Helping turn your stories

into the

meaningful changes

you want to see.

Improvement Catalyst Coaching helps teams and leaders at all levels advance health justice and make lasting systemic change by using effective communications strategies to tell powerful stories.

Services

1:1

One person can be a catalyst by using effective communications strategies. To be successful leaders, we coach individuals at all levels to listen, earn trust, and develop a shared vision.

Teams

We help teams to recognize power dynamics, build genuine relationships, and work together to accelerate and spread improvement.

Organizations

Helping organizations with their strategic communications means ensuring your messages are clear, focused, and aligned with your mission-driven goals to create lasting impact.

Book a call

Two women using effective communication strategies

42% of workers say poor communication negatively impacts cross-functional collaboration and 45% say it negatively impacts their trust in leadership and their team. 70% of change programs fail to achieve their goals and poor communication is a key factor.

Sources: Notta, Forbes, McKinsey & Company

Using effective communications strategies engages hearts and minds and turns goals into reality.

Improvement Catalyst Coaching helps individuals, teams, and organizations:

Accelerate, spread, and sustain improvement
Tell stories that resonate, engage, and inspire action
Meaningfully engage key partners and colleagues
Advance justice and dismantle racism
Amplify the mission-driven impact patients, clients, students, and communities need and deserve

challenge

A college readiness non-profit serving historically and currently marginalized high school students lacks a reliable system for telling the stories of their impact on the health, well-being, and educational success of their participants.

Possible Outcome

Through narrative coaching and co-designing a system for identifying, collecting, and sharing stories, the organization creates a story bank, making it easier to disseminate what they are learning and engage key partners.

Alternative Outcome

Without an organized and strategic approach to storytelling, what the organization learns and accomplishes remains underutilized and under-recognized, limiting the impact of its work and its ability to secure the resources needed to support its mission.

challenge

A newly appointed leader is given responsibility for ensuring equitable health outcomes but struggles to align key partners around a unified vision for health equity.

Possible Outcome

By using a clear communications strategy and listening to the concerns and ideas of others, the leader engages teams across the organization. They create a shared understanding of what is needed and focus their collective efforts where it can have the most impact.

Alternative Outcome

Without clearly communicating a unified vision and taking time to understand a range of perspectives, the leader faces ongoing miscommunication and disengagement, resulting in stalled or fragmented health equity initiatives.

challenge

Teams in a peer learning network - that includes healthcare and community-based organizations - find it difficult to work together effectively to address the social drivers of health.

Possible Outcome

With storytelling coaching that helps to build trust and addresses power dynamics, the teams establish strong partnerships, leading to collaborations that improve housing stability and health outcomes in the community.

Alternative Outcome

Without understanding the stories, motivations, and perspectives of those involved, attempts at cooperation remain strained, limiting the impact of both the healthcare and community-based teams’ efforts.

How It Works

Book an Initial Call

To get started, book a no-pressure call to discuss the challenges you are facing. If we agree to proceed, we will schedule a follow-up call and explore the next steps.

Receive a Customized Plan

Next, you’ll receive a customized coaching or consultation plan. This will include your recommended number of coaching or workshop sessions or consultation plan, including defined goals or deliverables.

Begin Your Journey

Once we sign an agreement, our work together begins.

Three healthcare workers reviewing documents

Meet Jo Ann Endo

Serving as a catalyst for change for over 25 years.

For a long time, Jo Ann Endo believed effective communication was simply a way to engage audiences. Now, after more than 25 years as a writer, editor, and communications strategist, she sees things differently.

Through her combined experience in healthcare, health equity, quality improvement, and social work, she came to understand the true power of communication. Communication, especially through storytelling, is the key to building empathy, creating genuine human connections, and motivating people to act. Communication is about doing more listening than talking and about conveying messages with purpose.

Jo Ann founded Improvement Catalyst Coaching with a clear mission in mind: to advance health justice and make lasting systemic change by using effective communications strategies to tell powerful stories. Together, we can joyfully do the hard work of challenging the status quo. Connect with Jo Ann Endo on LinkedIn.

Our Guiding Principles

From our interactions to decision-making, our guiding principles are at the forefront of every project we undertake.

Storytelling

Storytelling is the spark that ignites understanding. Stories are powerful tools for conveying purpose, building empathy, and inspiring action across traditional boundaries.

Relationships

Genuine connections are built on trust, foster collaboration, and support meaningful change. Relationships are the foundation for effective communication and equitable transformation.

Sustainability

Real progress requires change that endures. Impact must live beyond the moment to create lasting, long-term improvement that advances equity and justice.

What Partners Are Saying

“

I wish I had attended her workshop when I was starting my quality/safety career!

”

Jo Ann Endo has helped a large group of changemakers at my organization brainstorm how to incorporate a communication strategy from beginning to end of a performance improvement initiative.

Komal Bajaj, MD

Chief Quality Officer, NYC Health + Hospitals/Jacobi/NCB

What Partners Are Saying

“

Jo Ann knows the trials and tribulations and the seriousness of the health equity work that we’re doing and the impact it has.

”

The importance Jo Ann puts on justice for all people really resonated with me. I found her to be really supportive and helpful.

Floretta Cox

Consultant Midwife, University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust

What Partners Are Saying

“

Through decades of work to advance quality and equity in health care, Jo Ann has proven her skill and wisdom in helping leaders tell their stories.

”

You can look far and wide, but you will not find a better communication strategist and coach when you have something to say about quality improvement and equity, to help propel your vision for the future and engage those you need. Creating a compelling narrative, a strategic communication plan, ought not to be an afterthought, but rather integral to leaders’ work. And it is not for amateurs; smart leaders should draw on the best available counsel. Jo Ann Endo’s experience and results in this arena are varsity level, indeed.

Donald M. Berwick, MD, MPP, FRCP, KB

President Emeritus and Senior Fellow, Institute for Healthcare Improvement

Frequently Asked Questions

Meet Jo Ann Endo

Let’s connect.

Book an initial call with Improvement Catalyst Coaching to discuss the challenges you’re facing.