About

Ann Willemssen, Founder and Principal Consultant 

Ann Willemssen is the Founder and Principal Consultant of Shift Forward Consulting, LLC. With over two decades of public sector experience, she helps government and non-profit executives align on strategy and implement new initiatives. She specializes in facilitating multi-stakeholder collaborations (steering committees, communities of practice, task forces), helping them clarify the best pathways to success.

Ann is currently designing the Home for Good Black and Latine wealth-building initiative (subcontractor to UPD Consulting) in partnership with the Urban League of Philadelphia and the Wells Fargo Foundation. She also facilitated the California School Boards Association’s Artificial Intelligence Policy Task Force (subcontractor to Crocus LLC).

Prior to forming Shift Forward, Ann served as a director at UPD Consulting, where she led projects with over 50 clients. Work included development of a national set of use cases to connect economic mobility data (partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), application of equity principals to workforce data system development in three states through Data for the American Dream, creation of a School-Centered Housing Response model for the City of Baltimore (Fannie Mae Challenge Initiative), and support for a cohort of Virginia schools to use performance data to improve student outcomes. She honed a short-cycle strategic planning process over the years to help organizations spend less time stuck in the planning phase and more time testing and tweaking their ideas in implementation. And she helped countless government agencies to reimagine their data and IT programs to serve their customers better.

She recently created an online course for the University of California at Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy titled Data Governance for Public Decision Making, which explores the role of public sector leaders (particularly those outside the IT department) in making sure strategic decisions are made regarding their organization’s data assets Many of the governance principles discussed in the course were tested in action as part of a local education agency community of practice she facilitated in partnership with the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation. 

Previously, Ann led performance improvement projects at the District of Columbia Office of the City Administrator and the Office of the State Superintendent of Education. She also worked on low-income nutrition programs for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Ann has a Master of Public Policy degree from the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Oberlin College. She lives in Washington, DC.

Email Ann

Connect via LinkedIn