My core passion is to work with individuals, organisations and communities to help develop their potential to grow and succeed at accomplishing their missions. I aim to do this through helping them bring purposefulness to their missions, increase their self awareness to build meaningful relationships with the relevant stakeholders and experiment new ways of doing things.
I started my 18+ years of professional experience in the corporate world traveling the globe working with some of the biggest names in the logistics, shipping, consumer electronics and financial sectors. As I progressed through the corporate ladder from a sales executive to CEO I came to realise that the large majority of organisations are fundamentally broken and that the way they are designed is a great hindrance to unleashing the potential of the people working within.
At a pivotal moment in my career I moved into consulting to start a journey where I was experimenting with bold organisation development ideas such as self-organisation, distributed leadership and values based ways of working. For the past 8 years I have worked with organisations and senior leaders in telecom, IT, trading, manufacturing, energy, government and non-profit with the explicit mission to help making the workplace a more meaningful and engaging aspect within societies across the world.
Alix’s experience leading operations inside of self-managing organizations has come to great use as a founding member of August. Alix navigates the legal, tax, and monetary implications of August’s unique structure which is, according to the company’s corporate lawyer, “an intellectual exercise.” In addition to building a constantly evolving office in the US, she has successfully launched the London office with its equally as demanding understanding of finance and legalese.
After starting her career in hotel and restaurant management, she joined IDEO and then Undercurrent where she was able to leverage her passion for hospitality by incorporating those principles into experience design strategies. Alix excels at knowing how to create a thriving company culture that drives employee engagement and performance.
Clay was the Managing Partner of Undercurrent from the end of 2014 to 2015, where he led the transformation of Undercurrent’s business – doubling revenues through adoption of leading-edge org-design practices.
As Director of New Partnerships at Undercurrent, Erica led growth efforts and oversaw new client engagements.
Erica's passion for politics and the public sector led her to start working on political campaigns as soon as she could walk. Organizing is in her blood, whether grassroots or at the scale of Fortune 100 corporations.
At August, Erica coaches and inspires senior executives to embrace new tools and approaches that help teams achieve their most audacious goals.
Erik is a Brazilian born Norwegian with a playful mix of left and right brain capabilities. Growing up, he was the annoying kid that always asked lots of questions and having lived in four different countries by the age of 9, a curiosity about people and cultures was sparked at an early age.
This curiosity about people later on in life led him into innovation and prior to joining August he worked at a leading innovation consultancy, What If Innovation, working on global projects for companies like Lloyd’s Banking Group, Pernod Ricard, and IKEA.
He also set up digital education company Hyper Island’s London office where he was in charge of running their leadership level MA in Digital Management as well as designing and delivering digital and cultural transformation projects for clients like Moët Hennessy, Nielsen, and ITV. During his time there he also co-designed the Digital Transformation module for HEC’s Executive MBA in Paris.
Having spent 7 years working at Tesco, Hannah is no stranger to what it takes to navigate and collaborate across a large organisation. Her experience in transformation and creating new products and businesses in Tesco highlighted the need for a dramatically different approach. This prompted Hannah to launch a new venture within Tesco to develop the entrepreneurial skills, behaviours, and ways of working needed to be adaptive and bring ideas to life within a large organisation.
After leaving Tesco, Hannah continued to work with and coach large organisations, entrepreneurs and individuals, with a focus on changing the way they work to help them grow.
Jessie has always worked in the field of Organisational Change and is passionate about making organisations a happy place where great ideas come to life! Prior to joining August, Jessie worked at IBM and Undercurrent as an Organisational Change consultant for large global companies across a variety of industries - Financial Services, Energy and Utilities, CPG and Retail. Jessie thoroughly enjoys working with the world's most influential organizations to help them build stellar teams who are capable of greatness. Jessie is a born and raised Londoner who loves getting outside and playing new golf courses.
Joe has helped leaders of organisations from Fortune 100 companies to global NGOs make sense of technological changes and the ways that they can thrive in the modern era. His obsession with new ways of working and 21st century leadership has lead him to work with some of the biggest and brightest companies including American Express, General Electric, PepsiCo and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Prior to this Joe spent time in Adland working as a Strategist and helping brands like BBC, Marks and Spencer and The Eden Project.
Justine is a trusted advisor to business and public sector leaders. Her early experience in psychology research serves as a foundation for her approach to helping organizations overcome legacy ways of working and mindsets to rediscover their capacity for innovation. Recently, Justine developed turnaround organizational consulting services for social service agencies across New York State, and developed an internal innovation network for one of NYC’s largest behavioral health organizations. Throughout her career, she has worked with both startups and large companies tackling some of the most complex challenges facing our society across behavioral health, healthcare, community development, enterprise software and education. In addition to a BA in psychology and sociology, Justine holds an MBA from the Wharton School in Innovation Management.
Karina is passionate about coaching teams as they learn together, question deeply held assumptions, and achieve breakthrough change. Prior to joining August, she worked for ten years with nonprofits, foundations, government agencies, and community networks tackling complex organizational and social challenges - including economic development, public safety, food security, and creative placemaking. At August, Karina is an organizational design consultant who helps nurture more creative, self-managing and productive teams.
Krys is a management consultant, with over 5 years of experience, and holds a dual Masters in Public Administration and Public Health from Columbia University. She’s led large transformation initiatives in health agencies within the federal government and within a finance industry leader to innovate its approach to payment security. Her enthusiasm for change innovation has driven leaders to think in new ways and develop creative solutions for their teams, products, and organizations.
Mark is a strategist and coach to leadership teams seeking purposeful growth and change. As a former Partner at Undercurrent, he’s led transformation efforts for some of our world’s leading organizations – including American Express, and GE. His approach is supported by fifteen years experience in organization design, strategy and lean innovation. Recently, Mark launched a Responsive Organization Design Masterclass, as part of the Masters of Business Innovation program at CEDIM.
Having worked for major movie studios, a triple-A video games publisher and a Madison Avenue ad agency, Max's previous roles as a project manager and team coach have brought him to August where he is using his experience as a ScrumMaster, community manager and board game nerd to build awesome teams
Mike Arauz is a Founding Member at August. Mike is sought out by organizations around the world as a speaker and advisor to inspire organizations, teams, and leaders to change the way they work. Previously, Mike was a Partner at Undercurrent, where he helped executive leaders of global companies to transform how their organizations work and thrive in the 21st century, including GE, Pearson, and The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Mike is also a co-author of the Responsive.org manifesto and a leading contributor to the global self-management and future of work movement.
After studying Anthropology and Psychology in college, Monique realized she had a passion for how and why people connect and interact, and wanted to learn more about group dynamics, organizational design, and psychological development in a real world context. She joined the LEGO marketing team, which focused on expanding the female consumer base and launching new themes that encourage cognitive development and fun. Diving into the world of toys, she was continually reminded of the power of play, creativity, remaining true to consumer needs, and importance of organizational design and strategy. Her enthusiasm for people, creativity, and human and organizational development is what lead her to August.
Sasha Neha Ahuja comes to August having dedicated her career to anchoring racial, gender and LGBTQ justice and facilitating community-driven policy and organizational change at social service organizations, advocacy groups and local government. Most recently Sasha served as Deputy Director of the Policy & Innovation Division at the New York City Council, the largest legislative body in the US, where she ideated and implemented the Council Speaker’s progressive policy priorities and drove institution-wide innovation projects including participatory budgeting and a +$20 million public-private partnership dedicated to lifting up young women and girls of color, inclusive of trans and gender-non-conforming communities. Sasha is an Adjunct Professor at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College and Touro Graduate School of Social Work where she teaches Social Policy and Power, Privilege & Oppression (respectively). Sasha is also a trainer and facilitator with a range of progressive political training organizations and pipeline programs working with folks interested in deepening their racial justice analyses to engage in the work that drives them.
Usha specializes in building organizations’ and communities’ capacity to thrive. She engages teams in collaborative processes to enable them to do their best thinking and unlock their full potential in the face of complex challenges and unprecedented change. Prior to joining August, she worked at Google supporting team development and organizational learning. She holds a Master’s degree in Organization Development and a Bachelor’s degree in Interdisciplinary Behavioral Studies.
We are obsessed with learning what makes teams great, how technology is changing the way we work, and what organizations can do to create a better future for everyone.
We've spent our careers helping business leaders to understand 21st-century technological disruption and what they can do to survive and thrive in this new era of exponential change.
If our Purpose tells us why we exist, and our operating principles tell us how we work, our values tell us who we are. They are at the heart of everything we do.
We believe that the world’s most valuable work depends on teams of people working together to achieve a common goal. Figuring out how to create teams who are capable of accomplishing great things - inside and outside our company – is at the heart of everything we do.
Team even at the expense of flexibility and individual recognition.
We are fiercely committed to creating equal opportunity in the workplace for people regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and economic background. When it comes to related policies, actions, and politics, we are inclined toward activism.
Equity even at the expense of fast growth and ease of cultural affinity.
We design our culture and ways of working to maximize the quantity and quality of learning. We measure achievement by the value of the lessons learned.
Learning even at the expense of efficiency or comfort.
In today’s networked world our own achievement is directly linked to the achievement of others with a shared worldview. To whatever extent possible, we will seek to share what we do and invite others to benefit from it.
Public Benefit even at the expense of profit or competitive advantage.
We believe that people do their best when their work brings them joy. We love what we do, and want to help others discover the joy in their work.
Joy even at the expense of being taken seriously.