Our Story

During fifteen years working across West Africa, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Australia, and the United States, we spent much of our careers helping steward international community development investments. Some were small community initiatives. Others were regional strategies worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Those experiences taught us many lessons, but one has stayed with us more than any other.

The strongest ideas rarely come from consultants or donors. They emerge from conversations with community leaders, local organizations, parents, teachers, health workers, and neighbors. These are individuals who understand both the challenges they face and the opportunities that already exist within their communities.

In many parts of West Africa, these conversations happen beneath the Palaver Tree (L'Arbre à Palabre), a place where everyone has a voice, decisions are made collectively, and relationships matter more than transactions. It is never simply about reaching a decision. It is about listening well enough that everyone shares ownership of what comes next.

That idea is the foundation for Beneath the Canopy.

We wanted to build a consulting firm that reflected the same values: listening before advising, partnering instead of prescribing, and measuring success not by the reports we produce but by the communities our work will reach. 

The Canopy Commitment is how we put those values into practice–reinvesting a portion of every engagement in high-impact work that advances the priorities of the communities we serve. 

Consulting should leave more behind than a strategic plan.

It should strengthen the organizations that carry the work forward, deepen relationships across communities, and create opportunities for impact long after the engagement has ended.