About
A think tank for leaders,
communities, and individuals
Matriarc is a mission-led think tank founded by Dee Heffernan, a strategist and creative practitioner with two decades of experience across brand, culture, and organizational design.
Our central premise is that work is undergoing a structural shift: away from siloed, hyper-independent models of organization, and toward more integrated, interdependent ones. This shift has implications for how leaders build teams, how organizations sustain themselves, and how individuals find meaning in their work.
Matriarc examines this shift, and the conditions under which interdependence and community produce more durable, sustainable outcomes.
The thinking, writing, and cases shared on this site draw on Dee’s direct experiences in partnership and collaboration with a range of leaders navigating this same terrain.
Dee Heffernan
Founder & Collaborative Lead
Dee is obsessed with people and human experience. For Christmas, she consistently asked for two things: a swimming pool, and books about psychology, spirituality, really anything that would give her a window into what makes people tick.
After studying Human Development at the University of Chicago, where she also played point and shooting guard for the women’s basketball team, she dove headfirst into sales. Wait. Sales? Yes, the Yellow Pages. The big yellow book.
It makes more sense than it sounds. Nearly two decades later, having sat in just about every conceivable seat in sales, marketing, and branding, Dee had built a career that looked, from the outside, like success. From the inside, it felt like performance.
In 2024 she delivered a TEDx talk titled How to Stop Highlight Reel Living — a personal account on approval-seeking and performance-driven burnout. That talk informed the foundation of Dee’s REAL™ Framework, serving as the spine of everything at Matriarc.
Throughout her career, Dee has partnered with founders building something from nothing, and has also brought her branding and marketing expertise into organizations with decades of history behind them — universities, mission-driven nonprofits, and growing brands alike.
Dee works as a thought partner to a small number of leaders and groups each year, through individual advisory, workshops, and public speaking. Each engagement is unique with format determined by circumstance. Reach out to learn about working with Dee.
The REAL™ Framework
REAL™ is Matriarc’s signature strategic framework for guiding individuals, teams, and communities through deeper connection and authenticity with themselves, their work, and what they leave in their wake.