We need courage for the work ahead, and if you’re dreaming up something brave, beautiful, or wildly ambitious-I can help you make it happen.
If you're leading a small arts or culture organization - doing meaningful work with not enough hours, not enough staff, and never quite enough funding - I've been where you are. I've led organizations through the hardest parts: founder transitions, budget crises, board growing pains, and the particular exhaustion of caring deeply about a mission while scrambling to keep the lights on. I built this practice to be the partner I wish I'd had. I've watched makers launch businesses, artists get their first public commissions, and small organizations double their capacity.
My work is grounded in the belief that creative practice—when woven with land, community, and care—can heal, transform, and sustain us.
For me, the work of consulting is inseparable from the work of culture-making. Whether I’m facilitating a grant strategy session, supporting a public art plan, or helping a small organization navigate a leadership transition, I’m thinking about systems of support. I believe that the arts are not an extra—they are essential social infrastructure. They help us process grief, imagine alternatives, and connect across difference.
Hi, I'm Jessica (Jess) Muise, the founder of Muise Consulting LLC.
Born and raised outside of Boston, MA, I am the product of generations of laborers and craftspeople - people who build things. I’ve found a gift in supporting infrastructure for artists, creatives, and farmers working towards a better world. Twenty years in makerspaces, arts centers, and nonprofits means I've sat in every seat at the table - founder, staff, board member, funder, artist. That's why I can help you move forward with courage.
Why I do this work
I am an artist. My creative practice is rooted in transformation—of materials, of systems, of ourselves. I've spent twenty years inside the organizations you're trying to build — as staff, as a leader, as an artist, and as a board member. That means when you describe your situation to me, I'm not translating. I already know what it feels like when the founder is burning out, when the board is pulling in different directions, when a grant deadline is two weeks away and you're also running a program.
I’ve organized community spaces, ran a 40,000 sq ft makerspace, managed fifty artist studios, led a small nonprofit through COVID, led technical and operational improvement projects, and helped build my local public art commission. Each chapter taught me something different about what small organizations need - and what gets in the way.
I started this practice because I kept seeing the same gap: organizations doing genuinely transformative work, without the strategic or fundraising infrastructure to sustain it. That's the gap I work in.
Portrait by Timothea Pham.
borage for courage!
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borage for courage! *
Get in touch
I started this practice so I could choose who I work with. I choose people doing courageous work in the cultural sector. If that's you, I'd love to talk.