Andrea Estes, Principal Consultant, has her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Washington in Anthropology and founded AE Consulting based upon a passion for supporting social services and those they help.

Her nonprofit career started in 2007, when hired at the C.A.S.T. for Kids Foundation as their Operations Manager to update the administrative infrastructure and augment overall development to support growth and sustainability. Some of her highlighted accomplishments included developing a program evaluation tool in partnership with the UW Sociology Department and developing their grants strategy from scratch. In effect, C.A.S.T received over $100,000 in grant funding within the first year and now has fluid internal processes in place to support continued expansion and growth.

Andrea now manages C.A.S.T.'s grant writing and annual fundraiser in addition to working with several other clients across Washington State. She has solid experience managing the full lifecycle of community, private, and corporate grants. Andrea has planned and managed fundraising events that have amassed $1,000-$25,000. She has been described as having excellent communication, being highly organized, and tenacious. Read more testimonials through her LinkedIn profile.   

Nicole Ferrell, Editor and Creative Contributor, has her Bachelor of Arts degree in Technical Communications from Eastern Washington University, where she studied in the areas of technical writing, journalism & marketing, and visual communication design. She has been with AE Consulting since January of 2010 and is responsible for editing, designing marketing materials, and managing AE's blog.

Nicole has over five years experience working in a law firm where she has fine-tuned her writing and editing skills. She is passionate about editing because she loves bringing out the writer's full potential.

Interesting tidbit on Nicole: "I love playing Scrabble, but I'm terrible at it. Winning is all about strategic placement, and frankly, I'd rather focus on playing an impressive word."