About NAGA Strategies
A consulting practice built for consequential work.
NAGA helps mission-driven organizations navigate consequential moments of strategy, governance, leadership, and organizational change.
Our Story
The name is the method: Navigate. Align. Guide. Act.
NAGA Strategies grew from a simple observation: organizations often do not need another generic plan. They need help making sense of complexity, aligning people around what matters, making hard choices, and turning those choices into action.
The firm was built from experience inside organizations as well as alongside them—leading teams, partnering with boards, managing programs and resources, facilitating difficult conversations, and helping organizations move through change.
NAGA's work is grounded in the belief that strategy cannot be separated from the people, relationships, governance, resources, and systems required to carry it.
Rooted in relationship.
Woven into action.
Why the name NAGA?
A cultural symbol and a consulting framework.
In Lao culture and across Southeast Asia, the Naga is a powerful symbol connected to water, protection, continuity, and transformation. Often associated with the Mekong and found throughout Lao art, stories, and Buddhist traditions, the Naga represents both guardianship and movement—the ability to remain rooted while adapting to changing conditions.
The name also holds deep personal meaning for founder Saengmany Ratsabout. As a Lao American, the Naga connects this consulting practice to culture, memory, community, and the experiences that have shaped how he understands leadership and change. It is a reminder that organizations, like people and communities, carry histories with them. Moving forward does not require leaving those histories behind.
That meaning shapes how NAGA approaches consulting. Strategy is not simply about choosing a destination or producing a plan. It is about understanding the currents around an organization—its people, relationships, resources, responsibilities, and possibilities—and helping it move forward with greater clarity and intention.
Together, the cultural meaning of the Naga and the NAGA framework reflect what the firm seeks to bring to every partnership: stewardship, adaptability, clarity, relationship, and purposeful action.
Bio
Leadership experience on both sides of the consulting table.
Saengmany Ratsabout is a strategist, facilitator, governance advisor, and nonprofit leader whose work helps organizations move from complexity toward clarity, alignment, and action.
His professional experience spans executive leadership, nonprofit consulting, higher education, public history, governance, facilitation, organizational strategy, and community engagement. That range matters because organizational challenges rarely stay in one lane: a strategy question may also be a governance question, a leadership question, or a question about how people work together.
As an executive leader, Saengmany has held responsibility for organizational direction, board partnership, fundraising, staff leadership, programs, partnerships, and operations. As a consultant, his work has included strategic planning, organizational assessment, governance, bylaws modernization, board development, leadership transitions, facilitation, training, and implementation support.
Earlier roles in higher education and public history strengthened a practice of research, inquiry, interpretation, partnership-building, and making complex information useful to different audiences. Across these settings, the throughline has been helping people understand what is happening, identify what matters most, and create a path forward that fits mission and real capacity.
Work with NAGA
Bring the real question.
You do not need a finished scope of work before reaching out. Start with what is changing, what decision is ahead, or what feels stuck.