With Stepping Stones Consulting, YOU and your specific needs are front and center.
Stepping Stones Consulting has been supporting nonprofits in the US and overseas since 2010. In 2025, the firm decided to focus on supporting organizations with budgets under $5 million whose leadership is stretched and dealing with structural gaps that are holding them back or are creating risk.
Stepping Stones’ approach is rooted in the desire to avoid cookie cutter methods that result in generic deliverables that are not relevant or can’t be sustained.
We start with You.
Our Core Values
All in:
When Stepping Stones works with you we are all-in. This means we will take the time to actively listen and fully understand your needs, as well as the broader context around those needs. We do not come in with off-the-shelf answers or products, but use our experience, knowledge, and products as our starting place. We will adapt and tailor our support for your specific context and needs. You will never have to worry about getting a superficial report used for multiple clients. If this is our first time working together, we will take the time to get to know you, your philosophy, your values.
Knowledge and skill transfer:
Whether it is a risk analysis, establishment of systems or policies, or mentoring of leadership, Stepping Stones always approaches our engagement with the intention that you or your team can put the changes or improvements to work or maintain and expand the results without us. We do not want to substitute capacities that your business has, but enhance or bolster your capacities for specific, time-bound purposes.
Adding value:
It is important to us that our contributions are meaningful and impactful, and not just a document to be filed or another form people need to fill out once a year. Although there may be tangible deliverables, our focus is on the actual value that product will create for you. For example, a finance manual is a deliverable. But if the team does not understand the principles behind the policies, or how it relates to compliance- your organization will have a nice deliverable but not have actually addressed the underlying need- reducing risks associated with financial management. Stepping Stones Consulting will work with you to ensure we go beyond the deliverables to bring true value to your business or organization.
Risk reduction and resilience:
Everything we do, we do through the lens of risk reduction and resilience. Whatever the engagement, we will approach it in a way that part of the value it brings is reducing risk and building in resilience for your operations.
Driving Success Through Customized Business Strategies
Meet some of the experts behind Stepping Stones Consulting, dedicated to supporting you and your organization.
Jessica Pearl
Founder and CEO, Jessica Pearl brings more than 20 years of experience managing nonprofits, particularly in crisis-prone and transitional environments. She is known for her methodical approach to moving programs and teams from struggling to thriving. She has managed both US-based and overseas organizations with portfolios ranging from under $500,000 to over $7million. Her favorite place to be is in organizations that are on the cusp of organizational growth but without the luxury of the human and financial resources and operational systems to support that growth. She is committed to supporting organizations and leaders who are ready to unleash their full potential but are struggling to get their head above water. In addition to extensive experience with direct implementation and management, Jessica most recently provided risk and compliance oversight and management of foreign assistance portfolios of over $20 million. Jessica has certifications in nonprofit project management and financial management.
Stephanie Riddell
Stephanie Riddell is a senior global leader and organizational change strategist with more than 16 years of experience leading complex organizations, teams, and portfolios through transformation, growth, and uncertainty. She has led teams working on shoestring budgets up to $350 million, and advised government, international organizations, NGOs, and local partners across diverse and high-stakes environments. Stephanie brings a distinctive ability to translate strategy into execution—aligning people, systems, resources, and stakeholders around a shared vision while building the organizational capacity required to sustain change. Her leadership spans organizational transformation, strategic planning, stakeholder alignment, operational improvement, partnership development, and adaptive leadership. Known for navigating complexity and bringing clarity to challenging situations, she works with leaders to strengthen organizational performance, lead change with intention, and build cultures and systems that enable people and organizations to thrive.