About Outside Angle
Outside Angle partners with leaders building organizations and bringing meaningful new things into the world. We bring creativity, judgment, and practical commitment to the work it takes.
Outside Angle brings together people who can think with you, work alongside you, and help your team carry what comes next. We’re based in Asheville, Pittsburgh, and Atlanta. We work with clients nationally, with active projects in Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Washington, DC, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Florida, and with remote teams spread across the country and around the world.
Co-founder and CEO
Sam started as a classroom teacher, designed and helped build a public high school, and went on to lead change inside a large school district and a venture-backed education company. He connects strategic judgment with practical implementation.
Managing Director
Meredith brings experience in consulting and nonprofit leadership across education and social impact, including serving as COO at Sevenzo and Senior Director at Battelle for Kids.
Team Performance Coach
Tara brings experience designing and implementing organizational and systems change, including data strategy and performance management.
Team Performance Coach
Jacob brings experience leading teams, teaching, and facilitating. He previously led MERIT Health Leadership Academy.
Team Performance Coach
Allison brings more than 20 years of experience advancing organizational performance, with strengths in continuous improvement, team leadership, and strategy execution, and training in transformational coaching and facilitation.
Consultant and Project Lead
Clarke helps mission-driven organizations translate strategic intent into operational clarity, with experience in project management, practical tools, and sustainable ways of working.
Senior Advisor
Jerome is a marketing strategist and the owner of The LionFish Co. He helps organizations connect their missions with their audiences.
Outside is the expansive part: thinking creatively, seeing possibilities, and finding a perspective that opens something up. Angle is the precise part: rigor, organization, and attention to the details that make an idea work.
We bring both. We climb the ladder between the most strategic and the most tactical, because meaningful impact asks us to connect them—and learn from the work along the way.
We are motivated by what your work makes possible in the world. Our contribution is helping you build the organization, make the choices, and do the work that meaningful impact requires—with care for the people involved and the resources entrusted to you.
Our clients care about what they make possible and how they make it possible. They are growing companies, delivering public mandates, and leading social-impact organizations. They care about people, resources, and building something that can hold up through change.
Co-founder and CEO
I started as a classroom teacher, then designed and helped build a public high school. I went on to lead change inside a large school district and a venture-backed education company. Across those experiences, I learned how much depends on people finding a way to work well together—especially when the path changes and the decisions get hard.
I co-founded Outside Angle with Sarah Kozel in 2020 to work alongside leaders building things that matter. Sarah helped shape our approach and build Outside Angle into what it is today, and that legacy is part of everything we do.
I like the big question and the practical detail: what could be possible, what needs to change, and what we can do next. The work gets stronger when we can be candid, stay curious, and take responsibility together.
I want you to have a partner you can tell the truth to—and a team that will help you do something useful with it.
Outside work, I’m a dad, a basketball coach, and a party planner with a very long planning horizon.
Sam Franklin
Tell us what’s changing, where the work is getting stuck, and what you want to make possible.