Willemstyn !m Week 1

!mpact Makers is an incredible organization to intern for, as an entrepreneurial company with around 100-150 employees and a Certified B-Corp and Benefit Corporation. With such a small workforce for a Richmond consulting firm, and their unusual (for the industry) emphasis on workers, diversity, environment, and the community, I believe the leader/follower dynamics that exist here remain entirely unique to almost any other consulting firm. The company is structured with a board of directors and traditional in-office leadership such as the CIO, COO, CFO, and so on. They are currently searching for a new CEO, which has been fascinating to observe, since every candidate who comes in fits the same “power walk” archetype I imagined of consultants: male, tall, black suit, and a winning smile. It seems foolish to point out to my colleagues, but not a single female or POC candidate has come in, and that’s coming from a company dedicated to promoting diversity. Nonetheless, their interesting model shines through in other veins of leadership. They work in pseudo-departments defined by Marketing, Sales, Delivery, and Business Development, along with HR, Recruiting, and other areas expected of any business. However, those groups are also defined by service offerings (which rapidly change from the day to day) and industry verticals (Healthcare, Finance, and the Public Sector). Employees within these groups all report to the highest level (Principal) Consultant of their practice area, and they’re assigned intermittently to various projects. It’s a small firm, so for 85 actively billable consultants about 5% of those resources are always “on the bench:” i.e. not assigned to a project. Those teams independently run the engagement, with the principal consultants overseeing the work and lower-level consultants driving the majority of it. The decision-makers for the entire company are fairly centralized to the interim CEO and the Board, but the small size allows for employees (and even us interns) to interact with the decision-makers nearly every week. I’ve never experienced such transparency between leaders and their employees, since the start of this quarter was not very good financially, and they had open discussions about that fact while retaining nearly all their employees during that nervous time. I’d be curious to see how those dynamics operate at larger companies where time allocation prevents higher-level employees from having open transparent relationships with everyone, but for !m, I believe this model has created an awesome company culture that I’m excited to participate in.