What to Expect in Your First 90 Days Working with a DEI Consultant

Top TLDR:

Your first 90 days working with a DEI consultant move through three phases: honest assessment of where your organization stands, strategy development tailored to your specific gaps, and early implementation of training and structural changes with accountability built in. The first 90 days are not when transformation is complete — they are when the foundation is built to make it possible. Schedule a free consultation with Kintsugi Consulting, LLC in Greenville, SC to start.

One of the most common reasons organizations hesitate before engaging a DEI consultant is uncertainty about the process itself. What will actually happen? Who will be involved? How disruptive will it be? Will this produce anything concrete, or does the work just disappear into a report that nobody acts on?

These are fair questions. The first 90 days of a DEI consulting engagement set the tone, the direction, and the structural foundation for everything that follows. Understanding what those 90 days involve — what to expect, what to prepare, and what realistic outcomes look like at each phase — helps organizations show up as genuine partners in the work rather than passive recipients of it.

At Kintsugi Consulting, LLC, based in Greenville, SC and serving organizations nationally, every engagement begins with honesty about what this work actually requires and what it can reasonably produce. This guide walks through that process — phase by phase — so organizations know what they are stepping into.

Before Day 1: The Free Consultation

Every engagement with Kintsugi Consulting, LLC begins before the clock starts. A free consultation is not a sales call — it is a diagnostic conversation.

The goal of this conversation is mutual: to understand what your organization is actually trying to accomplish, what's getting in the way, and whether this consulting relationship is the right fit for your context and goals. Rachel Kaplan, MPH asks real questions about where the organization is, what it has already tried, what the leadership is ready to commit to, and what the community or workforce it serves actually needs.

This conversation also surfaces what kind of engagement makes the most sense — a short-term targeted project, a phased multi-month strategy, training embedded in broader consultation, or some combination. There is no template. The scope, structure, and timeline of every engagement are built from this initial conversation outward.

To schedule yours, visit the scheduling page here.

Days 1–30: Assessment and Honest Discovery

The first month of a DEI consulting engagement is not about delivering programming. It is about building an accurate picture of where the organization actually is.

This phase involves reviewing the organization's existing policies, HR practices, accommodation processes, digital and physical accessibility, communications materials, and program structures. It involves conversations with organizational leadership and, wherever possible, meaningful input from employees — particularly those from communities that DEI work most directly affects, including people with disabilities.

The assessment examines questions like: Is disability present in the organization's DEI framework at all, or is it an afterthought? Are accommodation processes functional and trusted by employees, or do they exist on paper while people quietly avoid using them? Are digital communications accessible to people with disabilities? Are there patterns in who advances, who stays, and who leaves?

This is the phase where uncomfortable findings surface — and that is the point. An organizational assessment done honestly produces the real picture, not the optimistic one. For a detailed view of what a comprehensive disability inclusion assessment involves at the structural level, the Comprehensive Framework for Disability Inclusion provides a useful reference.

By the end of the first 30 days, the organization and consultant have a shared, evidence-based understanding of what is working, what isn't, and what the most significant gaps are. That shared understanding is the foundation of everything that follows. Without it, DEI strategy is built on assumptions — and assumptions rarely address the right problems.

Days 31–60: Strategy Development and Structural Planning

The second month is where the assessment findings are translated into a real strategy — one with specific goals, defined priorities, clear ownership, and a realistic timeline.

This is not a glossy DEI plan designed to impress a board. It is a working document: a practical roadmap that sequences what needs to happen, in what order, with what resources, and with what accountability structures to ensure the work doesn't stall when organizational momentum shifts.

The strategy development phase involves close collaboration with leadership. Working with a DEI consultant does not mean handing off the work — it means doing the work together, with the consultant providing the expertise and outside perspective and the organization providing the institutional knowledge and commitment. The best inclusion strategies are built with organizations, not delivered to them.

During this phase, policy and program reviews happen in parallel with strategy development. HR policies, accommodation request processes, communications standards, and event and program structures are examined for equity gaps and redesigned where necessary. This is the structural work that training alone cannot accomplish — and it is where the foundation for lasting change is actually laid.

For organizations ready to understand what a full DEI implementation roadmap looks like from kickoff through evaluation, the DEI Training Implementation: Complete Strategy is a practical guide to the process.

By the end of month two, the organization has a strategy, a prioritized action plan, and early structural changes underway. What it does not yet have is full implementation — that comes next.

Days 61–90: Early Implementation, Training, and Accountability

The third month is where the work becomes visible to the broader organization. This is when training begins, structural changes are communicated, and accountability structures are put into place.

Training during this phase is not a standalone event — it is a component of the broader strategy, designed to build the knowledge and skills that support the structural changes happening in parallel. Kintsugi Consulting, LLC's prepared trainings cover a range of topics — disability awareness across the full spectrum of experiences, person-first versus identity-first language, accessible communications, inclusive hiring and onboarding, intersectionality — and are tailored to the specific audience, context, and goals identified in the strategy phase.

For organizations building psychologically safe environments where employees feel able to disclose disabilities, raise concerns, and engage authentically with inclusion work, Creating Psychological Safety in DEI Training Sessions addresses what this requires in the training context specifically. The broader conditions that support safety — accommodation culture, leadership modeling, communication norms — are addressed in the structural work of the preceding phase.

Accountability structures established during this phase include: how DEI progress will be measured and reported, who owns specific action items, what metrics the organization will track, and when the next assessment checkpoint will occur. For a framework on measuring what training actually produces, How to Measure DEI Training ROI covers what meaningful measurement looks like beyond attendance tracking.

By the end of 90 days, the organization has an accurate assessment, a working strategy, early structural changes in place, a training foundation established, and an accountability framework that keeps the work moving. That is what the first 90 days can realistically deliver. It is not transformation complete — it is transformation with traction.

Where Disability Inclusion Fits in This Process

Disability inclusion is woven into every phase of the first 90 days, not added at the end.

During assessment, the audit examines whether disability is present in the organization's DEI work at all, whether accommodation processes are functional and trusted, whether digital and physical environments are accessible, and whether people with disabilities are represented in the organization's staff, leadership, and programming.

During strategy development, disability inclusion is integrated into the broader equity framework rather than siloed into a separate ADA compliance section. This means building accessible communications standards into the organization's content workflow, redesigning accommodation processes so they function in practice, and embedding disability awareness into training that also addresses race, gender, and other equity dimensions.

During implementation, disability-specific training is designed around the full spectrum of disability experience — including invisible disabilities, psychiatric conditions, and neurodivergence — because blanket approaches that center only visible physical disability miss most of the disability community. For what comprehensive disability training involves, The Complete Guide to Disability Awareness Training provides the full picture. For building workplace systems that support employees with disabilities across the full employment lifecycle, Building Disability Inclusive Workplaces covers hiring, onboarding, accommodation, and retention.

For the legal landscape that shapes what organizations are required to do on disability inclusion — and where the most common compliance gaps appear — the Essential Guide to Disability Discrimination is a useful reference.

What to Bring to a First Engagement

Organizations that get the most from the first 90 days come prepared — not with all the answers, but with the honesty and access that make a real assessment possible.

That means being willing to share workforce data, exit interview information, accommodation request history, and employee survey results — including the findings that are uncomfortable. It means making leadership genuinely available for the assessment and strategy phases, not just the training delivery. It means acknowledging what previous DEI efforts have produced and where they've fallen short, rather than presenting a polished narrative of DEI progress that obscures the real gaps.

It also means going into the engagement with a realistic understanding of what 90 days can accomplish. The first 90 days build the foundation. The structural change that follows — the culture shift, the sustained improvement in employee experience, the measurable progress on equity metrics — happens over a longer arc, supported by the infrastructure established in the first three months.

For more on Rachel Kaplan's approach to this work — how she integrates lived experience, systemic thinking, and disability-centered equity into every engagement — see her consulting philosophy and methods. For what organizations have experienced working with Kintsugi Consulting, LLC, the reviews page reflects the client perspective.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much of our team's time will the first 90 days require? The assessment and strategy phases require meaningful time from leadership — interviews, document sharing, review sessions. Training delivery requires time from whichever staff groups are being trained. The total time commitment varies by scope but is built into the engagement plan from the start so organizations can plan for it.

What if leadership isn't fully on board yet? This is more common than organizations usually admit. The free consultation is the right place to have that conversation honestly. An engagement that leadership hasn't genuinely committed to will struggle to produce structural change — and that is worth naming before the work begins rather than discovering it midway through.

What happens after 90 days? Most organizations continue with ongoing consultation after the initial 90-day foundation is established. Ongoing consultation supports continued implementation, troubleshooting, measurement, and adjustment as the organization grows and its inclusion needs evolve.

Where do we start? Contact Kintsugi Consulting, LLC for a free consultation. Rachel Kaplan works with organizations in Greenville, SC and across the country — virtually and in person — and the first conversation is always about your specific context, not a packaged pitch.

Bottom TLDR:

The first 90 days working with a DEI consultant cover three phases: organizational assessment, strategy and structural planning, and early implementation with accountability built in — with disability inclusion integrated throughout, not treated as a separate compliance item. The problem most organizations face is not knowing what this process involves, which leads to either undercommitting or misaligned expectations. Schedule a free consultation with Kintsugi Consulting, LLC in Greenville, SC to understand exactly what a first engagement would look like for your organization.