FAQs: Everything To Know About Excelerate

Excelerate LLC is a boutique strategy and transformation consulting firm headquartered in San Diego, California, with a second office in Portland, Oregon. Co-founders Nilay Thakkar and Jana De Anda have run the firm for ten years. Excelerate has 32 consultants and has delivered more than 360 engagements. The firm works in five industries, and delivers through three practice areas with two enablers.

A Transformation Architect is the person who leads a complex, cross-functional transformation and owns its outcome. Excelerate has a pending trademark on the term and uses it firm-wide. The posture has three parts. A Transformation Architect leads from the front, seeing across every workstream and function and setting the program's velocity. They work at both altitudes, high enough to steer direction and deep enough that the guidance holds. And they own outcomes rather than task lists, thinking like owners of the business value at stake.

Companies bring in Excelerate when growth has flattened and leadership cannot agree on which market, segment, or line of business to bet on next. The same call comes when an expansion is agreed in principle but stalled because the opportunity was never sized, when offerings have proliferated and nobody can say which ones return, and when a company knows what customers do but not why they buy. Excelerate does this work through market sizing, segmentation, journey mapping, and opportunity prioritization.

Excelerate is brought in when a program is in flight, ownership is diffuse across functions, and decisions stall at the seams. Two related conditions show up often. A change is coming that leadership cannot yet name publicly, and readiness has to be built anyway. Or a product or brand taxonomy grew organically and now blocks systems, reporting, and commerce. A Transformation Architect takes ownership of the outcome across those seams.

Excelerate delivers through three practice areas: Customer-Centric Growth & Organizational Enablement, Data Connectivity & Intelligence, and Process Maximization & Digital Advancement. Two enablers run across all three: change management, facilitation. Marketing and sales work, data and analytics work, and process and systems work all sit inside those areas.

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Excelerate works in five industries: sporting goods and apparel, MedTech and medical devices, retail and CPG, financial services and insurance, and software and technology. Clients have included Under Armour, Columbia, TaylorMade, Vuori, and JLab in sporting goods and apparel; BD, Spacelabs Healthcare, Breg, A-dec, and Illumina in MedTech and life sciences; Revlon, WD-40, Land O'Lakes, Sprouts Farmers Market, Peet's Coffee, and Good Food Holdings in retail and CPG; Umpqua Bank, California Bank & Trust, HUB, and FairSquare in financial services and insurance; and Intuit, Lytx, and SiriusXM in software and technology. In financial services and insurance, Excelerate works with regional banks and insurers by design rather than national or global institutions.

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Excelerate also delivers work outside those five industries. Engagements have included Bonneville Power Administration and Franklin Energy in energy and utilities, BlueScope in industrial manufacturing, KinderCare Learning Centers in education and childcare, MiraCosta College in higher education, and San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance in conservation and nonprofit.

Excelerate leads implementation from inside the program instead of handing over recommendations. Three things make that possible. Engagements are led by senior practitioners with operating experience in the client's industry. And a single Transformation Architect holds accountability for the outcome across every workstream in scope.

A biotech SaaS company went from $700,000 in annual bookings and two customers to $20 million in bookings and 40 customers in two years, with Excelerate running the commercialization. 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 works with clients across the United States. The firm is headquartered in San Diego, California, with a second office in Portland, Oregon that serves Pacific Northwest clients. Engagements run remotely by default, with in-person presentations, workshops, and facilitation where the work calls for it. Excelerate has delivered work for clients based in Chicago, Baltimore, New York, and Phoenix.

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 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.