Whatever the engagement, the approach is consistent: understand the organization from the inside, resolve the urgent issues, and leave behind coherent systems your team runs on its own.
Paragon builds the HR infrastructure your organization runs on: a system, not a stack of documents. Handbooks, policies, and day-to-day compliance are designed to be internally consistent, to reflect current best practice, and to support the goals you've set. Paragon builds these structures with your team, so what's written down matches how the organization actually operates. When a sensitive personnel matter arises, Paragon manages the response with discretion, then turns what it revealed into stronger systems.
Compensation frameworks, performance evaluation systems and career ladders, built to fit your organization rather than adapted from a template. Paragon works from the inside, understanding how the organization actually works before designing anything bespoke, then documents each system so managers can run it without a consultant in the room. The result is a set of tools your team uses every cycle. Labor relations strategy can be part of this work: Sarah brings deep experience in collective bargaining, negotiation, and contract interpretation.
Strategic advisory for executives facing consequential decisions: how to structure the organization, how to organize a portfolio of work, where accountability should sit, whether to launch a new initiative and at what scale. Paragon takes a hard question or a promising idea and does the work behind it: the analysis, the stakeholder and policy landscape, the options with their tradeoffs, and a clear recommendation the leader can act on. Where the answer calls for new structures, Paragon designs them: organizational structure, governance, and decision rights; partnership and growth strategy; product and market positioning; and the plan that carries the work forward and achieves results.
Sarah has spent much of her career inside education: senior leadership at Denver Public Schools, growing Guild Education's academic partner network from six institutions to nearly 100, and advising districts, colleges, and education companies since. Paragon's services are industry agnostic, but clients in K-12, higher education, edtech, and the funder ecosystem get a partner who already knows the terrain.
Any of the services above can be delivered under any of these structures.
Defined scope, clear deliverables, and an established timeline for discrete bodies of work.
A deep engagement with strategic advisory and execution support, or a fixed share of senior capacity on an ongoing basis.
Leadership embedded with your team, covering a departure, leave or transition on an interim basis.
“When our organization faced a period of change, Sarah stepped in as interim head of finance, operations and HR. She got up to speed incredibly quickly, integrated with our team seamlessly, and brought the stability we needed. She didn't just hold things together — she helped us improve a number of processes and moved a lot of work across the finish line during her 5-month engagement. She also helped us determine the skills we needed for the new role, built out a hiring process, and successfully onboarded our new employee, setting him up for long-term success. I will definitely bring her in again when a need arises.”
CEO, Great MN Schools
