Strategy & Facilitation · New Orleans

The clarity
you need is
already inside
your organization.

Neutral Ground helps leadership teams align, make decisions, and turn complex challenges into clear direction and action. By gathering honest input early and making sense of complexity quickly, we help groups accomplish months of work in a matter of days.

See How We Work → Try mosAIc Demo

By the numbers

20+

Years designing high-stakes conversations

Fortune 100 companies served

150+

Leadership teams aligned

$37 billion

Lost annually in the U.S. due to unproductive meetings and misalignment

What We Do

We make complexity navigable.

Most leadership teams begin important conversations too late — when everyone is already in the room, time is limited, and the pressure to agree has taken over.

Neutral Ground works differently. We listen before the meeting begins: gathering honest input, identifying patterns, and helping leaders understand what people actually think before major decisions get made.

Then we design and facilitate working sessions that help groups align, make decisions, and mobilize around a shared direction.

The result is not just a better conversation. It is clearer priorities, stronger decisions, and momentum people can actually support.

Deep Listening

We quickly gather honest input from people across your organization — surfacing perspectives, concerns, and patterns that rarely emerge in the room, but often shape every important decision.

Clarity & Sensemaking

Our proprietary AI-powered strategic sensemaking process, mosAIc, helps leadership teams cut through noise and complexity — surfacing the patterns, priorities, and actionable insights needed to move forward with clarity.

Alignment & Mobilization

We design and facilitate working sessions that help groups align around priorities, make decisions, and mobilize quickly around shared direction.

Strategic Design

The DesignShop® process helps organizations turn complex challenges into clear strategy, aligned priorities, and breakthrough outcomes.

Team working through a challenge together in a circle discussion

How We Work

How we work

— 01

We start before the room

Most organizations wait until everyone is gathered to begin the real conversation. We begin earlier — gathering input, identifying tensions, and designing the process around what is actually happening, not what the agenda assumes is happening.

— 02

Better decisions require honest input

Most people tell leadership a partial version of the truth — especially in group settings. Our process creates space for honest input early, helping teams identify tensions, concerns, and blind spots before important decisions get made.

— 03

We design for decisions

Every engagement is built around clear outcomes: decisions made, priorities aligned, and action people can move on quickly. The goal is not a productive conversation. The goal is meaningful progress.

— 04

AI accelerates, humans lead

Technology helps us gather and synthesize large amounts of input quickly. But interpretation, judgment, and decision-making remain deeply human. We use AI to support the work — never to replace the people doing it.

— 05

We work with you, not at you

Every organization has its own language, dynamics, and constraints. We design each engagement collaboratively — adapting the process to the people in the room and the decisions that need to be made.

— 06

People support what they create

Lasting alignment rarely comes from a strategy handed down from above. It comes from a process where people have been heard, perspectives have shaped the outcome, and teams leave with shared ownership of what happens next.

Facilitator leading a room of professionals

"The best facilitation is invisible. The group leaves feeling like they did it themselves — because they did."

— Jonah Evans, Founder & CEO, Neutral Ground

How We Help

Two tools. One integrated system.

Neutral Ground combines strategic sensemaking with expertly designed working sessions to help organizations move from complexity to clear direction and action.

Our work typically happens in two stages: understanding what is actually happening across the organization, and helping leadership teams align around what happens next.

Insight + Sensemaking

mosAIc

Every piece matters. Together they make the picture.

mosAIc helps leadership teams quickly understand what is actually happening across their organization before major decisions get made.

Using AI-powered conversations and expert human synthesis, mosAIc surfaces patterns, tensions, priorities, and concerns that traditional meetings, surveys, and retreats often miss.

The result is faster strategic sensemaking, stronger alignment, and clearer direction for what happens next.

No surveys. No committees. No useless meetings. Just honest input, thoughtful synthesis, and a clearer understanding of what the organization needs most.

Step 01Discovery — We work with leadership to identify the key questions, tensions, and decisions facing the organization
Step 02Insight — mosAIc gathers honest input across the organization through private AI-powered conversations
Step 03Sensemaking — We identify patterns, priorities, tensions, and actionable insights leaders can use immediately
Step 04Strategic Synthesis — Leadership receives a clear synthesis report with key insights, areas of alignment, unresolved tensions, and recommendations for what happens next

Alignment + Action

The DesignShop®

DesignShop® helps organizations turn complex challenges into clear strategy, aligned priorities, and outcomes teams can actually deliver.

Through carefully designed working sessions, groups move from competing perspectives and scattered input toward shared direction, coordinated action, and measurable progress.

Structured Working Sessions for Strategy, Alignment, and Breakthrough Outcomes

Step 01Clarify the Challenge — We identify the real decisions, tensions, and priorities the organization needs to address
Step 02Explore Possibilities — We bring diverse perspectives into the room to generate new ideas, approaches, and strategic options
Step 03Build Alignment — We test assumptions, identify shared priorities, and help groups move toward practical decisions
Step 04Mobilize Action — We turn strategy into ownership, implementation priorities, and measurable outcomes

Our Impact

Two decades. Real results.

Neutral Ground helps organizations move through moments that matter: leadership transitions, strategic planning, organizational change, high-stakes retreats, competing priorities, and decisions that require real alignment to succeed.

Our work spans Fortune 100 companies, nonprofits, universities, government agencies, and growing organizations navigating complexity, change, and rapid decision-making.

Recent clients + partners

Our Values

What we believe.

People support what they help create

The strongest alignment comes from a process that reflects real perspectives. We build that into every engagement from the beginning because people are far more likely to support decisions they helped shape.

Hard truth, held well

The most useful thing we can offer leadership teams is an honest picture of where things actually stand. We create space for candor early — and help groups work productively with what emerges.

Human judgment, always

AI helps us move faster and synthesize at scale. But interpretation, judgment, and decision-making remain deeply human. We use technology to support the work — never to replace the people doing it.

Design over default

Good outcomes rarely happen by accident. They come from clear objectives, thoughtful structure, and a process designed around the real challenge the group needs to solve.

Outcomes, not optics

We measure success by what changes are made — decisions made, priorities aligned, and momentum that carries into real implementation. A well-run process without meaningful progress is not enough.

All of us are smarter than any of us.

The strongest solutions rarely come from a single person with the right answer. They emerge when diverse perspectives, honest input, and disciplined collaboration come together around a shared challenge.

Who We Are

Built for the moments that matter.

About Jonah

Jonah Evans is the Founder and CEO of Neutral Ground, a New Orleans–based firm focused on helping organizations align stakeholders, surface hard truths, and help leadership teams move from complexity to clear decisions and coordinated action.

With more than two decades of international experience, Jonah has worked with 27 of the Fortune 100 companies, federal agencies, global foundations, and nonprofit coalitions to align stakeholders, surface hard truths, and move groups toward meaningful outcomes.

He is the creator of mosAIc — an AI-powered strategic sensemaking process that combines human facilitation with advanced technology to capture perspectives across systems, revealing patterns, tensions, and opportunities that would otherwise remain hidden.

He holds a master's degree from the Harvard Kennedy School, where he was awarded the Ash Center Fellowship for Democratic Governance and Innovation. He lives in New Orleans with his wife and three children.

About Neutral Ground

Neutral Ground is a strategy and design firm that helps organizations align around priorities, make better decisions, and move from complexity to coordinated action.

We combine strategic sensemaking, collaborative design, and expertly facilitated working sessions to help leadership teams understand what is actually happening across their organizations — and what needs to happen next.

Our diverse team of designers, artists, facilitators, storytellers, technologists, and educators brings decades of experience helping organizations navigate complexity, align stakeholders, and move important work forward.

Our work combines disciplined collaboration with modern technology to help organizations move faster, think more clearly, and build alignment around decisions that matter. The result is not just productive conversations, but clearer priorities, stronger decisions, and momentum that lasts beyond the engagement.

The clarity you need is already inside your organization.