About Alysen Hanrahan

Woman in glasses presenting a growth chart.

I'm a writer, educator, business thinker, and relentlessly curious builder of books, frameworks, business tools, essays, and occasional unnecessary spreadsheets and Asana projects.

I tend to follow interesting questions wherever they lead. Sometimes that produces a practical tool for a small-business owner. Sometimes it becomes a book about work and organizations. Sometimes it becomes a children's book, an essay, or a project I did not remotely anticipate starting when I woke up that morning.

My Background

My career has taken me through consulting, technology, program management, process improvement, and nearly a decade at Amazon Web Services. I also have an MBA, which gave me formal frameworks for many of the questions I had already spent years thinking about: how organizations work, why they sometimes don't, how people make decisions, and how complicated problems can be made easier to understand. My background also includes an Advanced Certified ScrumMaster (A-CSM) certification and Lean Six Sigma training, both of which have shaped how I think about process improvement, continuous improvement, and making work more effective.

That experience now informs much of what I create, but I am just as interested in learning, writing, experimenting, and exploring ideas outside traditional business boundaries.

What I'm Building

A major focus of my work is Hanrahan Business Review, where I translate useful business concepts and frameworks into practical, affordable tools for small-business owners. I believe that good business thinking should be accessible to people who don't have advanced degrees, corporate support teams, or expensive consultants at their disposal.

I'm also an author. My writing ranges from books about careers and organizational life to children's books, essays, satire, and whatever subject has most recently sent me down a rabbit hole.

The common thread is curiosity and a desire to make complicated things easier to understand, whether I'm looking at a broken business process, a workplace dynamic, a decision-making framework, or an entirely unrelated question I suddenly need to know far too much about.

How I Approach the Work

I like useful ideas, practical frameworks, and questions that make people look at something differently. I am much less interested in jargon for its own sake.

When I'm creating something, I tend to ask the same questions: What is actually going on here? Why does it matter? Can it be explained more clearly? And is there something useful we can do with what we've learned?

Sometimes the answer becomes a tool. Sometimes it becomes a story. Sometimes it becomes another question.

High curiosity. High agency. Results may vary.

About Alysen Hanrahan

My Background

What I'm Building

How I Approach the Work

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