Our Story
The seeds of Fifth Star Collective (FSC) were planted in 2015 when we met while working on a collaborative HIV prevention project through the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH). At the time, Mallory was working as the project coordinator for the Evaluation Center at Northwestern University’s Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing. As part of Mallory’s role, she partnered with CDPH-funded agencies throughout Chicago that were implementing a variety of HIV prevention interventions and provided them with individualized evaluation technical assistance. One such project was the behavioral health program Connor had designed while working for Care2Prevent at the University of Chicago Medicine. Through this partnership, we collaborated to develop a variety of tools to support Connor’s work: a program manual, intervention flowchart, client assessments, fidelity monitoring tools, and data management spreadsheets — tools we now offer support to FSC clients in creating.
After a year of working together in this way, we had the chance to work side-by-side as mid-level managers at Care2Prevent, when Mallory accepted a position managing the agency’s outreach and prevention program in 2016. Shortly after this, we also each began offering consulting services independently: Mallory was providing support on community readiness assessment projects in Wisconsin and Texas, and Connor was helping develop trauma-informed programming for a collective impact organization on Chicago’s West Side. While we enjoyed our independent opportunities to serve as consultants to different agencies, we both felt a pull to build something more together.
Through our work together as co-managers, we had begun to recognize even more clearly our similar interests and complementary skills related to program development, strategic planning, and evaluation, and we wanted to create a platform where our strengths and expertise could be combined to meaningfully support a vision that we both valued. Together, we explored what a formal partnership could look like, one that reflected Mallory’s close appreciation for details and technical savvy, while also highlighting Connor’s “big picture” approach to program design and implementation. In early 2018, we formally established FSC as a business entity, and secured our first collaborative project as partners — a multi-month strategic planning and program development engagement with the Chicago Black Gay Men’s Caucus — later that same year.
Throughout 2019 and 2020, we continued to work on a small number of consulting projects on the side while we both maintained full-time positions with other organizations. By late 2020, our thoughts turned toward envisioning a leap to being full-time with FSC in order to focus all of our energies on doing the work we love, collaboratively. As we began exploring how to make this dream a reality, we knew we also wanted to ensure that our service portfolio fully captured the breadth of our skills and passions. Given Connor’s psychotherapeutic background, we chose to create a clinical arm for the business to incorporate this work under the FSC umbrella. In early 2021, Connor officially began offering therapy services through FSC, adding this supportive service for individuals and relationships alongside our existing focus on consulting services for organizations and teams.
About Our Name
When we began to brainstorm a potential name for our emerging business back in 2018, we considered a number of options. We entertained the classic and time-tested approach employed by many consultants of using some combination of our names: CM Consultants? Edgar-Williams Consulting? Ultimately, none of these options quite hit the note we were looking for. We wanted a name that held unique meaning for us and spoke to the story of our partnership. So, why Fifth Star Collective?
“Fifth Star” — This is an allusion to the flag of the City of Chicago, whose four stars commemorate significant events in the city’s history. There has long been talk of adding a fifth star for various achievements, and, in this way, the very idea of a “fifth star” is itself a symbol: of meeting and growing from challenges and of striving for success. This growth-oriented mindset is exactly what we aim to bring to our work with clients at FSC, whether they are an organization seeking consulting support or an individual seeking therapy. Because Chicago is also where we started our careers in public health and social work, and where we met and forged our friendship, the “fifth star” reference is that much more meaningful.
“Collective” — This is a nod to our belief in the power of relationships and collaboration. FSC is, after all, a friendship at its core, so we hold a deep belief in the transformative power of relationships. We know that nothing truly meaningful can be accomplished alone, and this knowledge is what motivated us to pursue starting a business as partners rather than independently. FSC is a bringing together of our collective experiences, talents, and aspirations, and, we hope, an endeavor through which we have the opportunity to make this “collective” even bigger through our partnerships with clients and other consultants.