Strategic Planning
Turn big goals into focused priorities, practical roadmaps, and accountable implementation plans.
Strategy • Equity • Impact
Build power.
Build power.
Move people.
Make change.
Founded by strategist, convenor, and advocate Heidi M. Ellis, HME Consulting & Advocacy helps organizations build strategies and policies rooted in racial equity, intersectionality, and justice.
What we do
From vision to action.
We work with nonprofits, foundations, coalitions, companies, and community leaders navigating complex policy, organizational, and social-change challenges.
Policy & Advocacy
Build issue strategies, advocacy campaigns, stakeholder plans, and policy approaches designed for real-world impact.
Coalition Building
Align diverse partners around shared goals, governance, messaging, and collective action.
Facilitation
Design and lead high-stakes conversations, convenings, retreats, and decision-making processes.
Training & Learning
Create practical learning experiences that strengthen leadership, equity practice, collaboration, and organizational capacity.
Stakeholder Engagement
Identify, engage, and mobilize the people whose insight, influence, and participation are essential to success.
How we work
Strategy that reflects people.
HME brings together policy expertise, organizational strategy, facilitation, and community-centered engagement—especially where race, LGBTQ+ equity, power, and public policy intersect.
01
Listen deeply
Understand the people, pressures, history, data, and decisions shaping the work.
02
Map the landscape
Identify stakeholders, opportunities, risks, power dynamics, and pathways to change.
03
Build the strategy
Translate insight into priorities, choices, roles, messages, and action.
04
Move together
Create the alignment, tools, and accountability needed to turn plans into momentum.
HME / Heidi in Action
Follow the work. Read the coverage. Watch the impact.
Connect directly with HME’s social channels and selected media, interviews, advocacy coverage, and video features.
Connect directly
Follow HME and Heidi across social media.
Get current updates on strategy, advocacy, coalition building, speaking engagements, community work, and partnerships.
Featured Profile
Securing D.C.’s Queer Future
National LGBTQ Task Force →
Profile
HME on the Frontline of LGBTQ Policy
Washington Blade →
Advocacy Coverage
Protecting LGBTQ Services in D.C.
Washington Blade →
Budget Advocacy
Fighting for LGBTQ+ Resources
Washington Blade →
Podcast
Advocating for DC’s LGBTQ+ Community
The Ward 5 Wave / Apple Podcasts →
Video
2024 SMYAL Community Advocate Award
Watch on YouTube →
About Heidi
Strategy, advocacy, and collective power.
Heidi M. Ellis (she/her) is the Founder and CEO of HME Consulting & Advocacy (HME), a Washington, DC–based consulting firm that helps organizations build strategies and policies rooted in racial equity, intersectionality, and justice.
A strategist, convenor, and advocate, Heidi has built a career that bridges federal service, policy consulting, local organizing, and community impact. She began her career in public service in her home state of New Jersey and went on to serve as a Senior Advisor at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency during the Obama Administration. There, she advanced major policy and engagement initiatives and played a leadership role in the White House LGBTQ+ and African American Kitchen Cabinets, helping plan historic convenings including the first White House African American Policy Forum and first White House LGBTQ+ Youth Summit.
She later spent several years at a national policy firm, overseeing multimillion-dollar budgets, recruitment and talent development, and comprehensive organizational planning. She also spearheaded the firm’s first multi-year racial equity strategy, helping reshape both internal culture and client-facing work.
In 2019, Heidi launched HME Consulting & Advocacy. Today, HME serves nonprofits, government agencies, leading U.S. and international companies, and community-based organizations through strategic planning, policy and advocacy support, facilitation, training, and stakeholder engagement.
Community Leadership & Impact
A cornerstone of Heidi’s work is her leadership of the DC LGBTQ+ Budget Coalition, a diverse network of local organizations and advocates working to ensure LGBTQ+ communities—particularly people at the intersections of race, gender identity, immigration, disability, and socioeconomic status—are prioritized in the District’s budget.
Under her leadership, the coalition has secured more than $25 million in investments over multiple budget cycles, supporting housing and supportive services, language access, harm reduction, and workforce development for transgender and gender-diverse communities. The coalition also convened the first-ever DC LGBTQ Housing Summit in 2023, bringing community members, advocates, and government partners together to elevate lived experience and build solutions.
During FY25 and FY26, Heidi helped guide the coalition through difficult fiscal environments while protecting life-saving programs and securing new resources, including $1 million for the DC LGBTQ+ Community Center, dedicated housing vouchers for LGBTQ+ residents, harm reduction funding, restored annual funding for transgender and gender-diverse workforce programs, and nearly $1 million for Extended Transitional Housing for LGBTQ+ youth.
Recognition
Heidi’s leadership and advocacy have been recognized with honors including Washington Blade’s Queer Women of DC in 2020, Most Dedicated Advocate in Best of Gay DC in 2023, the SMYAL Community Advocate Award in 2024, and a Black Pride honor from DC Councilmember Zachary Parker in 2025, accompanied by a Council resolution recognizing her contributions to Black Pride in Washington, DC.
Her work has been featured in publications including the Washington Blade, Washington Post, and Metro Weekly.
Education & Home
Heidi earned her B.A. in Political Science from Temple University and a post-graduate certificate in Executive Leadership from Stanford University. She brings her professional expertise, lived experience, and deep-rooted commitment to justice to every aspect of her work. Heidi is proud to call Washington, DC, home, where she lives with her wife and two dogs.
Have a complex challenge? Let’s build the path forward.
Tell us what you’re working toward, where you’re stuck, and what success needs to look like. We’ll start with the strategy.