We Help You On Your Path To Greatness

We are highly experienced consultants who specialize in peak performance, leadership and management capability building, reducing burnout and increasing well-being.

We’ve had the privilege of partnering with some of the most innovative enterprise organizations in the world. Our clients span academic medical centers to regional community health systems, flour milling to investment banking, pharmaceuticals to medical devices.

Bruce Alfred

Principal, Coach + Consultant

Bruce is a Gallup-certified CliftonStrengths consultant, peak performance coach, and an expert in building individual and team well-being and resilience. He guides clients in overcoming challenges, and more efficiently reaching goals while increasing joy and decreasing burnout.

Bruce focuses on building both performance and well-being in the workplace to help organizations become the place everyone wants to be and where great things happen.

His clients include Mayo Clinic, NYU Langone Health, University of Minnesota, University Hospitals, Be The Match, and others.

Bruce writes about team performance and organizational well-being for Brainz Magazine. He recently authored a chapter on developing a strengths mindset for peak performance for the book, Peak Performance: Mindset Tools for the Entrepreneur. 

A registered yoga and mindfulness teacher, Bruce is the father of four grown children, and wrangler of one completely rambunctious puppy. 

Top five CliftonStrengths:
Input | Learner | Strategic | Futuristic | Achiever

Susan Heinlein

Consultant + Facilitator

Susan works with companies to help them harness innovation, intelligence and insights to solve their most difficult problems.

She is an expert in results-focused business transformation, change management, and process design and improvement. Her down to earth style draws attention to what is critical and helps organizations take the actions needed to be successful.

Susan is a leading expert in internal partnering. Her new partnering framework is trainable, repeatable, and measurable. She believes that better collaboration is key to elevating business performance.

Previously, Susan was a partner at Korn Consulting Group. She spent 10 years at Ameriprise and GE in senior roles in finance, pricing and operations. Prior to GE, Susan worked at Honeywell in finance including international roles in Asia.

Susan is a Six Sigma Certified Master Black Belt.

Top Five CliftonStrengths:
Command | Ideation | Individualization | Achiever| Restorative

Marian Powell

Consultant + Facilitator

Marian has decades of experience helping organizations, teams, and individuals deliver higher levels of performance and results. She is a transformational leader that inspires individual and teams to both turn exciting ideas into extraordinary outcomes, and in the process, develop their own capabilities.

She is an expert in using a co-creative approach to help clients clarify their strategy, break down silos, gain alignment and work together to accomplish more than they thought possible.

Previously, Marian was a partner at Korn Consulting Group Inc, an Officer of GE Capital, and SVP of Global Sales and Marketing for GE Equipment Services. She has also served in senior roles in product management, operations, quality, communications, digitization, and human resources.

Marian is a Six Sigma Certified Black Belt with deep expertise in change management. She is also a graphic scribe.

Top five CliftonStrengths:
Ideation | Relator | Input | Strategic | Futuristic

Evan Smith

Consultant + Facilitator

Organizations change when their leaders do: when each leader chooses a growth-learning mindset, assumes personal responsibility, and builds capabilities to both learn and lead by example.

Evan helps leaders and their organizations grapple successfully with significant demands for learning and growth. In addition to his own independent clients and work with BolsterUp, he works with partners Kotter Inc. and Box of Crayons, bringing smart, practical habit change that helps leaders to shift their patterns, create more engagement, and have more impact.

He’s worked with leaders across Fortune 500 companies, private firms (including startups), government and nonprofits.

He has an MBA from the Yale School of Organization and Management; and Bachelors degrees in Engineering and Liberal Arts from Penn State; and lives in Providence, RI.

Top five CliftonStrengths:
Input | Includer | Ideation | Strategic | Achiever

Margaret Dow, M.D.

Program and Curriculum Development, Coach + Consultant + Facilitator

Margaret oversees program and curriculum development at BolsterUp. As a scientist, she is interested in data-driven approaches that incorporate strengths, positive psychology, and mind-body practices to amplify excellence. She is board certified in obstetrics and gynecology and in obesity medicine, and serves as a laborist and assistant professor of OBGYN at Mayo Clinic. She oversees wellness curricula in medical education in a variety of local and national committee roles and serves as chief wellness officer for her four not-quite-old-enough-to-launch children.

Top five CliftonStrengths:
Learner | Ideation | Connectedness | Individualization | Relator

Ann Budner

Strategic Planning Consultant

A specialist in nonprofit organizations, Ann’s expertise includes strategic planning, board development, and outcomes measurement. Ann has over 30 years of experience working with nonprofits.

Ann helps clients identify the human and organizational characteristics that are essential to their success. She designs strategic plans that are practical and detail-oriented yet concise, with benchmarks and timelines to ensure accountability. Working with a planning team of diverse stakeholders, she facilitates a highly participatory process that ensures maximum investment in the final product.

Top five CliftonStrengths:
Learner | Individualization | Empathy | Input | Connectedness