Peller Strategies

What Peller Strategies does

Come with a problem, not a scope.

Every engagement starts with the thing that's stuck. We've built organizations, coalitions, and policy agendas from scratch, and we've been on the inside of the decisions that shape them. These are the five ways we put that to work for you.

Strategic planning & roadmapping

You need a strategy that survives contact with reality.

Strategic roadmaps grounded in real-world constraints and focused on impact. Collaborative workshops, strategic coaching, and in-depth analysis that define a clear path forward.

Best for: organizations launching new initiatives, entering new markets, or at a strategic crossroads.

Policy strategy & analysis

You need to know what's coming before it lands.

Navigating complex policy landscapes: analyzing, shaping, and implementing policy that aligns with your objectives, with the perspective of someone who has been on the inside of these decisions.

Best for: foundations, nonprofits, institutions, and companies that need to connect policy to practice.

Coalition building & stakeholder alignment

You need people who disagree to move together.

The hardest, most important work happens between people who don't yet agree but need to. We build and manage coalitions and create the conditions for productive collaboration across divides.

Best for: cross-sector partnerships, advocacy coalitions, boards, and any initiative that requires diverse buy-in.

Narrative & communications strategy

You need the story that makes people act.

Message development, campaign strategy, thought leadership positioning, and reframing how key audiences understand a problem.

Best for: organizations whose story isn't landing, or whose work is more compelling than their communications reflect.

Organization & coalition management

You need the thing you built to actually run.

We help organizations run more effectively, invigorate coalitions, and bring projects from idea to implementation. An expert extra set of hands who's been the one making the decisions.

Best for: growing organizations, coalitions needing operational structure, and leaders managing through transition.

The work

In the room now. Building what lasts.

Organizations come to Peller Strategies with the ideas, the expertise, and the commitment, but without the strategic infrastructure to turn those assets into action.

Right now that's competency-based education and non-degree credentials, college affordability, and how organizations across workforce and higher education position themselves in a policy landscape that won't hold still.

What it looks like finished

Turning scattered priorities into a unified strategy

A national organization with a large policy team had ambitious goals but no plan for getting there. Peller Strategies designed and facilitated a strategic retreat that produced clear advocacy priorities and an actionable roadmap the team could implement immediately.

“Our team now has a clearer set of advocacy goals, an actionable roadmap, and a tool to repeat this action planning in the future.”

Elevating an organization's federal profile

A respected national organization had strong programs but limited visibility among federal policymakers. Through strategic coaching, we helped develop a federal policy agenda and build relationships with key policymakers. It's now shaping engagement on the Hill.

Adding strategic capacity at a critical moment

A national organization in a fast-moving, high-stakes project needed senior-level policy expertise immediately. We embedded with the team, providing strategic guidance and leveraging field relationships to deliver a stronger set of outputs than the team could have produced alone.

“Julie added capacity to our team at a crucial time in a large project. Her quick work and sharp insights were incredibly helpful!”

Building a roadmap for policy positioning

An organization with strong on-the-ground impact needed a credible national presence. We mapped the policy and funding landscape, identified opportunities, and developed an engagement plan: a playbook the organization can adapt long after the engagement ends.

“Julie's flexibility and deep content area expertise enabled her to jump right into a rapidly changing, fast-paced project. Her relationships with key experts in the field were invaluable.”

Current and former clients include

Western Governors University Lumina Foundation Jobs for the Future Excelencia in Education Competency-Based Education Network Institute for Higher Education Policy Center for Higher Education Policy and Practice Third Way National Skills Coalition Strada Education Foundation Tasseled Education Trust

About the founder

“I build things that don't exist yet. I've been doing it my whole career.”

When today's students, the parents, the workers, the first-generation students who now make up the majority of higher education, didn't have a strong enough voice in Washington, Julie Peller started an organization to change that. Higher Learning Advocates grew into one of the most recognized higher education policy organizations in D.C., and the Today's Students Coalition became a bipartisan force that helped change federal policy on Pell Grants, emergency aid, and financial transparency.

When Lumina Foundation needed a federal policy strategy, she created it: the foundation's first federal policy agenda, with a grant portfolio aligned to the strategy.

On Capitol Hill, she negotiated landmark higher education and workforce legislation as Deputy Staff Director and Senior Education Policy Advisor on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce under Chairman George Miller, including the Higher Education Opportunity Act, the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act, and the transition to 100% Direct Lending.

The campaigns she led, #40MillionReasons, Widen the Path, and the "today's students" framing, shifted the dominant narrative in higher education from "traditional 18-year-old" to an accurate understanding of who students actually are. That framing is now used across the field.

"The through line of my career is this: I see where the strategy, the coalition, or the narrative is missing, and I build it."

When you work with Peller Strategies, I'm the one in the room. You get the person who negotiated the legislation, built the coalition, and led the organization, with the relationships, judgment, and institutional knowledge that come from twenty years of doing this work at the highest levels.

20+

years at the highest levels of policy, from Capitol Hill to national philanthropy

$10M

organization built from scratch and led for eight years

3×

named to Washingtonian's 500 most influential people shaping policy

Featured by NPR, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, and The Hill.

Julie Peller, Founder & CEO

Knowledge doesn't need a gate.
It needs a door.

Ideas out in the world.

The Promise of the Disrupted Worker

Driving without a Map: Unpacking America's Credentialing Problem

Policy Components for Governing a Talent Marketplace