What I offer
Program design
Retreats, cohorts, curricula, donor events. Most events are built as an agenda. I build them as a journey: what the room feels like, the moment people see themselves in the mission, what they leave carrying.
Learn more →Story coaching
A story that moved you does not automatically move a room. I work with the leaders and speakers your program puts up front, so the thread between who they are and why the work matters is clear, and the room sees itself in it.
Learn more →The story on screen
A live testimony fills a room. A story told on film travels into rooms you will never stand in. I find the thread of transformation in a person’s life and tell it on screen.
Learn more →$100 trillion of the $124 trillion transferring through 2048 will go to women. Cerulli 2024 / BofA Global Research She engages differently than most organizations are built to expect. I spent a decade learning how. That work belongs to Kai Pollai, which I co-founded. What the decade behind it left here is audience knowledge: rooms designed for the people actually in them.
Not a moment. Not a message. Not a metric. Change that takes root in a person, a team, an organization and does not let go.
The work is personal before it is strategic. Relational before it is programmatic. And it begins where most programs don’t. Not with the ask, but with connection: with each other, and with God.
How I work →
Mary Shaw · Founder
For over a decade I have built the experiences that generosity organizations put their people through. Generous Giving. Women Doing Well. Now my own studio.
My early career was in beauty and wellness. I found success there and knew I was meant for work that went deeper. That desire led me into the generosity space, and everything changed. I found my calling: creating spaces where people connect to what moves them, and to a mission worth their passion.
Read the full story →One evening, one weekend, one program, one person who has to stand up and speak. Tell me which one it is and I’ll tell you honestly whether I’m the right fit.
The work is personal before it is strategic. Relational before it is programmatic. And it always begins with the right questions, the ones that surface what is already there, waiting to be seen. Most people have never been given the space to ask what truly moves them.
That is where the journey begins. Not with the ask, but with connection: with each other, and with God.
As people grow clearer on their own passions, they start to see those passions reflected in the mission in front of them, and to recognize they were part of it all along. Something shifts.
A room is never a generic audience. It is these people, on this night, carrying whatever they walked in with.
So I start with the team making the decisions, and I ask each of them why this mission became their passion and what in their life led them here. Their answers tell me what the organization actually believes, which is not always what its materials say.
Then I want to know about the people who are coming: who they are, what they care about, and why they would give an evening of their life to be in that room. Until I understand that, there is nothing worth designing.
Each element of the program is carefully planned to meet the audience where they are and take them on a journey. During the program itself I’m watching the audience, connecting with their emotion, and adjusting in real time.
They stop seeing themselves as recipients of information and start seeing themselves as part of something larger.
Great experiences don’t happen by accident. I design intentional programming that moves participants from passive observers to invested contributors. Clearer about what they care about, and more certain of where they belong in the work.
Mary Shaw · Founder
My early career was in the beauty and wellness industry. Though I found success there, I knew I was meant for work that created deeper meaning and transformation in people’s lives.
That desire led me into the generosity space, and everything changed. I discovered my calling: creating spaces where people connect to what moves them, and to a mission worth their passion. One of my core strengths is setting the table. Designing experiences where people can be met personally and powerfully right where they are.
At Generous Giving, I spent years on staff designing the programming and delivering their annual national event, along with the regional one-day events that carried the generosity message into communities. At Women Doing Well, I led the creation of The Pathway, a twelve-session signature experience that has reached thousands of women across the country, and built the national delivery model that let it scale without losing the intimacy that made it work. I continue to work with them today.
Julie Wilson has mentored me throughout, in the craft of transformational programming and storytelling, and in how to shape content that moves people and lasts. My leadership expanded into operations, communications, and strategic planning, and into the unglamorous infrastructure that closes the gap between a good intention and a real result.
Along the way, my own journey deepened my understanding of purpose and reshaped how I help others find theirs. When leaders are aligned with their true purpose, they naturally become catalysts for generosity. That insight is at the core of everything I do.
I love Jesus, and that shapes everything. When I design an experience, I leave space for the Holy Spirit to work, both in the room and through it. The space where participants connect with God and with each other is where I have seen real transformation happen.
Generosity Studio exists to help organizations and leaders experience that same transformation, through generosity programming, donor events, and the kind of clarity that changes not just strategy, but impact.
I also co-founded Kai Pollai, and all of my women and philanthropy work lives there now: the programming, the advisory work, and a diagnostic that shows an organization how it actually performs with women donors. Generosity Studio is where I design experiences. Kai Pollai is where the work with women donors happens.
My husband Bryan and I live in Chattanooga, where family and nature are close by. Our daughter is grown and out in the world now. The two boys are still at home, still teenagers, and I am loving this season. When the weather turns warm you will find me in a mountain river. That crisp cool water will wash away anything holding you down. It’s my annual reset. I love to cook. Give me a table, good people, and a good meal, and I have everything I need.
Program design
I design the whole journey — not just the content, but the arc, the room, the moment people realize something has shifted in them.
Most events are built backward from a run of show. The agenda gets filled, the speakers get slotted, the evening happens, and everyone agrees it went well. Nothing moves.
Some organizations need a single powerful evening. Others need a weekend that changes the trajectory of a person’s journey. Others need a full curriculum their team can deliver over time. The format follows the need.
What stays constant is the journey. Every program I design moves participants from connection, to a clearer sense of what motivates them, to seeing how the mission meets their own passions, so they walk out carrying something they didn’t walk in with: the knowledge that they belong to something bigger.
Included in program design engagements, and available on its own.
An emcee is not someone who reads the run of show. They hold the emotional throughline of the evening: setting the tone, landing the moments that matter, and carrying the room from one part of the journey to the next. When that role is unprepared, the program can be perfect on paper and still feel like a series of unrelated segments.
I work with whoever carries that role, staff, volunteer, or leader, on not just what they say but how they hold the room, so the program feels intentional and seamless from open to close.
Story coaching
The story is already there. I find the story underneath the story, and tell it well.
The person with the most powerful story is often the one least able to tell it. They rush the part that matters. They apologize for the part that would have landed.
Story coaching is for the leaders and speakers your program puts in front of the room. I help them craft and tell their own story of transformation, so the thread between who they are and why the work matters is clear, and so the room sees themselves in it.
Whatever the setting, the work is the same: finding the truest version of the story and telling it so the room connects.
The story on screen
A live testimony fills a room. A story on film lasts, and travels into rooms you’ll never stand in.
A live testimony fills a room. The energy is real, and it moves people while it’s happening. A story told on film does something else. It lasts. It travels into rooms you’ll never stand in, and it holds up to being watched again. I do both.
Video story production isn’t only the craft of visual storytelling. It’s finding the thread of transformation in a person’s life and telling it with the vulnerability and honesty that make a story worth thinking about.
I work with your video team, or bring my own, to bring that story to life on screen.
Women and generosity
Kai Pollai
$100 trillion of the $124 trillion transferring through 2048 will go to women. Cerulli 2024 / BofA Global Research She engages differently than most organizations are built to expect. Most of them know this. Very few have changed anything about how they invite, ask, or follow up.
Over the last decade I studied what actually moves women to give, and to give transformationally. At Women Doing Well I built The Pathway around it, twelve sessions delivered to thousands of women across the country.
All of that work now lives at Kai Pollai, which I co-founded. The programming, the advisory work, and the diagnostic that shows an organization how it actually performs with women donors.
Not sure which fits?
Most engagements combine more than one. Tell me the moment you’re designing for and I’ll tell you what it needs.
Write to me directly