What I offer
Program design
Retreats, cohorts, curricula, donor events. I design the whole journey, not just the content. What the room feels like. The moment people see themselves in the mission. What they leave carrying.
Learn more →Story coaching
I help the leaders and stakeholders your program features craft and tell their own story of transformation, so the room sees themselves in it.
Learn more →The story on screen
A live testimony fills a room. A story told on film travels into rooms you’ll never stand in. I find the thread of transformation in a person’s life and tell it on screen.
Learn more →Women and generosity
The largest wealth transfer in history is moving toward women. They engage differently than most organizations expect: they want to connect — to understand a mission and see how it meets what they care about — before they give. I help you understand your audience and build a journey that actually works for them.
Learn more →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
This work is my calling. For over a decade I have served organizations committed to generosity and transformation. What I do is personal. It is intentional. And it is deeply collaborative.
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 in 2013, and everything changed. I discovered my calling: creating spaces where people connect — to what moves them, and to a mission worth their passion.
Read the full story →Let’s figure out what you need.
Start with a conversation. 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.
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 in 2013, 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 six years on staff designing and delivering their annual national conference, and led the team developing the regional and national experiences that carry that message through trained volunteers. 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.
I began creating programming in 2019 and moved into leading that work full time in 2020. Julie Wilson mentored me in the craft of transformational programming and storytelling — 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 how I hold this work. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Women engage differently. Most organizations know this and still don’t know what to do about it. I do.
The great wealth transfer is already underway, and it is moving toward women. The organizations that understand how women give — and build accordingly — will be the ones that thrive.
This is not a demographic strategy. It is a fundamental shift in how an organization thinks about relationship, trust, and what it means to invite someone into a mission. It is the same journey of connection — helping women see how a mission meets their own passions, and where they belong within it.
Over the last decade I studied what actually moves women to give, and to give transformationally. That work made me an authority on how women engage, how they give, and what organizations have to build to meet them well.
The work ranges from building something new to refining what already exists.
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