Sequence Consulting Helping Associations Grow Faster

About Lisa Vaughan

Lisa Vaughan

Advisor to Association Leaders Navigating Membership Growth, Revenue, and Member Value

Lisa Vaughan helps association leaders meet one of the defining challenges of this moment: growing membership, expanding revenue, and delivering more value to members whose expectations keep rising.

She works with CEOs, boards, and senior leadership teams to strengthen member value propositions, accelerate growth, and build sustainable revenue models that support long-term impact. Her approach combines Fortune 500–level strategic rigor with a deep understanding of how associations actually work—and what it takes to lead change inside them.

For more than 25 years, she has partnered with leadership teams at some of the world’s most prominent professional and trade associations. What motivates her most is helping associations realize their full potential: to grow, adapt, and lead change in their professions and industries.

Lisa is co-founder and CEO of Sequence Consulting, founded in 2001 to work exclusively with associations. 

Lisa Vaughan Association Expert

When Leaders Call Lisa In

Lisa is usually brought in when leaders know something needs to change—but aren’t sure where to start, or when they’ve started and hit resistance. In most of these situations, the problem is not effort or commitment. It is that the organization is solving the wrong problem, often for longer than anyone realizes. What leaders are really asking for is not another initiative. It is a clearer understanding of what is actually limiting growth—and which decisions matter most now. In many engagements, the most important work is not solving a specific problem—it’s helping a leadership team see the organization clearly enough to make better decisions going forward. That work often includes: 
    • Helping CEOs and boards align around strategy when competing priorities have created drift
    • Redesigning membership models to reflect what members actually value today
    • Identifying and building non-dues revenue opportunities that fit the mission and capacity of the organization
    • Leading teams through structural change, M&A integration, and complex transitions
    • Translating strategy into practical execution that produces measurable results
In many engagements, the most important work is not solving a specific problem—it’s helping a leadership team see the organization clearly enough to make better decisions going forward. 

What Experience Looks Like in Practice

Across different engagements, similar patterns tend to emerge. Most revenue and membership problems aren’t execution problems. They’re clarity problems. 

In some organizations, growth returns after leaders stop treating symptoms and address the underlying constraint. In others, member value becomes sharper once the organization honestly confronts what it does—and doesn’t—do better than alternatives. In still others, revenue stabilizes only after long-standing assumptions about dues, pricing, or programming are finally put on the table. 

Before founding Sequence, Lisa served as Vice President of Global Workforce Development and Organizational Transformation at marchFIRST, a NASDAQ-listed global systems integrator with more than 10,000 employees across 30 countries. There she directed the integration of more than 40 mergers and acquisitions, worked closely with executive teams and boards to drive large-scale strategic change, and built the operational frameworks that allowed the organization to grow at speed without losing cohesion. 

At Sequence, she brings that same capacity for leading complex, high-stakes work to associations. Across more than two decades of client engagements, that work has produced results such as: 

Sustainable growth rarely comes from doing more. It comes from deciding more clearly—and then executing with discipline. 

 

Who Lisa Works With

Lisa works directly with CEOs, boards, and senior leadership teams at professional and trade associations of all types and sizes, including many of the most prominent organizations in the country.

 

Her clients have included AARP, the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, SAE International, and the Executives’ Club of Chicago, among many others.

Background and Perspective

Lisa holds a Master of Nonprofit Management from DePaul University and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Hope College. That combination—rigorous graduate training in the nonprofit sector alongside deep experience in high-growth corporate environments—gives her an unusually practical perspective on the challenges association leaders face. She is a member of the Association Forum of Chicagoland and the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE), and she serves as Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees at The Avery Coonley School. She is known for her ability to ask the question no one else is asking—and to do it in a way that opens the conversation rather than closing it.

Focus Areas

    • Membership growth and retention
    • Member value and engagement
    • Non-dues revenue and business models
    • Strategic planning and execution

About Sequence Consulting

Founded in 2001, Sequence Consulting works exclusively with associations that want stronger membership, more resilient revenue, and clearer strategic direction.

The firm is known for its candid perspective, rigorous analysis, and focus on decisions that lead to real change.

Learn More

If you are exploring Lisa’s work through a referral or the Sequence Consulting website, you can find additional insights, research, and case examples throughout the site.

For leaders facing growth pressure or strategic uncertainty, Lisa welcomes thoughtful conversations about what may be holding the organization back—and what could realistically move it forward.

Research and Insights   |   Contact Lisa   |   lvaughan@sequenceconsulting.com