“I’ve known Claudia a long time and she has been my go-to advisor for leadership and organizational challenges for as long as I’ve known her. Her ability to break down the complex into simple, digestible pieces is unmatched. Making change happen takes much more than inspiring intentions. Change must be engineered and managed to ensure success. Claudia is a master engineer who is grounded in business realities, understands the importance of building healthy culture, and never forgets that actual human beings make change real. I couldn’t recommend someone more strongly than I do her.”

Andrew Kasprzycki, President, Experience - Dentsu Creative, North America

“Collaborating with Claudia was a privilege and a joy. She is highly attentive, very skilled, and always focused on business outcomes. Indeed, We Grow Forward helped inclusively and compassionately move my organization forward! I cannot wait to work together again!”

Tyler Etters, Vice President, Highland Solutions

“We brought Claudia in as an interim Director of Production and ended up keeping her on contract as an invaluable consultant to help focus and organize needed changes within our organization. She provided focused insight, allowing our office to become a much better place to work and helped make our team more efficient and significantly more effective.”

Jeff Brecker, Managing Director, RG/A 

“I am a good Project Manager. It may seem strange to start off a recommendation with a self-congratulatory statement, but I am a good Project Manager and I am because of Claudia. I worked with Claudia for five years at two agencies. Claudia will not coddle you. Claudia will not micromanage you. Claudia will not suffer fools gladly. Claudia is a badass. She will push you to work at a level you didn’t think you were capable of (because she knows what you’re capable of). She is the calm within the storm. The voice of reason. She makes you want to do your best. She always has your back. Claudia helped cultivate one of the best working environments I’ve known, at Proximity. She used to say we hire for airport delays, meaning we hired people we wouldn’t mind being stuck in an airport with for hours. Claudia is definitely someone I wouldn’t mind running into at an airport in the middle of a blizzard.”

Nina Xoomsai, Producer, Energy BBDO 

“Claudia Richman is a champion of positive cultural change and she accomplishes this via emotional intelligence, a deep experience in operations, and a special kind of ambition for change that amps up the ambition for change in others.
Here’s a summary of her wins for 8th Light:

• Human-centered policy rollout: effective oversight and implementation of policies that made 8th Light a great place to work, done in transparent, easy to understand ways where the decision-making process was clear.

• Diversification of the employee workforce: her leadership and oversight of recruitment significantly increased the amount of well-qualified women and people of color working at the company.

• Career matrix development: Claudia led the roll-out of a more versatile and less linear way for employees to ladder up. This had another benefit of creating clearer and more consistent evaluation criteria for different disciplines.

• Employee retention and appreciation: Claudia proactively worked to identify quality of life increases for 8th Light employees AND she demonstrated a strong ability to integrate/act on feedback from employees.

• Advocacy and allyship: when employees had concerns, Claudia would follow through in inclusive ways with managers, and go above and beyond with regards to closing loops with individual employees.

Claudia connected well with the business needs of our organization AND cultivated great 1:1 relationships with people on every level of the organization. She recognizes the endgame of making the whole of a business/culture bigger than the sum of its parts.”

Doug Gapinski, Project Director, 8th Light