Some organisations don't need another consultant. They need the right room.
The Athenae convenes accomplished women from deliberately different worlds around one significant question: yours.
There has never been more access to expertise, and rarely less access to judgement. Analysis is easy to buy and getting cheaper. What is scarce is the conversation that tests a significant decision from angles your own sector cannot supply.
The room most organisations can assemble is narrower than it looks. The same disciplines, the same career paths, the same assumptions arrived at separately and confirmed together. The Athenae exists to put a different room within reach.
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The Athenae convenes accomplished women whose experience runs across sectors, disciplines and kinds of work. Women who have bought, built, regulated, funded and led. That judgement becomes more valuable when it is brought together, and bringing it together is what we do for organisations.
On working with Lynn
The Athenae is new. The convening behind it is not.
“Over the past two years, Lynn has helped transform the British and Irish Hypertension Society into a more structured, outward-facing and strategically ambitious organisation.”
“Her leadership of our wearable blood pressure technology programme shows what she does best. Lynn recognised the need for a neutral, device-agnostic route through evaluation and into clinical use. She saw exactly who needed to be involved, and brought clinicians, researchers, patients, regulators, NHS partners and industry around the same table, including through the national summit, which gave a fragmented field a shared direction. She turned a complex emerging challenge into a structured national programme spanning evaluation, data integration, research and a proposed multi-centre clinical study.”
“Lynn has a rare ability to see the whole strategic picture, know exactly who needs to be in the room, bring them together and translate complexity into a credible programme of action. BIHS is in a markedly stronger position because of her contribution.”
Professor Phil Chowienczyk, President, British and Irish Hypertension Society
“IRONlife began with an urgent but complex problem, and an ambition to change how iron deficiency in women and girls is understood and addressed. Lynn and Janine helped turn that ambition into a clear proposition and a credible charity, combining different perspectives with the practical work of building an organisation.”
“What stood out was their ability to make sense of complexity, bring the right people around the table and turn discussion into action. That combination is powerful and sits at the heart of The Athenae.”
Professor Toby Richards, Chair, IRONlife
The Strategic Sprint
Convened judgement around one significant question, in weeks not months.
Some questions are too significant to answer solely from inside one organisation, and too particular for a standard advisory process. A Strategic Sprint begins by sharpening the question. Over two to four weeks, from scoping to final written synthesis, The Athenae selects and briefs five to seven accomplished women for the relevance and useful distance between their experience, usually including a perspective from outside your sector.
The session is confidential with individual contributions not attributed outside it. Within five working days you receive a concise written synthesis: where the group agreed, where perspectives differed, the risks it identified and the choices it would test next. A debrief conversation closes the Sprint.
A Sprint is not built around a pre-sold solution or an implementation mandate. Material interests are declared, and any follow-on work is handled separately and transparently.
What a Sprint is not:
Unlike a conventional consulting engagement, a Strategic Sprint is bounded around decision quality. It does not arrive with a predetermined framework, a pre-packaged solution or an implementation mandate, and it does not stay on after the synthesis. Nor is it a roundtable: the room is built, not gathered.
Organisations tend to come to us at one of two moments: early, while a significant decision is still forming, or late, to pressure-test a decision before it becomes expensive. Both are good reasons.
How an engagement begins
It starts with a conversation. Thirty minutes of discovery, no obligation, and no preparation needed beyond the question itself. Questions usually leave that call sharper than they arrived, and if a Sprint is not the right instrument, we will say so.
Ready to start?
Bring us your question.
Whether you are exploring The Athenae for yourself or for your organisation, we would love to hear from you
Contact [email protected]
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