Kathleen M. Sullivan is a strategist and evaluator who has worked for over three decades to make laws and public policies more fair and equitable for low-income and marginalized people.
In 2010, she founded Fine Gauge Strategy to help advocates, organizers, and funders improve their social change efforts. Through FGS, she has worked for leading foundations as well as social change and law reform organizations to:
—design measurement and learning processes that help leaders to make decisions more strategically and confidently
—conduct independent evaluations of clients’ advocacy, organizing, grantmaking, and collaborations
— help organizations build resilience, so that their structures and tactics produce impact despite shifting policy environments
—assist clients to communicate their unique value to partners and funders.
What does work with Fine Gauge Strategy look like in practice? Examples of impactful projects can be found here.
Beyond her own direct work with social change leaders, Kathleen connects clients to experts, resources, and ideas that they might not readily identify on their own. By publishing blog posts along with tools and resources, Kathleen also seeks to increase understanding of policy-advocacy and the measurement of policy progress.
Fine Gauge Strategy grew out of Kathleen’s experiences as a lawyer and advocate for low income workers and immigrants. In this capacity, she’s supported activists promoting the human rights of families fleeing natural disasters, immigrant children seeking asylum from gang violence, and prisoners subjected to “national security” detention and torture.
As an immigration counsel to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, she helped develop legislation that enables immigrant survivors of domestic violence to live and work in safety. Along the way, she learned a great deal about what makes for successful policy-advocacy projects and effective advocacy organizations—lessons that inform Fine Gauge Strategy’s entire portfolio of services and projects.
Kathleen has an AB in history from Brown University, and a JD from Columbia University School of Law, where she was a member of the Human Rights Law Review. She benefits every day from her talented friends in the policy-advocacy world, and from creative and knowledgeable colleagues in the American Evaluation Association.
