"There is never time in the future when we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is now."
James Baldwin
Mesu Strategies was founded in 2016 to help leaders across sectors change systems to achieve meaningful results for low-income people, communities of color, and other under-invested groups.
Based in Oakland, California, or Huchiun, the unceded territory of the Lisjan people, we work with partners in the Bay Area, across California, and in communities and Native nations across the United States who share a commitment to health, opportunity, and building power for the oppressed.
MESU is a word in multiple languages, with multiple meanings. In Afrikaans, it means ‘knife.’ In Japanese, it means ‘female. ‘ In Basque, Hawaiian and Filipino, it means ‘message.’ In many Latin languages, it means ‘measured.’ It means ‘meat’ in multiple Eastern European languages, ‘mess’ in Dutch, and ‘honey’ in Malay and Estonian In Luxembourgish, mesu means ‘with me,’ and in Rwandan, the word means ‘us.’
MESU is a philosophy for arriving at transformational change by coming together with humility, empathy and powerful purpose to cut through messy complexities to get to the meat of an issue and birth new opportunities and sweet new realities.
MESU strategies are those approaches that leverage the most promising practices and partnerships to courageously and creatively advance a shared vision and collective impact.
Jme Suannah McLean, MCP, MPH, Founder and Principal of Mesu Strategies, LLC, has worked for nearly 20 years to address urban development, public health, and education to improve conditions for low-income people and communities of color. Her pioneering work has resulted in innovations in the design, implementation, and assessment of policies, programs, and initiatives at the federal, state and local levels; the forging of long-lasting multi-sector collaborations to address systems change in communities nationwide; and sharper, stronger organizations and coalitions across fields and sectors.
Before founding Mesu Strategies, Ms. McLean served at multiple institutions focused on advancing equitable social change, including PolicyLink, the Convergence Partnership (a collaborative of foundations including The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, The California Endowment, The Kresge Foundation, Kaiser Permanente, Nemours, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and others), and the United Nations Population Fund in Beijing. Earlier in her career, she held roles to support social change as an organizational consultant, grantmaker, educator and evaluator in the public and private sectors. Ms. McLean currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation.
Ms. McLean earned dual master’s degrees in urban planning and public health at the University of California - Berkeley. At Berkeley, she received the Foreign Language Areas Fellowship from the US Department of Education and multiple grant awards and scholarships from the school. She graduated from Middlebury College, where she designed her major in neuroscience as an Independent Scholar. Ms. McLean also studied Mandarin Chinese at the Harbin Institute of Technology and Capital Normal University in Beijing. Today, she regularly engages in professional development and continuing education on topics related to organizational development, transformational consulting, professional coaching, public leadership and measurement and evaluation.
Ms. McLean’s passion for justice and practices around lifelong learning and fostering homeostasis were fostered at an early age, growing up in a working-class, multi-generational, immigrant household in New England. She and her partner hope to instill these values in their two lively and inspiring kids.
