Senior Consultant - Change & Stakeholder Lead

We are seeking a Senior Consultant - Change & Stakeholder Lead to support a complex, active enterprise transformation engagement. This role is the primary change management voice at the program level - responsible for driving stakeholder strategy, designing distributed change activation approaches, and ensuring leaders have the support they need to lead change within their own organizations.

You will work closely with the Engagement Partner to synthesize ongoing workstream outputs into structured change plans, manage the boundary between change management and communications, and provide direct, tailored support to senior leaders navigating significant organizational uncertainty.

This role supports an active, ongoing enterprise transformation engagement. Work begins immediately upon onboarding - ramp time is minimal.

This is a strong fit for a consultant who operates effectively without a prescribed playbook, can hold their own in executive-level conversations, and thrives in a fast-paced, lean consulting environment where ambiguity is the norm., Stakeholder Strategy & Impact Assessment

• Develop and maintain comprehensive stakeholder maps, assessing influence, impact, and readiness across the organization
• Design and lead targeted stakeholder interviews to surface leader-level pain points, priorities, and change support needs - and shape the engagement approach based on what you learn
• Develop persona-based engagement strategies that account for the different change challenges leaders face based on their organizational position and context
• Translate stakeholder insights into clear, actionable engagement and communication strategies

Change Planning & Distributed Activation

• Design the distributed change activation model for the engagement - including POC network framework and Master Communications Roadmap architecture
• Co-develop the enterprise change plan and transformation roadmap with the Engagement Partner, synthesizing active workstream outputs
• Identify risks, dependencies, and organizational readiness gaps on an ongoing basis - not as a one-time assessment
• Build change infrastructure that can be handed off and sustained by client-side leaders and teams

Leader-Level Change Support

• Serve as a direct, accessible change resource for senior leaders navigating team-level uncertainty - able to think through a challenge with a leader and return with directional guidance
• Provide tailored support that accounts for each leader’s specific context, team stability, and organizational pressures
• Help leaders develop and execute their own change tactics for their teams, including messaging, feedback loops, and communication cadences

Change & Communications Boundary Management

• Work alongside the client’s internal communications function - clearly owning the change management lane and ensuring communications outputs are grounded in the actual change plan
• Identify when communications work has drifted into change territory and course-correct constructively
• Ensure no commitment goes out in communications materials that does not have an actual plan behind it

Consulting Operations

• Produce high-quality deliverables on schedule while managing competing priorities in a remote consulting environment
• Participate in weekly internal team standups to align on progress, risks, and deliverables
• Step into adjacent tasks as needed - on a lean consulting team, work routinely extends beyond a defined role description

DECISION SCOPE

You will own: stakeholder mapping methodology and persona framework, impact assessment approach, distributed change activation model design, POC network framework and Master Communications Roadmap architecture, leader-level change support approach

You will recommend: stakeholder engagement strategies by persona, risk prioritization and readiness sequencing, transformation roadmap phasing, change/comms boundary management decisions

You will collaborate on: final scope, commercial decisions, and executive-level messaging with the Engagement Partner; integration with the client’s internal communications function

Client interaction is primarily remote, with occasional in-person working sessions., * Describe a transformation engagement where the future state was not fully defined when you started. What did you do to keep change work moving without a clear destination?

• Tell me about a time you provided direct, one-on-one change support to a senior leader - not a presentation or a program, but working through a specific challenge with them. What did that look like and what came out of it?
• Have you worked alongside a communications function on a change initiative? How did you manage the relationship when comms work started overlapping with change territory?
• Have you designed - not just participated in - a change champion or point-of-contact network as part of a large-scale change initiative?
• On a lean consulting team, work regularly comes up outside your defined role. Give me a specific example of a time you picked up work outside your lane without being asked.

Do you have experience in Strategic communications?, * 5-8+ years of experience in management consulting, organizational change management, or enterprise transformation

• Prior experience as a 1099 independent contractor or in a project-based consulting engagement - candidates with exclusively federal or long-term corporate backgrounds may not be the right fit for this model
• Demonstrated experience designing and executing stakeholder engagement strategies, impact assessments, and enterprise change plans
• Experience providing direct change support to senior or executive-level leaders - not just presenting to them, but working with them through ambiguity
• Proven ability to operate in environments where the future state is not yet defined - can anchor on what is known and keep work moving without false certainty
• Strong ability to hold the line between change management and communications - knows the difference and can manage it in practice
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills; able to produce executive-ready deliverables independently
• Advanced proficiency in PowerPoint and Excel
• Ability to work effectively and independently in a remote, lean consulting team, * Experience designing distributed change activation models or POC/change champion network frameworks
• Experience supporting enterprise transformation or large-scale organizational change in a commercial consulting context
• Prosci or other Change Management certification (preferred but not required)

Experience working directly with executive stakeholders or senior leadership teams in ambiguous, fast-moving environments

$80 - $100 an hour - Full-time, Contract