About Us
The team at Radiate Works brings together a unique blend of expertise and experience in innovation and entrepreneurship across business, nonprofit and higher education. Our diverse skill sets enable us to bring complementary sensibilities to our projects, level-setting the landscape and providing a holistic approach to problem solving. We are prepared to guide your progress and assist with knowledge gaps along the way.
Melissa Carrier
Co-Founder & Partner
“With over 25 years of experience leading strategic initiatives and building organizations, I bring to Radiate Works a commitment to results. Through creative and community-centered approaches, I identify and capitalize on opportunities for organizations to adapt and grow as transformational leaders. An engineer by training, I love to design and implement solutions to complex problems across organizational boundaries. As an MBA, I am committed to making sure solutions are sustainable for the long term. My work as an executive director, funder and consultant in the corporate and nonprofit sectors has led to meaningful innovation and entrepreneurial practices. I bring my passion for teaching and keen ability to connect dots in unexpected ways to my work daily.”
Elizabeth Benefield
Co-Founder & Partner, Emeritus
“For over 30 years I have been combining a deep commitment to social justice with a passion for teaching young people how to become aspirational change leaders. Radiate Works is the culmination of a career dedicated to building strategic bridges across sectors and difference, and to creative problem solving. Through skilled facilitation, I love nothing more than uncovering the “a-has” and finding points of collaboration. Solid strategic thinking and building things from the ground up characterize ten years in the nonprofit sector and almost twenty years in higher education. In my previous role as Director of Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship at NC State, I led a campus wide effort to create and nurture an entrepreneurial ecosystem built on strong external partnerships and focused on embedding impact practices, with the goal of empowering students to become engaged citizens of the world.”
Co-Founders
We launched Radiate Works in 2023 to do good work better. Our clients benefit from our way of thinking as strategists, facilitators and educators.
Affiliate Partners
The impact of Radiate Works is amplified by our team of creative and passionate change leaders who bring diverse industry and functional expertise.
André Blackman
Executive Talent & Advisory I am a talent strategist, executive advisor, and ecosystem builder at the intersection of health, social impact and leadership development. For over two decades, I have worked alongside organizations navigating pivotal moments — whether scaling a team, closing a leadership gap, or reimagining how they find and develop the people who carry their mission forward. I bring a relationship-driven approach to executive talent and advisory work that prioritizes strategic fit, field knowledge and the human side of connecting people to opportunity. I believe the right people in the right roles can change the trajectory of an organization, and ultimately, the communities it serves. I am deeply energized by the work Radiate Works is doing and look forward to bringing my passion for purposeful connection to the Radiate Effect!
Jade Enns Rader
Arts and Creative Media Strategy I help organizations, especially those rooted in the arts and creative media, grow with clarity and confidence. My consulting work brings together strategy, operations, and innovation to turn vision into action and make the daunting not only doable, but enjoyable. My path has taken me from analytics at SAS, to leading research and innovation at Three Ships Media, to shaping transformative initiatives at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York — including The Collider, an R&D lab for the performing arts, and Restart Stages, which turned Lincoln Center’s campus into an outdoor performance hub during the pandemic. Today, I partner with leaders to design clear strategies, streamline operations, forecast financial futures, and craft growth-focused digital plans. I hold an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BS in Computer Science from UNC-Chapel Hill. Based in Raleigh, I thrive on working side-by-side with mission-driven organizations to co-create strategies, streamline operations, and embed innovation in everything they do. I believe in the power of art and creative media to transform communities, and I bring deep analytical rigor, creative mindset, and operational discipline to every engagement.
Vichi Jagannathan
Social Innovation & Rural Communities I am a serial entrepreneur and educator who applies human-centered design and systems mapping tools to create community-driven solutions that address root causes of problems facing rural and under supported communities. I currently serve as the Co Founder of Rural Opportunity Institute, a social innovation lab in Eastern NC that supports the design of innovative solutions for interrupting generational cycles of trauma. In my career I have designed a mobile app called Real Talk for middle school health, taught courses in Design Thinking at UNC Chapel Hill, and hold an MS in electrical engineering from Stanford and an MBA from Yale SOM. I bring together insights from all of these different experiences to offer compassionate, strategic, and actionable support to others who would like to get to the root of complex challenges and create strategies that have long term impact.
Wesley Melville
Executive & Team Coaching, Strategy Consulting I am an executive coach and management consultant who believes organizations perform best when their strategy and their people develop together. For nearly two decades, I have supported mission-driven leaders across sectors, from small businesses to Fortune 500s, nonprofits, and government agencies, to help them close the gap between their goals and the results they're actually achieving. After many years as a management consultant, I realized that one big thing missing from traditional consulting is the emphasis on people development, so I've focused my work at the intersection of executive coaching, team performance, and business strategy. Great strategy begins with honest self-examination, and organizations become great when they bring out the best in their people. I hold an MBA from UNC Kenan-Flagler and an ICF coaching certification. I look forward to partnering with Radiate Works and the clients it serves.
Jada Wyatt
Social Innovation and Creative Entrepreneurship I am pursuing a PhD in Business and Technology Management with a specialization in Entrepreneurship at Iowa State University, where my research focuses on values-based entrepreneurship. My strategy work spans higher education, the arts, technology, finance, nonprofit, and startup spaces. I have contributed across a range of roles, including research with entrepreneurial support organizations, entrepreneurial arts programming, and social innovation fellowship work. These experiences give me a broad lens on how ideas move from insight to action through visualization, facilitation, and resource development. I bring thoughtful design, clear communication, and systems-level thinking to each project, helping mission-driven teams shape strategies that are both creative and grounded.
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Sam Canney
Experience Design and Transformation Strategy As a creative experience designer, community org founder, and poet, I lead organizations through phases of deep transformation to their offerings and operations — revitalizing customer lifetime value and positioning delivery teams for long-term sustainability. I earned my design and strategy chops applying human-centered methodologies at startups, nonprofit-profit/NGOs, and large corporations like Apple, EY, UNC and Research Triangle Park. I believe every organization holds deeper potential, and I love to create experiences that tell a new story more true to the foundational vision and mission driving its leadership and teams. I specialize in design thinking workshops where we re-discover the people you’re hoping to impact, uncover new possibilities for your offerings, and determine actionable, low-risk high-reward next steps to get your team on the right track. Additionally, I love to co-create new project management systems that ensure your operations fit your new direction. As both a analytical strategist and artist, I’m committed to getting to know your teams at every level so we can strengthen the connection between your long-term vision and untapped potential, together.
Kenyetta Hall
Strategy, Marketing, & Product Management I am a Product leader, strategist and visionary who is passionate about community, collaboration, growth and innovation. I have over 15 years of experience working in corporate in various sectors focused on business strategy, product growth, and digital transformation. I am excited to use these skills to help companies do good work. What I enjoy the most about the work that I do is being able to see when the light bulb goes off and you know that true change is taking place. I look forward to making that happen with Radiate Works.
Kirsten Kainz, PhD
Sensemaking and Evaluation Strategy I am an engaged methodologist who specializes in group processes for evaluation and learning. I have worked for over 25 years in communities and higher education, serving in research, teaching, and leadership roles. I publish, teach, and present about how people work together to learn about their current conditions, envision desired changes, and create pathways to new and better outcomes. As a consultant, I practice sensemaking with groups to identify their purpose, understand their environments, express their values, and achieve their goals.
Eli Typhina, PhD
Behavioral Change, Relationships & Alignment I hold a PhD in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media and bring 15 years of experience in community and organizational change. I am passionate about listening to and enabling communities and organizations to create the change they envision within themselves, their community, and the world. My approach draws on behavior change theories spanning the fields of marketing, psychology, design, and organizational change to inform design of impactful systems, processes, and technological innovations. By combining research-based insights, on-the ground experiences, and my knowledge of indigenous teachings, I offer fresh perspectives on complex challenges that support the well being of both people and the planet.
Liz Chen
Research & Evaluation Strategy I'm an evaluation expert and have worked primarily with nonprofits, government entities, and K-12 schools to design and evaluate public health and education programs. With MPH and PhD degrees from the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and design thinking training from IDEO, I embrace participatory and utilization-focused evaluation strategies. My undergraduate thesis advisor called me a "practical idealist" and I think that description fits me well; I love to dream big within our real-world parameters to conduct intentional and useful evaluations.
Katie-Gray Jackson
Design & Communications Strategy I am a design strategist and storyteller who is most passionate about creative collaboration. I apply both my degree in Industrial Design and my experience in the tech industry to create collaborative conditions and iterative thinking environments for bright ideas to thrive. I apply strategic focus to the creative process and I support cross-functional teams in bringing design and communication concepts to life. The opportunity to apply these skills and passions towards the unique and meaningful work that Radiate Works is doing excites me very much and I look forward to contributing to the Radiate Effect!
Liz McNeil Royea
Design Thinking & Community Engagement I am a strategist and facilitator who supports organizations to deepen engagement with community to identify and solve complex challenges through co-design. My work spans social innovation and global health, including a decade of work across East Africa in the social entrepreneurship, humanitarian and non-profit spaces focused on sexual and reproductive health and youth engagement. I also have a passion for knowledge creation and exchange and have lead global communities of practice and co-taught courses and trainings on human-centered design. Originally from Canada, I am now living in Durham, NC and enjoy exploring trails, public libraries and restaurants.
Meg VanDeusen
UX/UI Impact Strategy and Facilitation I’m a nonprofit leader turned design strategist and love nothing more than facilitating a space for diverse perspectives to come together and get “unstuck.” The work I enjoy most aligns human-centered design goals with business strategy objectives in order to create sustainable impact and generative change. My expertise in engaging end users and constituents in problem-solving results in unique solutions at the intersection of creativity and viability. When I’m not working with clients you can find me in my pottery studio or curled up with a good book.
Radiate Works helps organizations move from intention to action. Through data-informed analysis, facilitation and collaborative design, we help our clients uncover opportunities, align around shared priorities, and build the capacity needed to drive sustainable impact. Let us share our unique capabilities honed from over 30 years of field building with your organization.