Meet our team…
Dani Beam, Principal
Dani works with individuals and organizations to find creative, practical, and integrated solutions to meet crucial needs and leverage team strengths. She has worked with local, regional, and global businesses and nonprofits to:
train leadership
raise funds
build organizational capacity
Her approach is holistic—she looks at all the components of a situation to address the challenge at hand and create a positive ripple effect to elevate the organization as a whole.
Dani’s capacity-building expertise is rooted in her 25 years as an organizational leader, facilitator, and nonprofit fundraiser. During that time, she supported and advanced the missions of a wide variety of businesses and nonprofits.
Dani’s core strengths are deep listening and empathy. She has a keen sense of client needs and the best ways to engage organizational leaders.
While living in Dallas, TX, and working for Viscern—a national consulting firm that provided fundraising and other consulting services for 10,000 organizations—she honed her expertise in conducting needs assessments, strategic plans, feasibility studies, and capital campaigns. She has also tackled revamping systems, employing best practices, and creating customer-centered services for one of the world’s largest conservation organizations, The Nature Conservancy. Dani has worked with the brightest and the best and knows for a fact—all organizations can improve their services no matter how sophisticated and global their reach is.
As the owner of Beam Consulting, Dani has offered client-centered counsel on annual fundraising, capital campaigns, strategic planning, and marketing for more than ten years. Beam Consulting has worked with organizations, large and small, all over the country. In addition to her consulting services, Dani is known for her highly engaging workshops and trainings.
In her free time, Dani enjoys reading, cooking for friends and family, playing with her nephews, and traveling to new places. She is also an avid swimmer and yoga practitioner and believes that organizations, like everyone else, can benefit from breathing deeply from time to time and seeking a grounded perspective.
Amanda Forr, the founder of Element A, has built a career dedicated to the idea that carefully chosen words are meaningful and can drive progress. As a writer, editor, and strategist, Amanda transforms research and data findings into actionable insights and strategic plans. She also tells stories, bringing voices and perspectives to light in authentic and insightful ways.
As senior director of integrated planning for a strategic communications firm, she gained experience across sectors, including economic development, arts and culture, nonprofits, and health care. Amanda also has deep experience in managing and implementing communications strategy and creative work, having served as vice president of brand communications at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, overseeing creative, media relations, corporate communications, and digital marketing. While there, she led an award-winning team, managing the brand and ensuring its adherence organization-wide.
Before the Aquarium, she focused on the written word as a storyteller, journalist, technical writer, and editor for national publications, and a government contractor. She earned degrees in English and media arts and design with a journalism concentration from James Madison University. She also completed the Rutgers Digital Marketing Mini-MBA and has taken Creative Writing courses from Stanford University.
Amanda’s skills include writing, editing, interviews, stakeholder engagement, creative direction, brand strategy, workshop design and facilitation, and marketing/communications consulting. She lives in Hershey with her husband, three children, and two incredibly furry dogs.
Jill Kratz’s passion is using creativity to solve problems and designing meaningful projects that have an everyday impact. In addition to her skills as a designer, she believes that collaboration is at the heart of powerful creative work. She brings this people-forward approach to every client. Jill has facilitated countless workshops focusing on the intersection of creativity and strategy.
Before creating Demi and co., Jill was the creator and facilitator of creative workshops at Bravo Group, leading the team and clients through every phase of the creative process from exploration to execution.
Prior to joining Bravo, Jill spent time on design teams of two cultural institutions and another Pennsylvania-based agency. Jill graduated from Slippery Rock University with a degree in public relations and a minor in film and media studies, and has served on the board of AIGA Central PA.
“I feel like you take the time to truly understand the organization that you are working with. I feel like you offer unique resources to all of the clients, because you have taken the time to understand them and can easily shift resources based on what you know from the clients. In addition, I have always appreciated how organized you are. I know exactly what our organization will receive from a contract and I know exactly what is expected from us to make the contract work. You stick to the contract and the timeline and are super reliable.”
— Tina C.| CEO | LANCASTER, PA