A Message From the Consulting Women Founder

In 1990, I first gathered with a few friends who asked what it’s like to be a consultant. I had no idea that all these decades later, there would be a dynamic network of almost 1,000 DC-area self-employed women consultants!

I began my consulting business in 1988 and named it Mulhauser and Associates, so people would learn how to spell my name. I had only planned to do consulting for a year, as so many professional people do in DC, until I got what I considered a “real job”. Little did I know when I began that I would make more money doing this work, and welcome the diversity of issues and kinds of work I was doing. And little did I know as well that consulting IS a real job and that being your own boss has a myriad of advantages.

So, when my friends asked me in 1990 how to start a business, how to know what to charge, and how to find clients, I said I was making it up as I went along but that we could make it up together. This is how Consulting Women began. We had monthly meetings in my conference room, where we offered support to each other with difficult consulting situations, wrote each other into contracts, and more. We have continued today as a wonderful support network. I miss the intimacy of the in-person meetings, but have met some of the most amazing professionals, have enjoyed contracts as diverse as organizing international conferences, facilitating large meetings, assisting with complicated board/staff relations, raised a lot of money and many other things this shy girl who grew up on a farm would never have imagined.

I look forward to all the dynamic work we can accomplish together moving into the future.

Karen Mulhauser
MULHAUSER AND ASSOCIATES