A selected portfolio of executive search, advisory, and strategic planning engagements that we've delivered alongside mission-driven organizations. Each one a different shape of work. Each one a leader still thriving in role.
Lighthouse Community Public Schools needed a Chief Academic Officer who could raise the academic bar without breaking the trust it had spent years building in East Oakland. Stronger delivered a structured search built around community trust, adaptive leadership, and nearly two decades of the right experience.
Engagements across executive search, advisory, fundraising, and academic strategy. Filter by service to see the work most relevant to you.
Opportunity 180 engaged Stronger to expand and strengthen recruitment for the Propel Fellowship. Stronger delivered a structured recruitment process, targeted sourcing beyond existing channels, and consistent candidate management from assessment through close.
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Democracy Prep at the Agassi Campus (DPAC) engaged Stronger to run a comprehensive Executive Director search during its transition to an independent state charter. Stronger managed the process from screening through board interviews, and the new Executive Director accepted the role and started June 1, about a week after the final interview.
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When Legacy Early College's founding leader stepped back, the network needed a Chief Schools Officer who could protect its model and keep raising the bar.
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The Alliance Foundation needed a VP of Development to bridge the gap between public funding and the needs of 13,000 scholars. Tiffany Markarian was built for exactly that.
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Teach For America Indianapolis needed an Executive Director who had already spent two decades earning credibility in the city. The search was designed to find her.
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When Chicago Public Schools needed a new Controller during a period of restructuring, credentials alone weren't enough; they needed a career.
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EL Education needed a Director of Communications who didn't just understand the mission, someone who had lived it. Finding that person required more than a job posting.
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KIPP Colorado was scaling quickly and needed a chief people leader to build the talent infrastructure to match its mission, before the gaps became problems.
View summary → EL Education was expanding fast nationally. It needed a development leader who could build the fundraising capacity to match, not just steward what already existed.
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Alliance hired a Director of School Counseling in 2019. Six years later, that leader oversees college access and success for 13,000 scholars across 26 schools in Los Angeles.
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Rooted School South Carolina partnered with Stronger on a high-stakes executive search during a period of growth. Stronger ran a structured, mission-first process to find a leader aligned with the organization's values and student-centered model, and the placement quickly exceeded expectations.
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Alliance, one of Los Angeles's largest charter networks, partnered with Stronger during a period of post-pandemic transition to strengthen principal recruitment, expand market understanding, and clarify hiring expectations for turnaround school leadership.
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Austin Achieve partnered with Stronger during a critical fundraising inflection point. With the Chief Advancement Officer going on leave amid ambitious expansion plans, Stronger provided interim management, a comprehensive systems audit, and donor portfolio strategy to keep the development engine running and ready for scale.
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FaithActs, a faith-based, Black-led grassroots education advocacy organization, partnered with Stronger to close a $700K funding gap and build the systems to sustain its movement. The work shifted fundraising from reactive gap-closing toward a sustainable, relationship-driven development model.
View summary → Lighthouse partnered with Stronger to redesign its compensation architecture across 131 staff members. The engagement delivered a streamlined framework grounded in market data and internal equity, plus a Total Rewards Communication Toolkit equipping leaders to communicate compensation decisions with clarity and consistency.
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Mary Black Foundation engaged Stronger to build a compensation framework specific to its regional context, replacing a generic national benchmark with role-aligned salary bands across nine positions. The engagement delivered a comparator dataset of 12 peer organizations, board-approved salary bands for FY2025, and a structured implementation plan.
View summary →Behind every case study is a leader still in the role, a team still building, and an organization closer to its mission. Here's what the work adds up to.
If you see your organization in the work above, start with a complimentary consultation. No pitch, no pressure. Just an honest read on whether Stronger is the right partner.