What good thing are you trying to make happen?

I help organisations across arts and culture, education and research, youth and community turn strategy into action.

You might be developing a new programme, exploring an opportunity, or trying to move an important priority forward.

From evidence-led reviews and programme design to temporary senior leadership, I bring the experience and judgement to make it happen, with social value shaping the work from the outset.

A woman with long blonde hair wearing glasses and a striped maroon shirt sitting at a wooden table, writing in a notebook with a blue pen. There are books and papers on the table, and a plant and framed pictures in the background.

How I can help

01 / Discover

Understand the work. Decide what comes next.

Evidence-led reviews, stakeholder engagement and opportunity assessments.

02 / Design

Turn an idea into a workable plan.

Programme development, partnership design and implementation planning.

03 / Build

Get the work done.

Temporary senior leadership to establish programmes, manage partnerships and deliver strategic priorities.

Experience behind the work

30 years

Leading programmes, partnerships and organisational development.

Founding senior leader at MoLI

Established and led Learning and Community for seven years.

Trustee, Axis Ballymun

Board-level governance and organisational stewardship.

Selected work

A picture of Museum of Literature Ireland's Readers Garden. A small courtyard garden with a wooden bench on a sandy ground, green shrubs, pink flowers, a cobblestone path, a tree, and surrounding brick buildings under a blue sky.

MoLI — Building an institution

Established and led Learning and Community at a new fee-paying national museum, building free-to-access participation and partnership into its way of working from day one.

16,500+

Participants across Learning and Community programmes.

135+
Volunteers and interns supported

Europa Nostra Grand Prix for Citizen Engagement and Awareness-Raising, 2023.

A still shot of the animation of the poem, All Ways Home. Illustration of diverse people standing on clouds in space, reaching for a star against a starry sky and the Earth in the background.

EIRSAT-1 — Space Poetry

Working with the UCD Centre for Space Research, the lead partner on EIRSAT-1, and the JCSP Demonstration Library Project, I developed a route for students from participating DEIS schools to actively take part in Ireland’s first satellite mission through a five-week online space poetry project.

Twelve students worked with poets to explore the theme of home during the pandemic. Their writing was later shaped by UCD students into All Ways Home, a collective poem etched onto EIRSAT-1.

EIRSAT-1 launched on 1 December 2023, carrying the poem into space.

A promotional image for Sphere 17, a regional youth service, with a background showing promotional flyers for a strategic plan from 2023 to 2026, and the phrase "A Place to Be Young!" overlaid.

Sphere 17 — Young People and Place

Over twelve years, I helped turn Sphere 17’s commitment to young-person-led practice into programmes, projects, spaces and opportunities for young people to shape decisions affecting them.

That work included supporting a youth committee to advocate for a new youth facility in Priorswood, delivered in 2014.

Bringing ambition to life.

Strategy gives us direction, based on what we know now.

Then comes the work. Bringing people and knowledge together. Testing, deciding and adapting. Turning ambition into action.

People. Partnerships. Resources. Decisions. Momentum.

That's the work. That's Good Stuff.

Let the work live.

Good work changes as people engage with it.

They shape it, question it, adapt it and sometimes take it somewhere nobody anticipated. That is part of the work, not a failure of the plan.

I build evaluation in from the beginning so we can see what is changing, learn from the evidence and make informed decisions about what to continue, adapt or stop.

The aim is work that creates value — for the organisation, for the people involved and for the resources invested.

A woman with long blonde hair, wearing glasses and a striped maroon shirt, smiling while sitting at a wooden table in a room with framed artwork on the wall and a potted plant in the background. She is writing in an open notebook with a blue pen, surrounded by a stack of books and a laptop.

You're welcome here.

I'm Jennie Ryan, founder of Good Stuff Consultancy.

I bring people, ideas and organisations together to move ambitious work forward.

I'm drawn to the questions, the possibilities and the practical challenge of working out what will actually move the work on.

Good Stuff,

Jennie

What would you love to move forward?

I'd love to hear about it.