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Experience & Expertise

Experience where decisions become consequences.

The full professional record behind ISA: the executives and elected officials our founder has advised, the decisions she has helped shape, and what that experience means for the leaders we work with.

Laurice Walker, Founder & Principal Advisor, ISA™

Founder Background

Laurice Walker

Founder & Principal Advisor, ISA™ · Executive Strategy & Organizational Effectiveness

Laurice Walker founded ISA after more than 15 years of executive leadership and advisory work across public institutions and enterprise organizations. Her career has centered on the people who carry consequential decisions: advising senior executives, department leaders, and elected officials on priorities, organizational performance, and the choices that shape how an institution actually performs.

In a previous executive role she served as an inaugural Chief Equity Officer, leading an enterprise-level approach to data-informed decision-making. Earlier roles included citywide budget analysis, organizational and workplace assessment, strategic action planning, workforce development, and executive facilitation, frequently working directly with department directors and executive teams.

She kept seeing the same pattern: organizations that drift gradually before they fail visibly. ISA exists to help leaders recognize that drift early, name it plainly, and respond to it deliberately.

Professional Experience by the Numbers

Cumulative experience, defined and counted.

Over the course of her professional career, ISA’s founder has trained more than 8,800 professionals and facilitated over 300 workshops supporting leadership, organizational effectiveness, strategic planning, and change.

15+

Years of Professional Experience

Professional and organizational leadership experience.

52

Executives Advised

Senior executives, department and organizational leaders, and elected officials advised.

8,800+

Professionals Trained

Through training, facilitation, and leadership development work.

300+

Workshops Facilitated

Across cumulative professional work.

These figures represent the founder’s cumulative professional experience and are not ISA client results. Department-leader and executive-advisor counts overlap and are not added together. Speaking engagements are listed separately.

Areas of Expertise

Six areas, each rooted in work actually performed.

Breadth matters more than a longer list of skills. Each area is grounded in documented professional work.

Executive Counsel & Governance

Judgment and preparation for consequential decisions, organizational complexity, and policy.

Executive briefingsElected-official relationshipsDecision rightsAccountability systemsGovernanceAI governance

Resource & Investment Prioritization

Budget decision processes, planning, competing priorities, and investment criteria.

Budget frameworksInvestment criteriaDepartment-level analysisPublic participationTrade-off analysisCapital planning

Public Safety & Critical Services

Workforce, risk, service demand, and organizational alignment in critical-service organizations.

Workforce assessmentOrganizational riskService demandLeadership alignmentEmergency communicationsCritical services

Organizational Effectiveness

Systems, culture, governance, and leadership alignment across complex organizations.

Workplace reviewsEmployee feedbackLeadership dynamicsOrganizational cultureOrganizational riskImplementation

Data & Performance Intelligence

Measurement, reporting, and decision-support frameworks that turn evidence into action.

Performance measurementDecision-support frameworksOrganizational dataExecutive reportingMetrics and accountabilityGeospatial analysis

Strategy, Policy & Change

Strategic planning, cross-functional execution, stakeholder engagement, and accountability.

Strategic planningLong-range planningCross-functional executionStakeholder engagementPolicy developmentChange management

Additional documented experience includes housing, transportation, water infrastructure, economic development, juvenile justice partnerships, employee engagement, AI governance, and nonprofit operations.

Documented Record

Two case studies, with the evidence attached.

Both cases describe work performed by ISA’s founder in previous institutional roles, in collaboration with departmental and technical colleagues. Neither was performed by ISA, and neither should be read as an ISA client engagement or a client result.

Case Study 01 · Enterprise data strategy

Building a shared basis for comparing need

Municipal government, previous executive role

Professional experience in a previous institutional role. Not an ISA engagement.

Challenge
Equity commitments existed across departments, but there was no shared way to compare need. Questions about where investment would do the most good were answered with anecdotes, and each department measured something different.
Responsibility
As the organization’s inaugural Chief Equity Officer, led an enterprise-level approach to data-informed decision-making, working with departmental and technical partners across the organization.
Work performed
  • Defined a shared indicator set with departments and the GIS and data teams, so figures were comparable across the organization.
  • Built the Equity Priority Index, which combined geographic and demographic data to compare need across the jurisdiction.
  • Embedded the framework in how departments assessed need and defended a request, rather than publishing a single report.
  • Presented the framework internally to executive leadership and externally to peers, including a session on pairing a chief equity officer with a data lead.
Documented outcome
  • Departments gained a repeatable way to compare need and explain how priorities were set, which outlasted the project itself.
  • The indicator data informed the prioritization of transit improvements in areas of greatest need.

Evidence

Harvard Kennedy School, Data-Smart City Solutions“Harnessing Data Visualization to Unify Departments in Equity Initiatives”Esri Public Sector CIO Summit“That’s a Wrap: Lessons Learned at the 2024 Esri Public Sector CIO Summit”, which features the equity data strategy session

External coverage and recognition are of the published strategy and conference session. They are not an endorsement of ISA, and ISA publishes no client references from this work.

Case Study 02 · Budget and resource decisions

Creating a consistent basis for budget decisions

Municipal governments, previous roles

Professional experience in a previous institutional role. Not an ISA engagement.

Challenge
Departments arrived at budget decisions with different criteria. Reviewing competing requests meant comparing analyses that were built to different assumptions, which made it hard to explain why one priority advanced over another.
Responsibility
Helped design budget-analysis practices in one municipal organization, then created and led a citywide budget-analysis approach in another, reporting to executives and presenting the analysis behind the recommendations.
Work performed
  • Built a decision framework linking strategic objectives, operational need, community conditions, and available resources to the investment decision itself.
  • Produced department-level analysis with the same criteria applied to every request, so trade-offs were stated rather than implied.
  • Supported public participation in the budget process, so the basis for prioritization could be explained outside the building.
  • Briefed executive and elected decision-makers on the analysis behind each recommendation.
Documented outcome
  • Departments gained a shared basis for weighing competing priorities and explaining the trade-offs behind an allocation.
  • The analysis approach became the standard used across the citywide budget cycle, not a one-year exercise.

ISA is not a CPA firm, accounting practice, or financial auditor, and does not provide regulated financial assurance. The expertise described here is the decision process, not fiscal compliance. No unpublished financial figures are reproduced.

Additional Selected Work

The work behind the numbers.

Public safety & critical services

Assessing workforce and organizational strain in critical-service organizations

Challenge
Critical-service organizations were carrying workforce strain, communication breakdowns, and leadership tension alongside the daily demands of service delivery.
Role
Conducted organizational and workplace assessments, surfacing employee experience, leadership dynamics, and institutional risk.
Approach
Brought structured employee feedback and organizational findings into executive discussions, translating them into recommendations leaders could act on.
Result
Workforce, organizational, and leadership findings reached the executives responsible for the decisions that followed.
Workplace reviewsEmployee feedbackOrganizational riskLeadership dynamicsEmergency communications

Advisory and organizational assessment work only. This is not sworn, operational command, clinical, or specialized emergency-responder experience. No confidential personnel or investigative details are published.

Strategic & long-range planning

Bringing long-range direction into department-level execution

Challenge
Long-range direction had to survive contact with departments that each carried their own mandates, budgets, and service obligations.
Role
Worked within municipal organizations on strategic and long-range planning. The role varied by effort, from leading or co-developing a plan to contributing analysis, facilitation, or departmental input.
Approach
Worked with department directors and executive leadership to consolidate competing priorities into plans with named responsibilities and implementation measures.
Result
Plans spanning economic development, water, fire service, internal operations, and equity, each with named responsibilities and implementation measures.
Strategic planningLong-range planningImplementation measuresExecutive facilitation

Roles varied by plan, and this shows range rather than sole authorship or adoption of each. These plans were developed within the employing organizations, not as ISA engagements.

Workforce & team development

Strengthening leadership teams under sustained pressure

Challenge
Teams were working under sustained pressure with unresolved conflict, unclear expectations, and strained trust.
Role
Designed and facilitated leadership development, team planning, and department-level interventions.
Approach
Delivered retreats, training, facilitation, and structured processes that gave teams a way to surface and work through difficult issues.
Result
Leadership development, team planning, facilitation, and retreats delivered across municipal departments and community-serving organizations.
Team planningRetreatsLeadership trainingPsychological safetyAuthentic leadershipConflict dynamicsDepartmental investigations

Selected examples reflect work performed in previous professional roles, often in collaboration with government departments, executives, and technical teams. They should not be interpreted as completed ISA consulting engagements.

Recognition & Documentation

Independently documented.

Harvard Kennedy School · Data-Smart City Solutions

“Harnessing Data Visualization to Unify Departments in Equity Initiatives”, coverage of the Tucson Equity Data Strategy.

Esri · Public Sector CIO Summit

“That’s a Wrap: Lessons Learned at the 2024 Esri Public Sector CIO Summit”, features the Tucson Equity Data Strategy session on pairing a chief equity officer with a data lead.

How This Serves ISA Clients

The same judgment, applied to your organization.

That experience connects directly to ISA’s three core services: Executive Advisory for ongoing counsel, Organizational Consulting for organizational work, and Leadership Development for individual and team capability. Organizational assessment, including Organizational Discovery, is an offering within consulting rather than a separate service.

The capabilities above are not sector-bound. The same thinking that narrowed hundreds of competing infrastructure needs into a defensible priority list applies to healthcare capacity, nonprofit program funding, workforce investment, capital planning, and organizational restructuring. ISA works across government, nonprofits, education, and private organizations, and we do not present previous government work as private-sector engagements.

If you are weighing a decision with real consequences, the first step is a short conversation about what you are trying to decide.

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