Today we’d like to introduce you to LaToya Shields.
Hi LaToya, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Like many people who build careers around serving others, I did not grow up with a detailed plan to become a social worker, public administrator, maternal health subject matter expert, adjunct professor, or consultant. My career has been less about following a predetermined path and more about following the needs I encountered along the way, listening, learning, serving, and finding myself increasingly drawn to the places where people, policy, and systems intersect.
I am the daughter of a hardworking mother who became a parent as a teenager. We did not have everything, but I learned early that having less did not mean expecting less from myself. I was academically driven and involved in extracurricular activities, including band, choir, UIL, sports, and early leadership programs. Those experiences shaped my discipline, leadership, and appreciation for teamwork and relationships.
I also grew up with a strong understanding of service. Through my family, church, and community, I learned the importance of recognizing a need and doing what you can to meet it. Relationships mattered. Showing up mattered. Helping people mattered. I did not have the language for systems change at the time, but I was learning the values that would eventually guide my work.
Over more than 20 years, my work has taken me across social work, community health, maternal health, behavioral health, public policy, higher education, program leadership, and systems architecture. I have been a service recipient, practitioner, advocate, educator, program leader, and strategist. Each role taught me something different, but the thread connecting them has always been the same: people deserve systems that see them, listen to them, and work for them.
Eventually, I realized that my greatest contribution was helping organizations turn what they care about into meaningful action. That realization led me to create Synergy Solutions LDZ LLC. The name is deeply personal, LDZ represents the initials of my two sons and me, making the company not only a reflection of my professional journey, but also a part of the legacy I am building for my family. For me, Synergy represents the belief that when people, ideas, relationships, and resources come together intentionally, the collective impact can be greater than what any one person or organization could achieve alone.
Today, as Founder and Principal Consultant, I help non-profits, startups, other consulting firms, coalitions, and faith-based organizations operationalize impact. I bring together lived experience, community voice, policy, strategy, relationships, and systems thinking to help organizations navigate complex challenges, strengthen their infrastructure, and create solutions that are both practical and responsive to the communities they serve.
Looking back, I can see that my career was never really a collection of separate roles. Each experience prepared me for the next. The daughter watching her mother work hard, the woman whose faith taught her to trust that purpose can unfold before the path is clear, the student who valued achievement and service, the mom learning to advocate, nurture, and navigate the world through the eyes of her children, the social worker learning to see the whole person, the community health worker listening to people on the front lines, the public administrator learning how systems work, and the strategist helping organizations change them are all part of the same story. I may not have known where I was going, but I kept following the work that mattered and eventually found myself exactly where I was supposed to be.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I wasn’t chasing titles, and I wasn’t building a career by design so much as following meaningful work as it unfolded. I followed the work that mattered to me, and along the way, the work kept leading me into greater responsibility, deeper expertise, and a broader understanding of how people experience the systems around them.
At the same time, my professional journey was unfolding alongside the very real responsibilities of being a divorced woman and a single mother raising my children. There were seasons when I was building a career, caring for my family, navigating uncertainty, and simply trying to keep everything moving at the same time. I didn’t always have the luxury of making decisions based solely on what was best for my career. Sometimes stability mattered. Sometimes my children needed me. Sometimes I had to make room for what life was asking of me.
Those experiences shaped me in ways that I didn’t fully appreciate at the time. They taught me how to adapt, how to keep going when the path wasn’t clear, and how to hold responsibility without losing sight of purpose. They also deepened my understanding of what it means to design systems around real people’s lives. People don’t experience healthcare, social services, education, housing, or other systems in neat categories. They experience them while raising children, working, grieving, navigating financial pressures, caring for family, and trying to make the best decisions they can with what they have.
I also learned that being capable does not always mean being seen or heard. There were times when I knew I had the experience, perspective, and ideas to make a difference, yet still struggled to have my voice recognized. I learned that doing good work is not always enough to create influence. Sometimes growth means learning to trust what you know, name what you see, and use your voice even when the room has not yet made space for it.
Those experiences taught me a great deal about leadership and advocacy. They also shaped how I think about creating space for others, not simply because of their title or position, but because of the knowledge, experience, and perspective they bring. I know what it feels like to have something valuable to contribute and wonder whether there is room for your voice. I don’t want to build anything that requires people to wait for permission to be heard.
Entrepreneurship brought a different kind of challenge. After spending more than 20 years working within organizations, building Synergy meant stepping outside of a structure where my role was already defined and creating something of my own. There have been moments of fear, uncertainty, and feeling overwhelmed by the responsibility of building a business, finding clients, defining my offerings, and trusting that the expertise I had spent years developing had value in the marketplace.
I’ve had to learn that I do not need to wait for someone else to recognize my value or give me permission to use my voice. I can create the table, bring people to it, and use what I have learned to help others be seen and heard. That has probably been one of the most important parts of my evolution.
Synergy is not just about consulting. It is also an expression of what I have come to believe about people, systems, and impact. It is about creating space for community voice, lived experience, and perspectives that are too often overlooked to influence strategy and systems.
I still have moments when I get in my head and wonder if I’m doing this right. I think that’s part of being willing to build something that matters. But I have learned to trust the experience, relationships, and lessons that brought me here, and to keep moving forward.
Perhaps that is what this chapter of my life represents most: not starting over, but finally giving myself permission to fully step into everything I have spent years becoming.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Synergy Solutions LDZ, LLC ?
Synergy Solutions LDZ LLC
Operationalize Impact
Public Policy · Systemic Health Equity · Community Trust
Synergy Solutions LDZ LLC is a strategy and consulting firm focused on helping organizations turn good ideas and good intentions into coordinated action and measurable impact.
At the heart of my work are three things: public policy, systemic health equity, and community trust. I work with organizations navigating complex challenges across healthcare, behavioral health, maternal health, community resilience, nonprofits, and other spaces where people and systems intersect.
At my core, I am a strategist, thought partner, and problem-solver. I help organizations make sense of complexity, identify opportunities, bring the right people and resources to the table, and build practical strategies that can move an idea forward.
My work is also shaped by more than 20 years of professional experience, my own lived experience navigating systems, and what I have learned by listening to communities. That perspective informs the signature “talk” topics and frameworks I have developed around issues I know deeply, from Black maternal health and community-centered design to behavioral health, cross-sector partnerships, care coordination, and equity in disaster resiliency.
What makes Synergy’s approach different is the ability to see an issue from multiple sides. I understand what it means to experience a system as someone seeking support, while also understanding what it takes to design, lead, and improve that system from the professional side. I bring those perspectives together to ask better questions, challenge assumptions, and help organizations see what may not be immediately visible.
Whether I am consulting, facilitating a strategy conversation, speaking, or developing a framework, I am often helping people move from Oh no, there’s a problem to thank goodness, here is what we can do about it.
That is what operationalize impact means to me: taking insight, strategy, and intention and turning them into the relationships, systems, policies, partnerships, and actions that create meaningful change. Because having a good idea is only the beginning. The real work is building what it takes to make that idea matter.
Is there anyone you’d like to thank or give credit to?
This list is extensive, because I did not get here alone. When you look at any story of growth or transformation, it’s easy to focus on the person holding the microphone or leading the initiative. But if you pull back the frame, you see that progress is always built on a network of quiet, steady support. As a woman of faith, I must thank God first. Even when I could not see the full picture, my faith reminded me to keep moving.
My two sons, Destin and ZaCory, deserve so much credit. They have been part of my why in ways they may not always realize. Building a life, a career, and now a business has always carried a deeper meaning for me because I want them to see what is possible when you accept your purpose, work hard, and stay grounded.
My partner, my sisters, friends, my mom, and a few specially identified cousins, have been part of the support system that has helped me keep going. My mentors, my faith community, former supervisors, colleagues, former high teachers, the operational and frontline teams I’ve had the privilege of serving alongside of, the community and clients themselves and the host of people who have poured into me throughout my career have all left something with me that I carry forward.
I am also grateful for the maternal and behavioral health, and health equity advocates who have challenged my thinking, encouraged my voice, and trusted me to contribute to work that matters. My past and current community partners have given me opportunities to learn, lead, collaborate, and turn ideas into action.
And then there are the people who simply believed in me, sometimes before I fully believed in myself. Some opened a door. Some made a phone call. Some gave me an opportunity. Some told me I was capable when I needed to hear it.
So, when I think about who else deserves credit, it is really a long list of people who have loved me, taught me, challenged me, supported me, partnered with me, and believed in my abilities. Synergy may have my name and vision behind it, but the journey that brought me here has been shaped by many people. I carry that with me, and I am grateful.
Pricing:
- Every engagement is thoughtfully customized based on format, audience size, level of preparation, facilitation needs, and desired outcomes.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://synergysolutionsldz.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/synergy-solutions-ldz-llc
