ShedLight

What ShedLight does

ShedLight is a Brooklyn-based nonprofit cultural-change consultancy founded in 2017 that helps organizations navigate complex social and cultural shifts by surfacing "unheard" American voices. It serves corporations, non-profit organizations, and government agencies, with a publicly disclosed engagement creating a strategic framework and outreach plan for the New Jersey Department of Labor's Innovate NJ workforce retraining program in partnership with design firm SOUR. Its core methodology blends ethnographic fieldwork with video essay production, deploying techniques such as annual cross-country road trips ("Road-Tripping"), trained community interviewers ("Neighborhood Detectives"), culturally anchored convenings ("Cultural Hangouts"), and facilitated ideation sessions ("StorySlam," "Citizen Breakthrough," "LifeStreaming"). ShedLight has positioned its research publicly through a 2020 SXSW presentation ("Invisible Majority: Educated, Working and Going Broke") and a multi-episode feature on Jessica Cherry's "ReImagining the Workplace" podcast.

The deliverable portfolio comprises six branded service offerings plus a six-part home-movie style video essay series titled "Of Many, One: The Impact of 2020 Events on Everyday Americans." The "technology" layer is a custom ethnographic storytelling framework rather than a software platform: there is no API, no mobile app, no proprietary AI/ML model, and no disclosed integrations. Distribution is direct enterprise consulting with top-of-funnel lead generation driven by owned media (YouTube, LinkedIn, website content) and podcast appearances.

ShedLight's revenue mechanics combine professional-services consulting fees on undisclosed quote-based pricing with recurring charitable donations and grants; donations explicitly subsidize discounted consulting for non-profit clients. The organization operates with a lean core of three co-founders (Melissa Dougherty, Cheryl Stallworth) and a board member (Mel Comer), all formerly of Kantar Millward Brown's Firefly qualitative research division, whose prior client rosters include Google, Chase Bank, PepsiCo, and Colgate-Palmolive. Operating geography is U.S.-only with disclosed activity concentrated in New Jersey and adjacent markets, and there is no evidence of international expansion, venture funding, M&A, or material headcount change.

Name

ShedLight

Legal name

ShedLight

Website

https://shedlight.org

Company type

Private

Founded year

2017

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

ShedLight is a Brooklyn-based nonprofit consultancy that helps corporations, non-profits, and government agencies navigate cultural change by surfacing unheard American voices through ethnographic fieldwork, video essay production, and proprietary qualitative research methodologies.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Headquarters

HQ city

Brooklyn

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Personnel, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Technology or R&D

Revenue model

1. Social Impact Consulting: Consulting services provided to organizations seeking to navigate cultural change and include underrepresented voices. Services include strategic frameworks, outreach plans, and cultural strategy development.
2. Research and Content Production: Video essay production and research services creating cultural insight content for clients.
3. Donations and Grants: Charitable donations from individuals supporting the organization's mission to uncover stories of unheard Americans. Donations also fund affordable consulting for non-profits.

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels1 record

Marketing channels5 records

Core offering

ShedLight is a nonprofit social impact consulting organization that helps organizations navigate cultural change by uncovering and incorporating the untold stories of the people they sell to, serve, employ, and influence. It delivers services through ethnographic storytelling, video essay production, on-the-ground research, and structured ideation sessions, producing strategic frameworks, outreach plans, and partnership strategies for corporate, government, and nonprofit clients.

Product overview

ShedLight is a social impact consulting organization offering a portfolio of qualitative research and storytelling services. The core offerings include Cultural Immersion (ethnographic video essay reporting), Cultural Hangouts, and Neighborhood Detectives for field research, complemented by StorySlam, Citizen Breakthrough, and LifeStreaming for ideation and strategy development. The company produces video content through its 'Of Many, One' series and works with clients including corporations and nonprofits to help them navigate cultural change through unheard American stories.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Cultural Immersion Ethnographic storytelling service with video essay reporting that involves on-the-ground research to find unheard voices and reveal emerging cultural through-lines for organizations.
• Cultural Hangouts Exploratory group sessions held among people of differing views, typically at culturally important locations such as local diners and churches, designed to surface cultural insights for client organizations.
• Neighborhood Detectives Program of trained community members who conduct conversations in settings where ShedLight researchers cannot easily access, enabling deeper cultural insights for clients.
• StorySlam Ideation sessions that bring together human stories, relevant experts, and client teams to develop new strategies, programs, and solutions for organizations.
• Citizen Breakthrough Facilitated sessions using comic improvisation techniques to help client participants get past barriers and tensions during strategic planning and decision-making.
• LifeStreaming Online storytelling and idea generation sessions designed for immediate impact with distributed stakeholders and remote audiences.
• Of Many, One: The Impact of 2020 Events on Everyday Americans A six-part video series featuring home-movie style video essays that reveal the emerging through-lines of culture and their impact on everyday Americans, available for client and public audiences.

Quantifiable outcome

• Created strategic framework and outreach plan for New Jersey workforce retraining initiative

Named customers1 record

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Technology focussed No

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Feature4 records

Partnerships

Two partnerships are on record, tiered core and minor.

• SOURcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerStrategic partnership with SOUR (sour.studio) to create a new strategic framework and outreach plan for Innovate NJ and the New Jersey Department of Labor. The partnership combined ShedLight's cultural strategy expertise with SOUR's design capabilities.
• Second City WorksminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerMel Comer, ShedLight board member, previously engineered a joint venture between Firefly and Second City Works (B2B arm of the world-renowned comedy theater) enabling new research methodologies including comic improvisation techniques (Citizen Breakthrough).

Scale indicators2 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights4 records

Broad incumbents

• Frog Design: Frog (part of Capgemini Engineering) is a global design and innovation consultancy with deep ethnographic research capabilities, competing for the same enterprise cultural-strategy budgets as ShedLight at significantly larger scale.
• InSites Consulting: InSites Consulting is a large global market research and insights firm with a dedicated cultural and ethnographic practice, serving many of the same enterprise customers ShedLight targets but at substantially broader scale.
• Lippincott: Lippincott is an established brand and corporate strategy consultancy that incorporates cultural understanding into positioning and identity work, overlapping with ShedLight's strategic framework and stakeholder engagement offerings.

Direct peers

• Sparkler: Sparkler is an ethnographic research and consumer insight firm (now part of Capgemini) that helps brands turn deep cultural understanding into strategy — comparable in method, if larger in scale, to ShedLight.
• The Sound: The Sound is a cultural insights and strategy agency focused on uncovering the cultural forces shaping consumer behavior, closely paralleling ShedLight's storytelling-driven cultural research offering.
• ReD Associates: ReD Associates is one of the most established ethnographic strategy consulting firms globally, applying deep cultural and social science research to help enterprises navigate change — directly comparable to ShedLight's ethnographic storytelling and cultural strategy approach.
• Latitude Research: Latitude is a research-driven consultancy applying ethnographic and cultural methods to help organizations understand people in context — a direct method-level peer to ShedLight's Cultural Immersion and Neighborhood Detectives work.
• ESW (Ethnographic Solutions Worldwide): ESW is a boutique ethnographic research and consulting firm serving Fortune 500 clients with immersive cultural insights — overlapping with ShedLight's on-the-ground cultural immersion and video essay methodology.

Emerging players

• We Are Social: We Are Social is a global socially-led creative agency with a strong cultural insights practice, increasingly competing for the kind of cultural storytelling engagements ShedLight delivers, though from a social-media-native angle.
• Movéo Forum Branding: Movéo is a cultural insights and innovation consultancy that helps brands connect with consumers through ethnographic and cultural trend research — comparable to ShedLight's blend of cultural immersion and strategic ideation.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• YouTubeyoutube.com/channel/UCwVzn6QxB6gG9G3Qx7g3vHw
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/shedlight-org

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles3 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about ShedLight