Culture shapes how we show up, make decisions, and move through complexity.
It lives in the stories we tell, the rituals we repeat, and our capacity to adapt. When culture goes unnamed, it runs on default settings, often driven by urgency, hierarchy, and inherited harm.
Culture Rules Everything works with leaders and teams to examine and redesign those operating systems in real time. Through intentional gatherings, structured dialogue, and embodied practice, we surface what's shaping the room and create new agreements about how to move together.
ABOUT
I'm Jess Solomon, MSOD — facilitator, organization development practitioner and Host of Possibilities at Culture Rules Everything. I work with leaders and organizations navigating the moments when how you move together matters as much as where you're going.
PRACTICE
The leaders and organizations I work with are usually in the middle of something — a transition, a tension, a decision that keeps getting harder to make alone. They're not looking for a framework handed down from the outside that has nothing to do with where they actually are. They want someone who can get into the room with them, help them see what's actually happening, and support the kind of thinking and being that leads to decisions they can stand behind.
My practice falls into three areas. What stays constant is the belief that the right kind of presence changes what's possible in a room.
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GATHER + DESIGN
I design and facilitate gatherings where groups think together and build shared direction. This work takes shape through retreats, planning sessions, and convenings where alignment must be built in the room.
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ADVISE + ACCOMPANY
I work alongside leaders and organizations at moments when the next step isn't obvious and how you decide matters as much as what you decide. This work stays close to decision-making through coaching, advising, and focused intensives.
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SPEAK + SHARE
I speak and share ideas about culture through keynotes, panels, podcasts, and facilitated conversations. Drawing on facilitation and standup comedy, I use humor and storytelling to help groups see the moment they're in more clearly.
In good company
Over the last 15 years I've worked alongside funding collaboratives, cultural institutions, municipalities, and movement organizations across the U.S.
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I've partnered with philanthropic organizations and funder collaboratives to design participatory processes, learning journeys, and internal culture work rooted in equity and shared decision-making. Collectively, these engagements have supported the distribution of millions of dollars through participatory grantmaking and movement-aligned funding strategies.
Bay Area Culture Funders for Equity, B'More Invested (Open Society Institute & Baltimore's Promise), Community Infrastructure Fund for Mutual Aid (Omidyar Network), Emergent Fund, Funders for LGBTQ Issues, Common Future, Borealis Philanthropy
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I've worked with arts and cultural institutions as a facilitator, advisor, interim leader, and educator, supporting organizational transitions, strategic clarity, and culture-building within creative ecosystems.
Threewalls, Afro Charities, National Arts Strategies, Creative Time, Detroit Narrative Agency, Rap Research Lab, Maryland Institute College of Art, Bromo Arts & Entertainment District, Valerie J. Maynard Foundation
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Community-Based Organizations I've partnered with community-based organizations and movement groups to support leadership transitions, capacity building, and collaborative work rooted in care, accountability, and systems change.
Black Women Build Baltimore, Building Movement Project, Black Women's Health Imperative, Impact Hub Baltimore, Lalibela Baltimore, Black Yield Institute, CLLCTIVLY
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Creative practice is central to my work and informs how I understand culture, power, and collective imagination.
Mabley Comedy Club, Baltimore Poetry Coalition, Meridians Lab, Locally Grown Festival (Baltimore Center Stage), U.S. Department of Arts & Culture, NextNOW Fest, Alternate ROOTS, Crank & Groove, The Saartjie Project
STUDIO
The Studio is where I work on questions that don't fit inside a client engagement — questions about culture, grief, humor, memory, and what it takes to hold space well over time. It's where I experiment, learn in public, and bring what I'm discovering back into the practice.
Studio notes
This is where ideas are in motion—field notes, sketches, questions, and early formulations from my practice. I share what I’m learning and unlearning, not as finished products, but as part of an evolving body of work. Some of what begins here becomes frameworks, talks, or tools. All of it reflects a practice I’m actively shaping.
Some people peak in high school. I became a third-quarter captain in middle school and never really stopped.