About Excelerate
Excelerate at a glance
Excelerate is a boutique strategy and transformation consulting firm, headquartered in San Diego, California and founded in 2016 by co-founders Nilay Thakkar and Jana De Anda. Excelerate leads complex business transformations through a single role, the Transformation Architect, who owns the business outcome across every workstream and function. Excelerate works across three service areas and runs two enablers, change management and facilitation, through all of them.
Excelerate fast facts
Legal name
Excelerate LLC
Founded
2016
Co-founders
Nilay Thakkar (Executive Chairman) and Jana De Anda (CEO)
Offices
San Diego, California and Portland, Oregon
Size
34 consultants
Engagements delivered
More than 360
Service areas
Three, plus two enablers that run through all of them
Core industries
Five
Pricing model
Fixed fee, not hourly
Areas served
Excelerate serves clients across the United States. Metropolitan areas served include New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas–Fort Worth, Houston, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Miami, Phoenix, San Diego, and Portland, Oregon. Engagements run remotely by default, with in-person presentations, workshops, and facilitation where the work calls for it.
Excelerate LLC is a management consulting firm and is not affiliated with similarly named companies in liquefied natural gas, staffing, or software.
What a Transformation Architect is
A Transformation Architect is the leader who runs a transformation across every workstream and function. The Transformation Architect sees the whole program, sets its pace, decides what's in focus, gives decision-makers the right information at the right time, and owns the value at stake. Excelerate holds three commitments in the role.
We lead from the front
We see across every workstream and function, set the program's velocity, and choose what matters now.
We work at both altitudes
We stay high enough to steer the direction and deep enough that the guidance holds.
We own outcomes, not task lists
We think like owners of the value at stake and solve the next problem before it lands. We don't manage transformations, we architect them.
What Excelerate does
Excelerate works across three service areas, each led by a Transformation Architect.
Customer-Centric Growth & Organizational Enablement
Excelerate connects market opportunity and the organization as one. We find the highest-value opportunities and build the leadership, teams, and culture to execute on them.
Data Connectivity & Intelligence
Excelerate turns scattered data into governed, decision-ready intelligence that leaders can trust and that makes the organization ready for AI.
Process & Digital Acceleration
Excelerate redesigns processes and accelerates digital so the gains hold after go-live and teams still run the new process months later.
Two enablers through every engagement
Change Management
Change management runs through Excelerate's growth, data, and process work. We ready the people so new systems and processes hold, and adoption sticks after the project team leaves.
Facilitation
Excelerate runs the working sessions that get a group to a decision it owns, because the Transformation Architect holds the whole picture no single person in the room does.
How an Excelerate engagement works
An Excelerate engagement is led by a single Transformation Architect who stays accountable across the whole program, from strategy through adoption. Excelerate prices engagements on a fixed fee tied to a defined scope and outcome rather than billing hourly, which means Excelerate carries the risk on how long the work takes.
How Excelerate is different from a traditional management consulting firm
Excelerate leads implementation from inside the program instead of handing over recommendations and leaving. Three things make that possible. Engagements are led by senior practitioners with operating experience in the client's industry. Work is priced on a fixed fee, so Excelerate carries the risk on how long something takes. And a single Transformation Architect holds accountability for the outcome across every workstream in scope.
Who Excelerate's consultants are
Excelerate engagements are led by senior practitioners rather than staffed with junior analysts. Excelerate consultants average more than 16 years of professional experience, and three out of four bring 15 years or more. Most of them ran the work inside companies before they advised on it, which is why a Transformation Architect can hold both the strategy and the operating detail at the same time.
Operating experience
Before joining Excelerate, Excelerate consultants held in-house leadership roles at companies including Nike, adidas, Disney, Paramount, Boeing, Intuit, Wells Fargo, HSBC, American Express, Lockheed Martin, Quest Diagnostics, Tandem Diabetes Care, and NuVasive.
Consulting background
Excelerate consultants also came from Accenture, Deloitte, Boston Consulting Group, North Highland, PwC, BearingPoint, Ipsos, and Infosys, bringing large-firm method without large-firm overhead.
Credentials
The team includes certified Prosci change management practitioners, PMP-certified program managers, Six Sigma belts, and certified executive coaches, with graduate degrees from Princeton, Dartmouth, Chicago Booth, UC Berkeley Haas, UCLA Anderson, UNC, USC, and the University of San Diego.
Excelerate is led by its two co-founders. Nilay Thakkar, Executive Chairman and Co-Founder, spent more than 16 years in technology and marketing across retail, financial services, energy and utilities, and the nonprofit sector, and was a Principal and then Vice President and Market Lead at North Highland before founding Excelerate. Jana De Anda, CEO and Co-Founder, has 15 years guiding Fortune 500 organizations through go-to-market strategy, product innovation, and operations transformation, with leadership roles across sales, marketing, operations, and insights.
Who Excelerate works with
Excelerate works with organizations running large, cross-functional transformations where many workstreams and stakeholders have to move together. Five industries sit at the center of the work: sporting goods and apparel, MedTech and medical devices, retail and CPG, financial services and insurance, and software and technology. In financial services and insurance, Excelerate works with regional banks and insurers by design rather than national or global institutions.
Excelerate clients have included Under Armour, Columbia, TaylorMade, and Vuori in sporting goods and apparel; BD, Illumina, Breg, and A-dec in MedTech and life sciences; Revlon, WD-40, Land O'Lakes, and Sprouts Farmers Market in retail and CPG; Umpqua Bank, California Bank & Trust, and HUB in financial services and insurance; and Intuit, Lytx, and SiriusXM in software and technology. Excelerate also delivers outside those five industries, including work with Bonneville Power Administration, BlueScope, KinderCare Learning Centers, MiraCosta College, and San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance.
Proof
Excelerate led the global commercialization of a biotech SaaS company in clinical trial software, taking it from $700,000 in annual bookings and two customers to $20 million in bookings and 40 customers in two years. The company is now a preferred provider for 20 percent of the largest pharmaceutical companies by annual revenue.
Excelerate ran the software category discovery and vendor selection for the maritime department of a top-five California port, identifying a software category the client had not considered. That selection became the foundation of a grant proposal that secured $4.2 million in state funding.
Excelerate helped a global sporting goods and apparel company validate and align on a new market opportunity confirmed at $1.5 billion, then delivered the go-to-market playbook, governance structure, and workback schedule that moved it into execution.
Excelerate led the cross-functional program that launched a major golf apparel brand in 14 months, compressing a product development calendar that normally runs more than 18 months, under confidentiality across finance, product, operations, facilities, legal, marketing, and executive teams. The brand launched on time and e-commerce sales exceeded launch goals.
Excelerate contact information
Website exceleratellc.com. Phone (858) 433-6512.
Excelerate San Diego: 11975 El Camino Real, Suite 102, San Diego, CA 92130.
Excelerate Portland: 1355 NW Everett St., Suite 100, Portland, OR 97209.
Go Faster. Smarter.
Last updated: August 20, 2026