Social Impact Advisory

Innovation & Transformation

Innovation means making room for bold new ideas, people, and behaviors that do not fit existing systems. It is how you close the gap between where you are today and where you strive to be, when business as usual no longer suffices.Doing this well requires managing the complexity and uncertainty of building what you do not yet know, and doing so ethically and equitably. The same is true for AI: it earns its place through testing and learning.We partner with executives and senior teams at mission-driven organizations, from global non-profits to arts and cultural institutions, and purpose-led companies to shape and align on a shared innovation and transformation strategy. From there, we reshape the operating models, capabilities, and culture that sustain impact long-term, enabling you to strengthen your role in your sector and take solutions from ideation to scale.


About & FOUNDER

Misfit CoLab was founded to support senior leaders who want to innovate across their organization, shaping the strategy and building the teams, capabilities, systems, and governance needed to execute and achieve their ambition.Vanessa Ceia advises executives and senior leadership teams at Fortune 500 companies and global organizations, and is former full-time faculty at Harvard and McGill. Across both worlds, her work runs from aligning leadership around a shared strategy to launching new labs, teams, and ventures, and leading culture change.She has deep experience working with multi-stakeholder and cross-disciplinary teams, in governance, and building innovation practices and ventures across Latin and North America, Africa, and Europe. Her background spans gender and social justice studies, human rights, cultural studies, and ethical tech and AI policy, with a Ph.D. from New York University.Most recently, Vanessa developed and operationalized the innovation strategy for Oxfam America and its Global Innovation Lab for Equality (aGILE), and supported Oxfam South Africa, Colombia, Brazil, Indonesia, and Turkey in shaping their own.

Let’s Chat

If you’re rethinking how your organization innovates, transforms, and leads, I’d love to hear about it.

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