From complexity to clarity.
From ideas to impact.
Peller Strategies works with organizations to build what doesn’t exist yet — the strategy, the coalition, the narrative, or the infrastructure needed to turn important ideas into impact.
THE FIRM
Peller Strategies thrives at the intersection of policy, strategy, and management — where the hardest and most important problems tend to live.
A note from the Founder, Julie Peller:
I founded this firm because I kept seeing the same pattern: organizations doing critical work but missing a piece of the puzzle. The strategy wasn’t clear. The stakeholders weren’t aligned. The research was strong, but nothing was changing on the ground. These are the problems I’ve spent my career solving. I’ve built organizations from scratch, negotiated landmark legislation, raised millions in philanthropic support, and led national campaigns that changed how an entire field talks about the people it serves. That lived experience shapes every recommendation, every strategy, and every conversation at Peller Strategies.
What drives me is the gap between what we know and what we do about it. The research exists. The talent exists. The commitment exists. What's missing is the connective tissue — the strategy that aligns the work, the narrative that makes people pay attention, and the relationships that turn good intentions into policy. I do this work because I've seen what happens when those connections are made — and what's lost for the people who need them most when they're not.
When you work with Peller Strategies, I’m the one in the room.Not a junior associate, not a project team you haven’t met. 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.
WHAT SETS PELLER STRATEGIES APART
We’ve Built the Things We Help You Build
Most consultants advise on strategy. We’ve built organizations, coalitions, and policy agendas from scratch — and know the difference between a plan that looks good on paper and one that actually works. When we advise on strategy, coalition building, or communications, it’s because we know where things go wrong, not just where they should go right.
We Bring People Together Across Divides
In a polarized environment, the ability to align diverse stakeholders around shared goals is one of the scarcest leadership capabilities. Peller Strategies works effectively across the interests because we focus on substance over buzzwords. We’ve built bipartisan coalitions, managed multi-stakeholder partnerships, and facilitated conversations across political, institutional, and ideological lines.
We Bridge Research, Policy, and Practice
Too many good ideas stall in the gap between what the research says and what actually changes on the ground. One of Peller Strategies’ core strengths is translation — connecting research to policy language, converting policy goals into organizational strategy, and making the abstract concrete and actionable.
We Care About the Story
Data doesn’t change minds on its own. We’ve led national campaigns that didn’t just raise awareness but changed how an entire field talks about the people it serves. We bring that same discipline to every engagement: narrative strategy, message development, and reframing how key audiences understand a problem so they’re moved to act.
WHAT PELELR STRATEGIES DOES
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Peller Strategies works with organizations to build strategic roadmaps grounded in real-world constraints and focused on impact. Through collaborative workshops, strategic coaching, and in-depth analysis, we help define a clear path forward — whether you’re launching a new initiative, navigating an inflection point, or rethinking your long-term direction. I’ve done this work for national nonprofits, foundations, and mission-driven organizations at every stage of growth.
Best for: Organizations launching new initiatives, entering new markets, or at a strategic crossroads.
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Peller Strategies helps organizations navigate complex policy landscapes with expert guidance in analyzing, shaping, and implementing policies that align with their objectives. Whether you’re building a government affairs function for the first time, translating research into policy priorities, or positioning your organization in a shifting federal landscape, we bring 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.
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The hardest, most important work happens between people who don’t yet agree but need to. Peller Strategies helps build and manage coalitions, facilitate multi-stakeholder alignment, and create the conditions for productive collaboration across political, institutional, and ideological divides.
Best for: Cross-sector partnerships, advocacy coalitions, boards and governance bodies, and any initiative that requires diverse buy-in.
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Peller Strategies helps organizations craft the story that makes people pay attention and act. This includes 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 current communications reflect.
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Thoughtful, connected management is critical to fulfilling your mission and making an impact. Peller Strategies helps organizations run more effectively, invigorate coalitions, and bring projects from idea to implementation. We are an expert extra set of hands with the experience of someone who’s been the one making the decisions, not advising from the sideline.
Best for: Growing organizations, coalitions needing operational structure, and leaders managing through transition.
IMPACT
What the work looks like
Organizations come to Peller Strategies with the ideas, the expertise, and the commitment — but without the strategic infrastructure to turn those assets into action. Here’s what the work looks like:
Turning Scattered Priorities into a Unified Strategy. A national organization with a large policy team had ambitious goals but no plan for getting there. Multiple teams were working across related issues without alignment on priorities, sequencing, or shared advocacy goals. Peller Strategies designed and facilitated a strategic retreat that produced a clear set of advocacy priorities and an actionable roadmap the team could implement immediately.
Elevating an Organization’s Federal Profile. A respected national organization had strong programs and deep expertise but limited visibility among federal policymakers. Through strategic coaching with staff and leadership, Peller Strategies helped develop and implement a federal policy agenda, identify and build relationships with key policymakers, and position the organization as a credible voice in national policy conversations. The organization has since launched partnerships with other national organizations on joint publications and webinars, and published an updated federal policy agenda that is actively shaping their engagement on the Hill.
Adding Strategic Capacity at a Critical Moment. A national organization in the middle of a fast-moving, high-stakes project needed senior-level policy expertise immediately. Peller Strategies embedded with the team, providing strategic guidance, leveraging relationships with experts in the field to strengthen the work, and helping design and facilitate productive stakeholder sessions. The engagement delivered both the immediate capacity the team needed and a stronger set of outputs than they could have produced alone.
Building a Roadmap for Policy Positioning. An organization with strong on-the-ground impact needed to translate that work into a credible national presence. Peller Strategies mapped the policy and funding landscape, identified strategic opportunities, and developed an engagement plan that gave the organization a clear path to sustained policymaker relationships and investment. The result was a playbook the organization can use and adapt long after the engagement ends.
What Clients Say
“Peller Strategies’ approach to designing and facilitating our retreat resulted in our team having a clearer set of advocacy goals and an actionable roadmap for achieving our goals. We now have a tool to repeat this action planning in the future.”
“Julie added capacity to our team at a crucial time in a large project. Her quick work and sharp insights were incredibly helpful!”
“Julie’s flexibility and deep content area expertise enabled her to jump right into a rapidly changing and fast-paced project. Additionally, her relationships with key experts in the field were helpful for developing strong session plans and facilitating productive prep calls.”
I am particularly passionate about creating a system where people have the opportunity to gain the skills and credentials they need to reach their goals — and where people can seamlessly interact with multiple learning systems, in colleges and universities, in workplaces, in workforce training programs, and in community spaces.
OUR CLIENTS
We work with organizations, foundations, companies, and institutions that are doing hard, important things and need a strategic partner who’s done it before.
Our clients tend to share a few things in common:
They’re building something new and need someone who’s gone from zero to one before.
They operate at the intersection of policy, practice, and people — and the problems they face don’t fit neatly into one category.
They care about outcomes — not just outputs, reports, or check-the-box deliverables.
They’re navigating complexity and need help making sense of it all.
This includes nonprofits, national associations, foundations, higher education institutions, workforce development organizations, government affairs teams, and social impact ventures. Peller Strategies’ deepest expertise is in education and workforce policy, but the capabilities we bring are relevant across any sector where the work is complex and the mission matters.
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
Tasseled
Education Trust
ABOUT
Julie Peller, Founder & CEO
I build things that don’t exist yet — and I’ve been doing it my whole career.
When I saw that 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, I 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 I built 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, they didn’t have one. I created it — building the foundation’s first federal policy agenda and managing a grant portfolio aligned to that strategy.
On Capitol Hill, I 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 I led — #40MillionReasons, Widen the Path, and the “today’s students” framing — shifted the dominant narrative in higher education from “traditional 18-year-old” to a more accurate understanding of who students actually are. That framing is now used widely across the field.
And, I’ve accomplished these goals while staying true to my core values — people matter, ideas matter, and together we can get things done. I consistently work with people and organizations on all sides of an issue, bringing people together around goals and creating impact.
The through-line of my career is this: I see where the strategy, the coalition, or the narrative is missing — and I build it.
I’ve learned that the hardest, most important work almost always happens at the intersection — between research and policy, between policy and practice, between people who don’t yet agree but need to. That’s where I do my best work, and that’s what I bring to every client engagement.
Named one of the 500 most influential people shaping policy by Washingtonian Magazine for three consecutive years. Featured by NPR, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, and The Hill.
RECOGNITION
PERSPECTIVES
Original perspectives on the education-to-workforce pipeline, the future of federal policy, and what it actually takes to move from ideas to impact.
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The Student Who Was Never Traditional
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