About Us

Stronger Consulting Services

We build solid foundations for education organizations and advance opportunities for young people of color.

Stronger Consulting is a mission-driven education consulting firm founded in 2016 by founder and CEO Mike Montoya, a 26-year education sector veteran with extensive experience working across K-12 school systems and with numerous youth-serving nonprofit organizations.
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Mission-Driven

Stronger Consulting is a mission-driven, education consulting firm. We believe all kids deserve the opportunity to pursue their own version of happiness and prosperity. We partner with K-16 school systems and education non-profit organizations to design and achieve remarkable educational experiences for young people. We are a Latinx-owned company and serve a national client base, specializing in building diverse talent pipelines to build extraordinary teams and supporting organizations working to ensure equitable opportunities for traditionally underserved children and families.

Our Difference

We imagine a future in which everyone can access fair and outstanding educational and life opportunities.

We aspire to see leaders today who are boldly addressing and dismantling systemic and institutional inequalities, striving to provide people with opportunities that surpass our wildest expectations.

We recognize that the shortage of diverse and empowered leaders, and the absence of thoughtful equitable solutions, pose significant obstacles to realizing this vision. Our mission is to build diverse talent pipelines that link equity-focused leaders with organizations and school systems in need of their expertise and offer solutions that benefit underserved children, communities and families.

We pursue this through:

  • Equitable Empowerment: We passionately champion a world where equity and anti-racism thrive, empowering all people to flourish in an inclusive and just society.
  • Boundless Optimism: We believe in the boundless potential for a brighter reality today and tomorrow, fostering optimism that drives impactful, positive change.
  • Compassionate Connection: We forge genuine connections, walking alongside others with empathy, building authentic relationships, and supporting mission driven organizations that enrich lives.
  • Respect: We lead with progressive empathy, treating others with respect, fostering kindness, and nurturing an environment of collaboration.
  • Informed Transparency: Driven by data and optimism, we transparently communicate truth, emphasizing positivity while embracing facts to guide impactful decisions.

Stronger Consulting partners with you to solve your toughest challenges, from discrete projects to ongoing engagements focused on ensuring exceptional results for children and educators. We approach our work based on three fundamental values: integrity, transparency, and customization. By leveraging data and asking the right questions, we produce quality insights to help you, our partner clients, achieve their goals.

We lead with our core values of optimism and empathy: optimism for bringing about a more positive reality for children today and in the future and compassion for our clients working to make this vision a reality.

We believe all kids deserve the opportunity to pursue their version of happiness and prosperity. Stronger Consulting partners with organizations to design and achieve remarkable educational experiences for young people.

Stronger Consulting was specifically founded with a mission to advance opportunities for young people of color and prides itself on its placement of leaders of color with organizations that have taken a stance that all children deserve the opportunity to receive a high-quality education in a safe and supportive environment. Furthermore, we are working to support leaders and organizations with missions that align with ours and who are innovative, passionate, and working with a sense of urgency to create a positive reality today and in the near future. Our impact on the world is through the leaders and the organizations that we partner with.

We ensure our clients have the right individuals leading the exemplary work that produces solid outcomes for the children they serve.

We focus on the fundamentals and the essentials.

  • Solid, predictable revenue supporting important work for and with children.
  • Highly effective and caring leaders.
  • Reliable and efficient operating, human capital, and financial systems.
  • Programs that are clear and focused, and effective at creating high-quality opportunities for kids.
  • Use of data and results to drive decisions and direction.
  • planning and assessment to ensure strategic priorities are achieved.

We want children to have opportunities to grow up in healthy and supportive cities, communities, and schools. We believe that a relationship with one caring adult outside a child’s immediate family is a protective factor and key to developing resilience. We know that when children have access to safe and supportive environments that appropriately stretch them, they grow into healthy young adults. We want to ensure that these environments are abundantly available to all kids.

Our Stronger Consulting Team

Our team consists of a variety of team members with a diversity of experiences and backgrounds. Our team leaders all have experience operating in school systems, as teachers, or building and growing nationally recognized non-profit organizations such as The Broad Center and Teach for America.  Many of our consultants were specifically hired and trained in management consulting firms including Parthenon, Accenture, McKinsey, and others.

Stronger has attracted and selected these individuals to join its core team and brings empathetic, optimistic, and caring individuals with serious horsepower to our work with you on behalf of children.

Meet the Team
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Our History

Mike grew up deeply involved in school, sports, and youth-serving organizations, where he spent much time learning and growing in highly supportive and caring environments. He was one of only a handful of Mexican-American kids in his school system and grew up in a place and time where his parents actively discouraged his bi-cultural development. The path out of working-class life was assimilation, education, and opportunities. Many of the adults and teachers he engaged with worked hard to provide opportunities and mentorship that are not widely available to all kids.

Mike was fortunate to leverage federal aid and private scholarships and attended a highly rated liberal arts college and later a top-tier research institution for graduate school. As Mike has grown in his professional life, he has always remained focused on having a substantial impact – mainly by working to bring extraordinary adults into leadership positions where they can focus their skills and gifts in ways that expand developmental and educational opportunities for children who have less access to pathways toward a prosperous and satisfying life.

The firm’s name, “Stronger,” showed up during our founding year and the run-up to the 2016 Summer Olympics in São Paulo, Brazil. Mike went to college in Colorado Springs and spent several years as a human performance research associate at the Olympic training center, so he’s always been a big fan of the Games. The Olympic motto – Stronger, Faster, Higher – is aspirational and signals that there is more to achieve through commitment, dedication, drive, technology, training, focus, self-awareness, empathy, and optimism.

Mike’s journey to uncover and recover parts of his identity is ongoing. He has benefited from significant investment from professional mentors, coaches, and leadership fellowships. He has re-engaged with some aspects of his hidden heritage and found ways to deeply invest in the growth and development of other young men, women, and team members as emerging professionals. Mike practices spiritually centered mindfulness in his daily life and brings this awareness and its benefits to his personal and professional relationships.

2016

Founded project-based consulting practice in San Diego, CA.

2017

Launched our Executive Recruiting practice.

2018

We expanded our consulting work to include additional expert consultants.

 

2019

– Hired our first full-time team member.

– Began scaling our executive recruiting practice.

2020

Hired our second and third full-time team members and expanded our scope of services and clients for the 4th year in a row. 

2021

Expanded our team to include multiple additional full-time and part-time staff members and expert consultants to deliver high-quality work for our client partners.