What World Strategies is a strategic event and off-site and retreat consultancy. We build unique and purposeful events, whether its a team retreat, a group off-site, a strategy workshop, or a large, multi-day forum, we help organisations assemble the right people, in the right envionment with the right agenda to deliver concrete outcomes.
About
We design and lead the strategies and meetings that move organisations forward.
What World Strategies is a strategic event and team off-site consultancy. We work with leaders to bring people together to build momentum.
Who We Are
A consultancy built on one principle: the right meeting in the right environment, changes everything.
"We don't arrive with a fixed methodology. We design each event around your specific people, purpose, place and moment — because the right room looks different every time."
That approach has taken us from intimate leadership sessions to high-stakes international summits — from corporate boardrooms to the margins of G7 and UN General Assemblies. The discipline is the same everywhere: deep preparation, precise design, and meeting leadership that holds the room with care and moves it with purpose.
What We Bring
The skills that make a meeting actually work.
Most meetings do not acheive their objectives not because of a lack of good intentions, but because a lack of great design and planning. The agenda is too full, the objectives are unclear, the environment is stale, the room dynamics are unmanaged, and people leave without the clarity or commitment that was the whole point of being there.
We bring a different kind of expertise. It is not subject matter expertise — it is momentum expertise. We know how to design the arc of a session so that the right conversation happens at the right moment. We know how to hold a room when the dynamics get difficult. And we know how to bring a group to a conclusion that people will actually act on.
Session Design
Architecting the flow of every meeting
From objectives through agenda, process, and participant preparation — built around your specific people and purpose.
Facilitation & Room Leadership
Holding and moving the room
Expert, neutral facilitation of complex group dynamics — keeping conversations productive and moving groups toward alignment.
Strategic Convening
Bringing the right people together
Designing the composition, conditions, and context of gatherings — so the meeting itself becomes a strategic instrument.
Strategic Advisory
Clarity before the room convenes
When the strategy needs to be built before anyone is brought together — from advocacy campaigns to organisational inflection points.
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Leadership
Led by someone who has spent twenty-five years in the room.
What World Strategies is led by Kel Currah — a strategist, facilitator, and convener with over twenty-five years of experience designing and leading a wide variety of meetings for some of the world's most complex organisations.
Kel's expertise sits at the intersection of strategy and facilitation. He knows how to build a strategy — a real one, grounded in reality but ambitious and what is actually achievable — and he knows how to bring a room of people toward it. He has spent 24 hours in a conference room in Beirut leading the negotiation of the final text of a partner alliance. That combination is key. Most strategists cannot hold a room. Most facilitators cannot build the strategy. Kel does both, and it is what What World Strategies was built around.
Before founding the consultancy, Kel for international NGO, think tank and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He has addressed UN conferences, led international delegations, and convened events at the margins of G7 and G20 summits across four continents.
That background informs everything about how What World Strategies works. Kel brings the same discipline — deep preparation, precise design, clear-eyed judgment about group dynamics — to a corporate leadership retreat as to international partner forum. He has built the consultancy around a simple belief: that organisations acheive more when their teams, partners and allies are informed, aligned and agreed on a plan of action and that best happen when they sit down together.
Our Experience
Twenty-five years working in the most complex rooms in the world.
We have designed and facilitated meetings for global foundations, heads of state, UN leadership, international civil society coalitions, and corporate leadership teams. We have worked in every type of high-stakes environment — from intimate strategy sessions where a leadership team needs to make a hard call, to large-scale international summits where hundreds of stakeholders need to leave with a shared direction.
That breadth of experience is what we bring to every client. We have seen what works in a room and what doesn't. We have held difficult dynamics and navigated impasse. We have learned — in practice, not theory — how to design a meeting that achieves what it sets out to achieve.
Strategy
Designing advocacy campaigns and organisational strategies for global foundations, international institutions, and NGOs — from the Gates Foundation and WHO to the OECD and World Food Programme.
Convenings
Designing and leading international summits, side-events at G7 and G20 meetings, UN General Assembly convenings, and multi-stakeholder forums on some of the most pressing global challenges.
Leadership
Facilitating high-stakes sessions for C-suite teams, boards, and senior leadership groups navigating critical decisions — setting direction, resolving conflict, and building the alignment needed to act.
Retreats
Designing and leading leadership retreats, team off-sites, and annual convenings that build trust, deepen relationships, and create the conditions for sustained collaboration.
Scale
Working across North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa — from single-day workshops to multi-day international events — with the same discipline and care regardless of size or context.
25+
Years of Experience
30+
Global Organisations Served
6
Continents of Active Work
Our Approach
Every meeting is a design challenge. We take that seriously.
"You have a meeting to make a decision, not to decide on the question."
— Bill Gates
Every engagement begins with listening — to your people, your dynamics, and your moment. Only then do we design the event: the arc of conversation, the sequencing of agenda items, the way participants are prepared and invited in. Nothing is accidental. Everything is intentional.
We bring this same rigour whether we are designing a two-hour board session or a three-day international summit. The scale changes. The discipline doesn't. And because we work with a small team of specialists selected for each engagement, you always get exactly the expertise your situation requires.
Who We Work With
Organisations that understand the meeting is the strategy.
Our clients are leaders who know that what happens in a room — or doesn't happen — determines everything that follows. They may be setting a new direction, bringing a remote team together, navigating a difficult transition, launching something significant, or bringing a diverse coalition into alignment. They share one thing: they need to build momentum and outcoes.
We work with foundations, organisations, businesses leadership, business associations. We are based in Canada and work globally — wherever the work requires us to be.
Let's talk about what you need your next event to deliver.
Every project begins with a conversation. Tell us what you are building, what you are navigating, or what you need your people to achieve together.
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