We catalyze regional economic transformation.
Formation is a national consulting organization that helps leaders act with clarity and confidence to create inclusive, durable growth.
Our Work
Formation creates insight, crafts strategies, and enables action in three domains:
We guide regions to decisions about which industries matter and how to grow them in ways that expand opportunity.
Regional Economic Strategy
We strengthen connections to jobs by aligning workforce development institutions and activating the private sector.
Workforce & Education Systems Alignment
We help regions accelerate the transition to clean energy in ways that create good jobs and spark innovation.
Energy Transition
We work at any scale, from advising executive teams to guiding regional coalitions. And we step in at any stage: framing challenges, driving teams to sharpen strategies, activating partnerships to execute, or evaluating initiatives to guide investment decisions.
Our Experience
Formation’s co-founders Francie Genz and Ryan Donahue have refined their craft through years of practice in more than 100 regions, working alongside leaders of economic and workforce development organizations, colleges and universities, city and state governments, and philanthropies.
We’ve created cluster strategies for biomanufacturing in Modesto and polymers in Akron. We’ve launched sector partnerships in New Orleans and Honolulu. We’ve charted a path to clean energy abundance in Illinois and helped Cleveland build pathways into climate jobs. We’ve led national learning networks on inclusive growth and industrial policy.
This experience gives us the discernment to identify what works and how to adapt those models in different places. It also gives us a keen sense of what doesn’t work and the drive to innovate where old playbooks no longer apply.
Our Vision
Formation’s work is rooted in the belief that economic transformation is not only necessary but possible.
Changing the trajectory of an economy requires ambitious visions that are grounded in rigorous research, linked with strategies that make clear and bold decisions, and anchored by systems that turn those strategies into lasting action. Formation delivers this type of coherent, mutually-reinforcing strategic guidance to regions.
Economic transformation also requires that pioneers come together to develop new ideas, and that those ideas spread rapidly across the field. Formation is a platform for developing leaders and advancing the art and science of inclusive growth across the country.