LeadForward Strategic Growth Leadership Cohort
Lead with clarity, confidence, and community.
Step into your next growth challenge with a peer group designed to help you thrive — not just survive — as a strategic leader.
The LeadForward 2027 Strategic Growth Leadership Cohort is a six-month, virtual experience created for A/E/C professionals ready to move from reacting to leading with purpose.
You’ll gain clarity, build tools, and develop the confidence to lead your teams into what’s next.
Why join?
- You’re stepping into a new role, or a familiar role that suddenly feels different.
- The expectations are high. The plans are ambitious. And somewhere between “set the vision” and “get it done,” you realize you need more than another spreadsheet or retreat.
- You need clarity. You need focus.
- And you need a group of people who get it — leaders who are also navigating what it means to grow strategically, with intention.
That’s exactly what LeadForward offers: a place to slow down, reflect, and realign before charging ahead.
LEARN MORE OR REGISTER TODAY!
The next Cohort session begins the week of January 18, 2027.
$2,500 for the full six-month program (limited to 12 participants).
What You'll Gain
Every part of the LeadForward experience is built to help you lead with confidence—and without burnout.
- Peer Support: Join a small, curated group of like-minded professionals, from across the country, tackling similar growth challenges. You’ll gain not just insights, but genuine accountability and encouragement.
- Tools & Strategies: Access a robust toolkit to help you define success, lead teams effectively, and align operations to your goals.
- Clarity for Leadership: Walk away with a sharper understanding of how to grow your firm — and yourself — in a way that’s sustainable and strategic.
- Accountability for Action: Because growth doesn’t happen in isolation, this is where ideas become next steps, and goals become momentum.
Your guides
LeadForward gives you more than tools — it gives you guides who’ve walked the path. Sarah Kinard and Marion Thatch pair strategic clarity with grounded coaching to help you lead with purpose, confidence, and a whole lot more ease.
Sarah Kinard
Strategic Growth Advisor & Co-Guide
Sarah brings clarity, structure, and a future-focused lens to every conversation. As the driving force behind The Flamingo Project’s research-driven, human-centered approach to growth, she helps leaders cut through noise, define what matters, and build strategic rhythms that actually work. Her gift is making the complex feel simple—and the overwhelming feel doable.
As Marion’s co-guide, Sarah brings the strategic architecture and momentum, pairing seamlessly with Marion’s coaching depth to create a supportive, energizing space for leaders ready to step into what’s next.
Marion Thatch, FSMPS, CPCC
Leadership & Marketing Strategist & Co-Guide
Marion brings a grounded, practical approach to leadership and marketing — the kind that comes from real, inside-the-firm experience paired with an outside advisor’s clarity. As President of Distinction in Marketing, she helps leaders navigate mindset shifts, change management, and the human side of strategic growth with steady encouragement and smart, actionable insight.
As Sarah’s co-guide, Marion brings depth, perspective, and intuitive coaching that helps participants build confidence, take action, and keep moving forward — even when things get messy.
What the six months look like
Each month focuses on a different aspect of strategic growth — blending leadership clarity, operational tools, and actionable next steps.
Month 1: Planning with Purpose: How to set yourself up for success and architect a process that builds buy-in.
Month 2: Defining Growth: Use the Growth Matrix to understand where your firm is now — and what “growth” really means for you.
Month 3: From Ideas to Strategy: Move insights into themes that connect communication, operations, and action.
Month 4: Communication for Alignment: Create clarity across teams, clients, and leadership so everyone rows in the same direction.
Month 5: Operationalizing Growth: Turn strategy into systems and momentum into measurable results.
Month 6: Action & Accountability: Track progress, celebrate wins, and set up the rhythm for what’s next.
Each month combines guided sessions, peer discussions, and templates designed to help you apply what you’re learning in real time.
READY TO MAKE 2027 YOUR MOST FOCUSED YEAR YET?
- When: January-June 2027
- Investment: $2,500
- Limited to 12 participants. We’re keeping this cohort small, limited to 12 participants, to create space for meaningful dialogue and growth.
Accepting applications for the January 2027 Cohort.
Who joins LeadForward?
This cohort was designed for growth-minded leaders across the A/E/C industry, people who WANT to refine how they think, plan, and lead.
- A principal or director of strategy who’s ready to align vision with execution.
- A marketing or BD leader tired of reactive planning and ready for systems that work.
- An operations or finance exec craving clarity and focus for the next growth cycle.
Let’s LeadForward — together.
“Implementing the strategic plan will be the hard part. Implementation is about effective change management, and I want to learn how to facilitate that well, because that’s where success really happens.”
— Kristin Beamer, Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer, McKim & Creed, Inc.
you don't have to navigate alone!
The next Cohort session begins in January 2027!
$2,500 for the full six-month program (limited to 12 participants).
Resources
WHICH PLANNING FRAMEWORK IS RIGHT FOR YOUR AEC FIRM?
A practical guide to seven strategic planning models — and how to know which one fits where your firm is right now.Every few years, a planning framework catches fire in the AEC industry. Firms adopt it because a peer firm swears by it, or because someone came back...
THE K-12 CONSTRUCTION MARKET HAS THREE LAYERS. MOST AEC FIRMS ONLY SEE ONE.
The national K-12 construction market looks healthy from a distance. Enrollment is large, facility stock is aging, and communities across the country are investing in schools. Pull back the lens a little further, and the picture gets more nuanced — and more...
THE EVOLUTION OF AEC MARKETING STRATEGY: AND THE QUIET SHIFTS THAT CHANGED GROWTH
Over the past 25 years, the AEC industry hasn’t changed overnight. It has shifted gradually—through signals many of us didn’t recognize until they became impossible to ignore. As a strategic growth consultant working with architecture, engineering, and construction...
GROUNDHOG DAY AND YOUR BUSINESS PLAN: WHAT TO ADJUST NOW
January has a funny way of sobering us up. In the fall, you planned. You workshopped. You debated priorities. You built the business plan, nodded confidently, and kicked things off on January 1 with fresh notebooks and big energy. And now it is late January. The...
NAVIGATING MARKET SHIFTS IN THE A/E/C INDUSTRY
Navigating market shifts in AEC has never been more critical. Some shifts come quietly, others make a lot of noise, but all of them create ripples that affect how firms do business. The key is not to avoid shifts, it’s to understand where they hit your business and...
GO TO INDUSTRY RESEARCH AND PULSE RESOURCES FOR AEC MARKETING AND STRATEGY
Market research can feel like a big, abstract concept, but at the end of the day, it’s about knowing where to look for the right insights. Over the years, I’ve built a go-to list of resources that I check regularly to understand market shifts, track competitor trends,...
FROM PLAN TO PRACTICE: MAKING STRATEGY STICK INSIDE YOUR FIRM
Every January, firms roll out fresh strategies with fanfare. The PowerPoint decks are polished, the goals are inspiring, and leadership beams with optimism. By mid-year, reality sets in. Competing priorities creep in, teams lose focus, and the strategy becomes...
KEEP IT SIMPLE: VISIONING FOR 2025
February is a time for reflection at The Flamingo Project. We look back on the past year and cast a vision for what’s ahead. January often feels like a whirlwind of “new year, new you” energy, so we let the dust settle, find our footing, and then go. If you’re...
PLANS: SIMPLIFIED AND DEFINED
Every business relies on plans, but not all plans are created equal. From strategic and business plans to marketing, BD, or financial roadmaps, it’s easy to get lost in the jargon or try to do it all at once. Instead, we believe the key is to simplify, starting with...
NEW YEAR, NEW TECHNOLOGY
Unless your head’s been buried in the sand, you know that artificial intelligence (AI) has been in the limelight for good and bad reasons. One of the things that sets businesses apart is their ability to innovate which often means embracing new technology; In this case, AI. At The Flamingo Project, one of our core values is being curious. We also believe in sharing generously, which is why we want to help you understand how to harness the power of artificial intelligence to help you win work differently.