Needle Strategies partners with people and organizations which center racial equity, and pursue racial justice through systemic and societal change.

Mission

Needle Strategies’ north star is a world where we can all be free. To get there, we partner with individuals, communities, organizations, and sectors to center the lived realities of communities of color to infuse racial equity principles in people, policies, culture, organizations and systems.

About Elana

Dr. Elana Needle is the Founder and Principal Consultant at Needle Strategies LLC. She formed Needle Strategies after serving as the Racial Equity Anchor Collaboration Director at UnidosUS where she brought nine nationally preeminent racial justice organizations (Anchors) together to work on short- and long-term collaborative projects to move the needle on racial equity in the US. Elana leverages her professional experience to teach the next generation of movement leaders by serving as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Silver School of Social Work, New York University since 2015. Elana teaches her classes from a critical race and intersectional perspective, infusing structural racism knowledge into each lecture. And, she challenges students to understand their privilege and how that impacts policies and movements.

Why Work with Needle Strategies?

Organization and Coordination

Social justice and racial equity issues can be complicated. With a multi-pronged, cross-community, and partnership approach to these issues, your project can shift perspective, bring people together, and create change in communities, organizations, and systems. Elana is super organized and prides herself on being able to pivot easily. She is an expert in facilitation, coordination, and providing strategic direction, even during the most complicated times.  

Relationship Centered Design

Pushing the needle on racial equity cannot be accomplished alone. Your project will likely require relationship building and connecting with people and organizations. And through these relationships, Elana centers and partners with community members, communities and organizations striving to ensure a future where our differences are recognized, appreciated, celebrated, and loved; a future of shared power, resources and responsibility; a future which centers people, communities and organizations typically siloed and silenced; a future where racial and intersectional equity is central to any and all work.

Expertise

Learning to navigate the complexities of racial equity and social justice will not happen overnight. For the past decade, Elana has worked in the racial equity field. Elana’s work has crossed sectors: philanthropy, national racial justice organizations, the private sector, and education. And, various communities: multi-racial groups, race / ethnicity- specific organizations, and internationally. These partnerships had varying subject matter focuses including civic engagement, strategy development, research, policy analysis, advocacy, narrative change, program creation and implementation, fundraising and development, etc. As part of her anti racism learning journey, Elana was a 2019 Atlantic Fellow for Racial Equity. She remains an active member of the Atlantic Institute’s fellowship alumni network. Due to her longevity in the sector, Elana has deep relationships with racial equity movement leaders, organizations, and government practitioners.

Needle Strategies Approach

As a white cis-gender woman working in the racial justice sector, Elana operates from a frame of radical inclusivity and with an anti racist lens. Needle Strategies is an organization working to dismantle white supremacy and create equitable systemic change. In order to deconstruct supremacist systems, Elana works every day to continue learning and understanding how race operates in America, about her privilege and to question how she “takes up space.” Elana also strategically “inserts herself” to ensure the people of color who she is partnering with or serving are not carrying the bulk of the work. In all things, Elana deeply believes in shared leadership with and lessening the burden for the people of color who she partners with or serves. When working with Elana, people and communities who have been traditionally excluded help to shape everything from soup to nuts.

Services

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to achieving racial equity and racial justice. Needle Strategies provides services that are bespoke and collaboratively scoped in partnership with clients. Some examples of our services include:

Research:

• Equitable Evaluation*

• Landscape Analysis

• Literature Reviews and Qualitative Analysis

  Thought Leadership:

• Strategy Consultation

• Facilitated Dialogues

• Strategic Planning

  Partnership and Relationship Building:

• Network Building

• Relationship and Partnership Development

• Anti Racist Organizing and Movement Building

  Project Implementation and Management:

• Project Direction and Management

• Customized Training Curriculum

• Agenda Creation and Facilitation

Also embedded within each engagement, free of charge, is Elana’s sense of humor… all the dad jokes.  

*possible sub contract / partnership

 Portfolio

Building a Bigger We: GARE Leverages Transformative Partnerships to Build Institutional Change at the State Level

National States Strategy For Racial Equity: Our States Strategy Steering Committee includes the Government Alliance on Race and Equity at Race Forward, State of Equity at the Public Health Institute, and Needle Strategies.

 What It’s Like Working With Elana

“Elana has a keen ability to grasp, organize, and communicate a vast amount of information across multiple issue “silos.” She has a proven ability to capably support and drive a diverse collaborative of civil rights leaders and organizations, an effort that required considerable humility and flexibility along with substantive expertise. She is a strong facilitator/coordinator, taking great care to make sure each voice is heard and that the materials developed together were equitably reflective of all voices in the collaborative. And, she an effective program manager, tracking and moving various partners, vendors and consultants to advance multiple objectives in real time. In sum, Elana is the consummate professional.”

Charles Kamasaki, Former Executive VP, UnidosUS; Fellow, Migration Policy Institute; Distinguished Visiting Scholar, Cornell Law School

“The global pandemic and social justice uprising of 2020 really tested the leadership of many organizations and created a monumental need that we were not fully prepared to address. We had to show up in so many ways for our communities and try to take care of ourselves at the same time. That’s were our Racial Equity Anchor partners really saw Elana step in and step up. Elana truly is a master facilitator. She helped us organize our thoughts into strategy, she kept us on track with our goals, yet she allowed us time to process and be mindful about how we navigated complex issues that were unfolding daily. Elana’s personality is genuine, caring, humorous, and unwavering in her pursuit for collective liberation.”

Lycia Ortega Maddocks, Former Vice President of External Affairs, National Congress of American Indians, Racial Equity Anchor Partner

More Coming Soon!

Current and Past Clients & Partners

Needle Strategies LLC is a New York State Certified Women Business Enterprise (WBE).

Needle Strategies LLC website was created with assistance from Dominique Apollon of Apollon Research and Consulting and Lycia Ortega Maddocks of Thunderbird Strategic LLC.