BLAIR & Brandon
Dottin-Haley
WHATEVER YOU CAN IMAGINE...
Let’s do this...
WHAT WE DO
From concept to implementation—and every stage in between.
Most organizations have no shortage of ideas. What’s rare is the infrastructure, the relationships, and the disciplined execution it takes to turn those ideas into programs that actually run—and actually work.
Program design and launch is the core of what The Dottin-Haley Group does. We partner with nonprofits, educational institutions, and purpose-driven organizations from the earliest stages of program development through full-scale implementation. We don’t hand you a plan and walk away. We stay at the table.
OUR APPROACH
How we show up for your program:
Program Architecture
We build the structural framework—logic models, participant pathways, milestone sequencing, and evaluation criteria—so your program launches with a foundation that holds.
Stakeholder Coalition Building
We identify, recruit, and align the partners your program needs—institutional, community, and funding—and manage those relationships through launch and beyond.
Participant Recruitment & Activation
We design and execute strategies to reach the right participants, build momentum, and sustain engagement throughout the program lifecycle.
Hands-On Launch Management
We manage the logistics, timelines, vendor relationships, and day-to-day execution of your launch—so your team can lead without getting lost in the details.
Strategy Vetting & Feasibility
Before you commit resources to a new direction, we pressure-test the strategy—sourcing perspectives from stakeholders, analyzing data, and delivering clear recommendations.
Impact Measurement & Reporting
We help you define the right metrics, build systems to track them, and communicate results to funders, boards, and the communities you serve.
CASE STUDIES
Programs we’ve built. Work still underway.
CASE STUDY
Delgado Community College + Apple • New Orleans, Louisiana • Ongoing
ONE NOLA Initiative
Designed and launched as one of the most ambitious digital education initiatives in New Orleans history, ONE NOLA brings together institutional partnership, community reach, and hands-on learning to prepare learners of all ages for a technology-shaped future—on their own terms.
Ideas are easy. Implementation is rare. ONE NOLA is what implementation looks like.
The Challenge
Delgado Community College sought a partner who could do more than design a program on paper—they needed someone who could build it, launch it, and run it. The goal: create a citywide digital education initiative that used Apple technology not as a novelty, but as a vehicle for teaching transferable skills, creative problem-solving, and community-centered thinking.
What We Built
The Dottin-Haley Group architected and manages the ONE NOLA Initiative from end to end. We designed the program framework, built the curriculum pathway, recruited and activated learners across age groups and neighborhoods, and manage the institutional relationships that keep the initiative running. ONE NOLA is also telling the stories of New Orleans through Lagniappe Stories, a podcast series available on Apple Podcasts.
ONE NOLA teaches participants to use digital tools—coding, design, and media production—not as technical skills in isolation, but as instruments for creating art, telling community stories, and building solutions to real local challenges. The program is grounded in the belief that technology is most powerful when it’s in the hands of people who have something to say.
What’s Happening Now
• Hundreds of learners of all ages actively participating across New Orleans
• Program spans three skill domains: coding, digital design, and media production
• Community-centered project framework connects learning to real neighborhood challenges
• Institutional partnership with Apple and Delgado Community College fully operational
• Initiative ongoing and expanding
200+
Learners of all ages reached in 4 months
3
Skill domains: coding, design, media
1
City. One initiative. Citywide reach.
CASE STUDY
Junior Achievement of Greater New Orleans • New Orleans, Louisiana • Ongoing
Regional Strategy Vetting Initiative
Junior Achievement of Greater New Orleans is in the middle of a strategic evolution—one that asks a harder question than most organizations are willing to sit with: not “how many students did we reach?” but “what actually changed for them?” The Dottin-Haley Group is leading the research, stakeholder engagement, and strategic analysis that will answer it.
The most important metric isn’t how many students walked through the door. It’s what they did when they left.
The Challenge
JAGNO had long measured program success by volume—the number of students participating in Junior Achievement programming across the region. But participation numbers don’t tell you whether a student’s relationship to learning changed. They don’t tell you whether a young person left more motivated, more capable, or more clear-eyed about their own career trajectory.
Leadership recognized that a shift was needed: from counting participants to evaluating impact on student motivation, academic performance, and attitudes toward career planning. The question was how to get there—and what that shift would require of the organization.
What We’re Doing
The Dottin-Haley Group is leading a comprehensive strategy vetting initiative that sources perspectives from dozens of leaders across four sectors: education, workforce development, economic development, and philanthropic funding. Our process combines stakeholder interviews, focus groups, and quantitative data analysis to build a complete picture of what’s possible and what’s required.
We are investigating three core questions:
• What metrics would genuinely capture improvement in career trajectory—and how would JAGNO track them?
• What partnerships, institutions, and systems need to be leveraged for those metrics to be meaningful?
• What needs to change about how Junior Achievement shows up in community to achieve these outcomes?
What This Makes Possible
The initiative is not just a research project—it is the strategic foundation for JAGNO’s next chapter. When complete, it will give leadership a clear roadmap: the right metrics, the right partners, and the right organizational posture to become a program that doesn’t just reach students, but demonstrably moves them forward.
Hundreds
Leaders across 4 sectors engaged
4 Industries
Sectors: Education, Workforce, Economic Development, Philanthropy
1
Clear shift from volume to depth.
CASE STUDY
NOLA Public Schools • New Orleans, Louisiana • July 2022 - Feb. 2024
Elevating Student Voice, Building Wellness from the Inside Out
Mental health programming in schools often flows in one direction: adults designing interventions, then delivering them to students. The Dottin-Haley Group built something different for NOLA Public Schools—a multi-format initiative that put student voice at the center and reached hundreds of students and educators with tools they could actually use.
The most powerful mental health intervention isn’t a curriculum handed down from above. It’s a student who finally has the space to say what they’re actually going through.
The Challenge
NOLA Public Schools needed a mental health initiative that could do two things simultaneously: meet students where they were emotionally and developmentally, and give educators the tools to support student wellness beyond a single assembly or workshop. The program needed to feel credible to students—not performative, not scripted—and it needed to last.
What We Built
The Podcast Series: Voices of Future Leaders
At the core of the initiative was a podcast series that gave students a platform to address the issues they themselves identified as most urgent. Students weren’t asked to perform wellness or recite talking points. They were given a microphone, a production process, and the space to speak honestly about what was affecting them and their peers.
The series elevated student voice as both a creative act and a civic one—positioning young people not as recipients of mental health programming, but as contributors to a community-wide conversation about what wellness actually looks like for them.
Assembly Programming: Wellness as Practice
Alongside the podcast, The Dottin-Haley Group designed and delivered mental wellness assemblies that reached hundreds of students and educators across NOLA Public Schools. The programming was built around practical, evidence-grounded techniques that participants could use immediately and return to independently:
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Box breathing — a structured breathwork technique for acute stress regulation
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Stress identification — helping students name and locate stress in their bodies and lives
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Stress relief techniques — actionable tools for de-escalation and emotional regulation
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Wellness practices — sustainable habits for maintaining mental and emotional health over time
The assembly format was designed to be participatory, not presentational. Students and educators engaged with the material together—building a shared vocabulary for wellness across the school community rather than siloing mental health as a student-only concern.
What This Made Possible
By combining a student-led media platform with hands-on wellness programming, the initiative created two things that rarely coexist in school-based mental health work: authentic student ownership and practical, scalable tools for educators. The podcast gave students a durable artifact of their own voice. The assembly programming gave the full school community a common language for mental wellness.
Hundreds
Students and Educators Engaged in Mental Health Trainings
Dozens of Industry Professionals Engaged
Sectors: Education, Workforce, Economic Development, Philanthropy
1
City focused on improving mental wellness.
CASE STUDY
Black Education for New Orleans (BE NOLA) • New Orleans, Louisiana • Ongoing
Digital Syllabus & Black Is Brilliant Series • Season 1 & 2 Completed
In-School Adoption of Black Education History Week - Ongoing
Black Is Brilliant: A Two-Season Documentary Series and Living Educational Resource
What does Black educational excellence actually look like—in practice, in pedagogy, in the lived experience of students and educators in New Orleans? Black Is Brilliant is a documentary series The Dottin-Haley Group produced for Black Education for New Orleans that answered that question with primary sources, academic rigor, and the voices of the people who have been doing this work for generations.
Black Is Brilliant didn’t theorize about Black educational excellence. It documented it—from the institutions that built it, and the scholars who can prove why it works.
The Challenge
BE NOLA sought to document and codify the pedagogical practices that have made New Orleans’ historically Black educational institutions so effective—and to connect that firsthand knowledge to the broader body of academic research on Black educational excellence. The goal was not just a film series, but a living educational resource that practitioners, policymakers, and communities could use.
Season 1: Primary Sources from New Orleans’ Own Institutions
The first season sourced firsthand testimonials from educators, alumni, and administrators at New Orleans institutions specifically founded to educate Black children—schools with decades or generations of proven outcomes and deep cultural roots. Featured institutions included:
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St. Augustine High School
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St. Mary's Academy
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McDonogh 35 High School
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Ahidiana
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Students at the Center
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The Learning Workshop
These weren’t interviews conducted at arm’s length. They were deep conversations about pedagogy—about what it means to teach Black children with intention, with cultural grounding, and with the expectation of excellence. Season 1 built a qualitative foundation: a body of firsthand knowledge about what Black educational excellence looks like from the inside.
The Digital Syllabus: Making the Research Usable
From the learnings of Season 1, The Dottin-Haley Group developed the BE NOLA Black Is Brilliant Digital Syllabus—a structured educational resource that organizes the series’ findings into a form that educators and institutions can actually apply. The syllabus is publicly accessible and designed to function as both a teaching tool and a research document.
The Digital Syllabus is available at:
BE NOLA Black Is Brilliant Digital Syllabus
Season 2: Academic Verification from Scholars Across the Country
The second season took the qualitative data gathered in Season 1 and brought it into dialogue with leading Black educational scholars from across the United States. These academics provided the research framework, historical context, and academic validation that transforms firsthand testimony into evidence-based practice. Featured scholars included:
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Dr. Akosua Lesesne
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Dr. Camika Royal
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Dr. Kevin Lawrence Henry Jr.
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Dr. Vera Triplett
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Rev. Dr. Starsky Wilson
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Kathe Hambrick
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William Jackson
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Hiewet Senghor
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Rhonda Broussard
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Sharhonda Bossier
Season 2 was a deliberate methodological choice: to honor the knowledge embedded in New Orleans’ own institutions while connecting it to the national scholarly conversation on Black pedagogy, culturally responsive education, and the history of Black schooling in America. The result is a two-season body of work that is simultaneously local and national, qualitative and academic, historical and immediately applicable.
What This Made Possible
Black Is Brilliant is not a finished archive—it is a resource in active use. The Digital Syllabus gives educators and institutions a structured entry point into the research. The series itself gives those institutions something rarer: a mirror that reflects their own excellence back to them, documented, validated, and shared with the world.
For BE NOLA, the project established an evidence base for Black educational pedagogy rooted in New Orleans’ own history—while positioning the organization as a national contributor to the scholarship on Black educational excellence.