We built Stronger because we'd been on the other side of the table running searches, sitting through pitches, and constantly watching firms overpromise and under-deliver. We wanted a firm that earned trust the hard way and stayed on the engagement after the placement was made.
The short version is that I got tired of watching good search engagements get derailed by firms that didn't understand the work, have deep networks and relationships, or an obsessively-thorough-enough process to find and land great talent. The long version is below.
Before Stronger existed, Mike Montoya spent twenty-two years inside the kinds of organizations that Stronger now serves, from school systems to nonprofits like The Broad Foundations in Los Angeles, and Stanford University's John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities in San Francisco. He sat on the KIPP SoCal Public Schools board of directors, was the board chair for The Community Network for Youth Development and the West Contra Costa County Education Fund, and is an active champion and collaborative partner with the Education Leaders of Color network and Latinos for Education. He has served as senior advisor to dozens of clients including Teach for America, Innovate Public Schools, the KIPP Foundation, the Mind Trust, the Diverse Charter School Coalition, The Commit Partnership, and Spartanburg Academic Movement.
What he saw repeatedly was the same pattern. Organizations under real pressure to hire senior leaders, retained search firms that pitched well but disengaged once the contract was signed, candidate pools that were neither deep nor diverse, and placements that fell apart within the first year because the search firm never understood the culture of the client it was supposedly serving.
We wanted a firm that earned trust the hard way. The partner who pitches you stays on the engagement. The slates we present are the slates we'd hire from ourselves.
Stronger Consulting opened in 2016. The first principle was that the partner who pitched the work stayed on the team throughout the work. The second was that diversity in lived experience, education, racial background, and professional pedigree wouldn't be a stretch goal at the end of the search, but a designed decision at the beginning. The third was that we were willing to push back and push forward on a candidate brief, salary range, timeline, and interview design whenever it would improve the outcome. Search firms that don't push back and offer a stronger way forward don't deliver.
Ten years in, we're a team of sixteen practitioners working across executive search, strategic advisory, and the Stronger Select membership program. We've placed more than 500 senior leaders across 38 states and more than 100 organizations. We've been the trusted partner for KIPP Public Schools, Chicago Public Schools, The New Teacher Center, Latinos for Education, College Track, America's Promise Alliance, Aspire Public Schools, Noble Schools, Leading Educators, Education Leaders of Color, Making Waves Foundation, EL Education, The Broad Foundation, and many others. Every engagement still gets the same care we brought to the first one.
Behind every engagement is a team doing the granular work: sourcing candidates, designing assessments, modeling compensation, and advising clients between sessions. Partners and consultants, all committed to the same standard of work.
Twenty-two years inside the kinds of organizations Stronger now serves before founding the firm in 2016. Sat on the KIPP SoCal Public Schools board, board chair for The Community Network for Youth Development, and senior advisor to Teach for America, the KIPP Foundation, the Alliance for College Ready Public Schools, and EL Education.
Connect on LinkedIn m.montoya@strongerconsulting.comLeads operations and strategic projects across the firm. Recipient of the Utah Governor's Award of Excellence for designing new payment models for substance use disorder treatment. Background bridges social work, public policy, and organizational leadership.
Connect on LinkedIn denise@strongerconsulting.comLeads client partnerships across the firm. Twenty years of experience in talent leadership and executive search across education and social impact. Approach to the work came through immigrant roots and relationships: people first, opportunity through connection.
Connect on LinkedIn ron@strongerconsulting.comThese aren't slogans we wrote during a retreat. They're the principles we've relied on and returned to in every transformative or difficult moment of the work, and the ones we keep finding evidence for.
At most firms, senior partners win the work and then hand it to an associate. We don't operate that way. The partner who sat across the table from you in the pitch stays on the team that runs the search. Recommendations, difficult decisions, and project updates are all achieved in close collaboration across the team, including the person you originally chose to work with.
We don't bolt diversity onto the end of a search by adding two underrepresented finalists to a pre-selected slate. We design pipelines that represent the field from the start, build assessment frameworks that surface leadership capability regardless of pedigree, and treat the question of who has access to the role as a first-order design decision.
We're willing to push back on a job description if we think the role is poorly designed. We're willing to push back on a timeline if we think it'll compromise the search. We're willing to push back on a finalist if we don't think the placement will hold. Polite firms protect their next invoice, but honest firms protect your next year.
The placement is the start of the work, not the finish. Onboarding, transition support, and ongoing coaching keep the investment compounding for the leader and the organization that hired them. We measure success at year two, not at the offer letter.
Behind every search is a person making one of the most consequential decisions of their career. Behind every advisory engagement is a leadership team carrying the weight of an organization. We bring care to every interaction because the people on the other side of the table are doing care-intensive work themselves. We owe them no less than what we expect of the leaders that we place.
Stronger partners with mission-driven organizations across K-12 education, social impact, and public-purpose nonprofits. The common thread is leadership that matters, in organizations where the stakes are high and the work is hard.
We don't take every engagement. We take the ones where we think we can make a real difference, and where we think we'd enjoy the people we'd be working with.
Our team brings credentials and affiliations earned across the fields we now serve. A partial list of the boards, fellowships, and recognitions our leadership holds.
Mike Montoya. Cohort dedicated to transformative leadership in education.
Mike Montoya. National network of leaders of color in education.
Mike Montoya. Director. Oversight of one of the largest charter networks in California.
Denise Jensen. For new payment models for substance use disorder treatment.
A complimentary 30-minute call with someone on our team. No pitch, no pressure. Just an honest read on whether we're the right fit.