As an experienced board trainer, Constance Royster helps boards unify and course-correct to make more effective, efficient, and strategic decisions. Through strength assessments, specialized training sessions, and facilitated retreats, she leads them to set clear goals and expectations for each member’s roles and responsibilities. Connie excels particularly in guiding boards through periods of transition, whether that involves changes in leadership, challenges in fundraising and development, or structural shifts in organizational hierarchies. Organizations like Dwight Hall at Yale, the Center for Public Service and Social Justice, Christian Community Action, the Community Healing Network, and the Westville Village Renaissance Alliance have benefitted from her expertise on issues of sustainability, fundraising, hiring executive directors, board member searches, the management of fiduciary duties, and setting boundaries between board responsibilities and staff responsibilities. With the compassion, skill, and wisdom borne of robust careers as a lawyer and development director, she works with boards to right the ship.

Connie’s warmth, depth of experience, and strategic insight position her for work as a truly transformative professional mentor. Her specialty is guiding individuals through times of profound transition, perhaps even crisis; her canny expertise on what it takes to advance professionally is balanced by her deep sense of empathy and respect for her clients’ unique strengths and passions. Much of her work with individuals has focused on helping them successfully negotiate dual careers, designing with them a professional path tailored to the areas in which they want to excel and the problems they wish to solve regardless of the hat they may be wearing that day. In the course of her own professional life, Connie has great instinct and intuition for helping incipient leaders realize their potential, drawing out latent strengths and opening unseen doors so future luminaries can start leading now. 

After eighteen years of fundraising leadership at two iconic Connecticut institutions, WSHU National Public Radio and Yale, Connie brings a wealth of experience to boards and organizations looking to overhaul their development strategy or just trying to stop being afraid of the ask. By breaking down the overarching methods of development into storytelling and relationships, she renders the act of asking for money accessible to reticent boards, staff, and volunteers. Further, her extended tenure as a development director positions her to take the long view on development plans for the lifetime health of an institution’s coffers. She sees teaching boards to fundraise as fundamental to that health, and offers facilitated trainings on easing fear of fundraising, cultivating relationships, and telling compelling stories. 

 As an advisor and guide, Connie has particular expertise on issues of diversity, both from the perspective of institutions fixing broken diversity plans and from the perspective of individuals experiencing hostile work environments. Through her work with the Dean’s Diversity Committee at the Yale Divinity School, she served as an important member of the committee that developed a ten-year plan for a more diverse campus, bringing in external trainers for immediate gaps in cultural competencies and setting further goals for admissions, faculty hiring, and curricula changes. In advising individuals, she guides them in maneuvering to get help, assisting in negotiations, and mediation, all with an eye for maximizing a just outcome while minimizing political blowback.