Our Services
Will Transform You & Your Organization
Using The People First Approach, Croteau & Company helps institutions of higher education, academic medical centers, government, healthcare institutions, NGOs, arts organizations, and social justice movements increase their impact on the world by focusing their leaders on their greatest assets: their people and their strategy.
Croteau & Company's approach toward strategic transformation is purposeful. We assess (A), we innovate (I) and we deliver (D). Our A.I.D. approach allows us to understand the current state of successes and challenges for leaders and organizations. Our advisors create solutions to amplify strengths and remove barriers to achievement. Then, we deliver by showing you how to do just that: deliver.
Strategic Planning & Organizational Strategy
“Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.” – Gloria Steinem
Our advisors can help your organization dream and imagine the ideal mission, vision, and strategy. We then help you design a strategic planning process that is right for you and your organization, eliminating barriers, bottlenecks, indecision, and inaction.
It all starts with the right organizational mission, vision, and a long-term strategy to achieve ambitious goals.
Leadership Advising
"I think self-awareness is probably the most important thing to becoming a champion." – Billie Jean King
Leadership can be lonely at times. Our advisors provide leadership advising that gives you the private, confidential, and judgement-free space to explore your most critical leadership challenges.
Whether pondering the next move in your organization, how to better manage up, or how you can be the best manager to your team, leadership advising offers you sage, unbiased, wise counsel and advice to achieve your leadership goals.
Leadership & Career Counsel
“Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.” – e. e. cummings
Exploring what your next role or even what career might be best for you can be daunting. Our advisors can help you discover your strengths, and determine roles and careers that fit you the best.
You spend so much of your life working; finding a role in a place, in an industry, that also brings you joy is our ultimate goal.
Leadership Development
“Ideals are like stars. You will not succeed in touching them. But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides and following them you will reach your destiny.” – Carl Schurz
Developing leaders is as much an art as it is a science. The art is how your advisor guides you to self-awareness and the science sets the chart of specific goals to get you where you want to be, or where your organization wants you to get.
Leadership development is how our advisors help you or your organization find the best inspirers, empathizers, imaginers, and igniters. Leadership development is not only about transforming you as a leader, but also about transforming your organization, because of the leaders you develop.
Organizational & Talent Effectivenss Assessment
"Before you become a leader, success is all about growing yourself. After you become a leader, success is about growing others.” – Jack Welch
In order for an organization to be successful it has to understand the enhancers or the barriers to making its people successful.
A talent effectiveness assessment does just that: it helps the organization learn what key areas in your people strategy are holding you back and what small changes or investments could make you even more effective.
After our assessment phase, we give you the blueprint and the road map with a step-by-step approach on how your people, your organization, can be even more effective.
Culture & Change Management
“Determine what behaviors and beliefs you value as a company, and have everyone live true to them. These behaviors and beliefs should be so essential to your core, that you don’t even think of it as culture.” – Brittany Forsyth
Culture might seem intangible, but our advisors bring it into view. We can help you and your organization establish and execute the kind of workplace you want to be, and get you there.
Building, growing, or expanding culture takes effort and time. Change is hard but it does not have to be. Our advisors can help you and your organization realize your culture aspirations and help you change it at the same time through the development of key core values and inculcating them into your organizational systems.
Leadership Transition & Succession Planning
“The most successful leader of all is one who sees another picture not yet actualized. He sees the things which belong in his present picture but which are not yet there…” – Mary Parker Follett
Ensuring the successful future of organizations is all about leadership transition and succession planning. Every leader or board should be developing their next leader replacement; whether a chief executive officer or a vice president, transition does not always mean finding someone from the outside.
Our advisors can help you assess your leadership scenario, develop a future generation of leaders, and strategize for any transition, planned or unexpected.
Our Experts
Dr. Jon Derek Croteau, Founder, CEO & Principal Advisor
Jon has been a leader in the nonprofit sector for over 25 years with expertise in strategic planning, talent management, leadership advising, board governance and engagement, philanthropy, workplace culture, and executive recruitment. His unique combination of experiences as a leadership advisory and executive search consultant, interim/transitional executive, author, teacher, and speaker in higher education, healthcare, academic medicine, arts, and advocacy organizations has made him a thoughtful and thought-provoking contributor to an array of institutions across the globe. Dr. Croteau has authored many books and dozens of articles on leadership and talent management.
Kerry Brady Seitz, M.A., Managing Advisor
Kerry is Managing Advisor at Croteau & Company and Vice President of Women’s Leadership at the Simmons University Institute for Inclusive Leadership. She brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to produce innovative, research-based learning journeys that foster gender parity in organizational leadership worldwide. Kerry was Vice President of Learning and Development at Landit, a career development tech startup aimed at democratizing career success. Prior to that role, Kerry was the Director of Advancing Women and Inclusive Leadership solutions and Executive Director of the Women in Leadership Institute at Linkage, a global leadership consulting firm.
Books, Articles and Essays by Dr.Jon Derek Croteau
Books
Coming Soon: Out Front: The LGBTQ+ Leadership Edge
Never before has anyone profiled, analyzed, and compiled the leadership qualities and traits unique to LGBTQ+ leaders and trailblazers. Out Front is the first book of its kind to profile a set of 30 diverse leaders and groundbreakers in the LGBTQ+ community and in a variety of professions, and across industries. It will be published by Bloomsbury Academic in early 2027.
My Thinning Years: Starving the Gay Within
An Amazon best-selling memoir exploring identity, queerness, and self-acceptance, and what it means to live authentically as a leader and human being.
Making the Case for Leadership: Profiles of Chief Advancement Officers in Higher Education
A deep exploration of the role, impact, and leadership journeys of chief advancement officers in higher education, highlighting how they drive mission, philanthropy, and institutional progress.
The People First Approach: A Guide to Recruiting, Developing, and Retaining the Right People
Methodologies and practical tools for recruiting, developing, and retaining the right people, grounded in a People First philosophy that aligns talent strategy with mission, culture, and long-term institutional success.
Effective Measures: The Return on Investing in Talent Management
A research-informed look at how strategic talent management drives measurable returns for mission-driven institutions.
Eating Disorders: The Journey to Recovery Workbook
A practical, compassionate workbook supporting individuals and families on the path to healing from eating disorders.
