What We Believe

As your trusted advisor, partner, and resource, we embrace your mission, values, and goals so we can work together to ensure that your organization thrives. At Wishnick & Associates, we combine our beliefs, experience, and talent with yours to help you effectively and successfully achieve your mission.

  • Mission-driven organizations succeed when their priorities are clear
  • Increased internal capacity enhances an organization’s ability to achieve its mission
  • Knowing how to assess opportunities and make good decisions requires skill and vision
  • Working with a consultant provides a fresh viewpoint and someone who connects ideas in new and innovative ways
  • Progress and change are incremental
  • The process of discovering the answers to hard questions is as important as the answers themselves
  • Organizational and individual successes are linked – this bond is based on an understanding of how individual roles impact the entire organization
  • A consultant is your biggest fan, your honest critic, and your reality check

As Wishnick & Associates’ clients embrace equity, diversity, inclusion, and belonging, so does Amy. Ever mindful of bias and structural racism, she is authentic and open with clients and in all engagements.

About Amy Wishnick, Principal

Amy is passionate about organizations. A perceptive listener, strategic thinker, and creative problem solver, she asks the right questions to help clients uncover valuable organizational and leadership development opportunities. Amy is a valued colleague with proven leadership ability with diverse clients in diverse settings.

As a professional and a volunteer, Amy has managed client relationships, chaired boards and committees, designed and managed programs, conducted organizational assessments, developed agendas, facilitated meetings and workshops, and more. She began her career at the National Endowment for the Humanities, managing grants to libraries and archives. She then ventured into the private sector, managing attorney recruiting for a Chicago-based international law firm. During her seven years in executive search, Amy consulted with clients ranging from small and family-owned businesses to publicly traded Fortune 500 corporations. Clients included law firms, trading firms, financial services companies, nonprofits, foundations, higher education institutions, family offices, and manufacturing companies.

Amy has served on and chaired numerous nonprofit boards and committees. Currently, she is a member of the board of directors and executive committee of KAM Isaiah Israel Congregation. Amy is also a co-chair of the congregation’s capital campaign, Mishpacha: Our Family. Our Future. She has also served as a trustee for the KAM Isaiah Israel Foundation, which oversees the synagogue’s endowment, and chaired a transition committee. Amy had the unique opportunity to serve on the United States Defense Department Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS), a committee of civilian volunteers appointed to advise the Secretary of Defense. As a member of the executive committee, Amy trained new committee members to conduct visits to domestic military installations to gain a deeper understanding of career opportunities, forces utilization, and quality of life issues for active duty women. She also served as the primary author of two reports for the Secretary of Defense, highlighting findings and making recommendations based on the executive committee’s overseas trips to military installations in Europe and Asia.

Amy is a past board member and president of the Association of Consultants to Nonprofits (ACN). She has served on the governance committee and co-authored the association’s publication, Nonprofit Leader’s Guide to Hiring and Engaging Consultants. Amy was a member of the Axelson Center for Nonprofit Management Advisory Board and previously taught strategic planning at Axelson’s annual BootCamp for New Nonprofit CEOs. She has served on the selection committee for the Alford-Axelson Awards for Managerial Excellence since 2010. She is also an advisor member of the Forefront (formerly Donors Forum).

About the Associates

When an engagement calls for it, Wishnick & Associates works with trusted colleagues to build a project team. Many are members of the Association of Consultants to Nonprofits and all are consultants who have distinguished themselves in their fields of expertise. They are experts in DEI, fundraising, grant writing, market research and strategy, communications and marketing, program evaluation, and more. With this network of skilled consultants, Wishnick & Associates is able to meet clients’ needs and deliver a broad range of services, while still maintaining the fee structure of an independent consultant.