Episode
Humanizing Data (and Strengthening Sales) with Tanisha Tate Woodson
- Published
- Sep 17, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 3439
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://aggressivelyhuman.substack.com/p/86-humanizing-data
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Summary
Most research gets done to communities: someone extracts the data, publishes the paper, and is never heard from again. Tanisha Tate Woodson built a firm on the opposite premise — and then did the less glamorous thing, which was turn that premise into an actual codified method. In this episode, we talk with Tanisha Tate Woodson, who runs Woodson Insights Research and Evaluation , working with nonprofits, government agencies, and funders to humanize data and show the impact of their work. She walks us through her approach: four dimensions that get dialed up or down for every engagement, culturally responsive methods that let people tell their stories the way they actually want to, and a sense-making session at the end so the report doesn’t die on a shelf. Then we get into what having a method has done for the business. Tanisha’s RFP win rate is around 50% in a field where 15-20% is normal, because she’s bidding on one or two instead of five and can answer a proposal from a process she’s already written down. She built an AI skill that knows her red flags and tells her when to pass. And she’s growing on referrals and community relationships with limited social media presence. This is a meta episode — premise, method, methodology in action. * Storytelling as data: why observation and conversation are data, not just spreadsheets * Why funders and the nonprofits they fund are speaking two different languages * Research done to communities vs. research done with them — and the harm history behind the suspicion * Why every engagement ends with a two-to-three-hour sense-making session, not a report on a shelf * The through line from a promise made to a community to an artifact that actually goes back to them * The four dimensions that get dialed up or down for every client — an…