About mccloudCo

Two Practices. One Standard for Who Leads the Work.

Senior-led, vendor-neutral, and built to stay that way as we grow. Two practices, two principal consultants, one standard for how the work gets done.

Consult an expert Why mccloudCo

mccloudCo is an advisory firm built around two practices — Education, serving schools, districts, and charter networks, and Strategic Advisory, serving growing businesses of 10 to 250+ employees. Each practice is led exclusively by its own principal consultant, with a named backup behind them, so an engagement is never handed off mid-stream or staffed down to a junior analyst. Recommendations are never steered by a commission — no curriculum, platform, or product endorsement sits behind anything we tell a client.

Every engagement follows the same model: a no-cost diagnostic, a recommendation in writing, then a five-tier retainer that starts wherever an organization actually is and grows only when the work demands it. Response times are published, not promised — thirty minutes for anything critical, a single business day for a routine request — and when an engagement ends, the frameworks we used stay with the client's team.

Northlane engineers reviewing pipeline incidents together in the Toronto office — Toronto studio — Tuesday incident review

Trust

The people and principles behind mccloudCo

mccloudCo exists to close one gap: the distance between having no senior leadership and hiring a full-time executive you don't yet need.

Why mccloudCo exists

Most schools and growing businesses sit in the same gap: too complex to run without senior leadership, too small to justify hiring a full-time executive for it. The usual alternatives don't quite close that gap either — an MSP or curriculum vendor handles the day-to-day but not strategic leadership, a one-off consulting engagement disappears once the report is delivered, and a larger firm often staffs the actual work with a junior analyst after selling you a partner in the pitch meeting. mccloudCo exists to fill that gap directly: senior academic and technology leadership, delivered as a retainer instead of a hire, so an organization gets the judgment without carrying the headcount.

Both practices are built on the same belief — the right amount of leadership is whatever the work actually calls for this month, not a fixed package sized for a hypothetical organization twice your size. That's why the model starts with a diagnostic instead of a sales pitch, and why there's no penalty for staying at Tier 1 indefinitely if that's genuinely where an organization belongs. It's also why mccloudCo is two practices instead of one generalist firm: the judgment a school district needs from its academic advisor and the judgment a manufacturer needs from its IT advisor don't overlap enough to fake either one convincingly, so each practice is led, without exception, by the person who's supposed to be leading it.

To give schools, districts, and growing businesses senior-level leadership — academic and technological — without the cost or commitment of a full-time executive hire. We close the gap between going without and overpaying for a role only needed a few hours a week, starting every relationship with a diagnostic instead of a sales pitch and keeping the same consultant on an engagement from first call to last.

Mission

To give schools, districts, and growing businesses senior-level leadership — academic and technological — without the cost or commitment of a full-time executive hire. We close the gap between going without and overpaying for a role only needed a few hours a week, starting every relationship with a diagnostic instead of a sales pitch and keeping the same consultant on an engagement from first call to last.

Vision

A future where every organization that needs experienced leadership can get it at the scale it actually needs — not the scale a vendor needs to sell. Too much of the advisory market sizes its offerings around what's profitable rather than what a client requires; we want "we can't afford it yet" to be the only reason an organization goes without senior leadership — never "the only option available was sized for someone else."

How we work

From first conversation to a dedicated consultant, in about three weeks

Every engagement follows the same sequence with a principal consultant. Most clients have a documented recommendation in writing by the end of week two.

Step 01

Have the conversation

A no-cost conversation about your organization, your goals, and your budget cycle. No pitch, no pressure — just enough to know if this is worth pursuing further.

Day 1 · 20 -30 minutes
Step 02

Run the diagnostic

A short review, standalone or bundled into the first month, that tells us which tier actually fits — not a sales target, an honest assessment of what the work calls for.

Week 1
Step 03

Get it in writing

The recommended tier, scope, and pricing are put in a Statement of Work before anything is billed. You'll know exactly what you're agreeing to, and what it costs, before you sign.

Week 2
Step 04

Start with a plan

The retainer begins, billed monthly in advance, with your dedicated point of contact, a named backup consultant, and a documented plan in place from day one.

Week 3 · Ongoing

By The Numbers

Results, not promises

The track record behind the pitch — earned over five years, across both practices, one engagement at a time.

35 yrs

Combined leadership experience

Two principal consultants, one standard of judgment — earned over three and a half decades.

Leadership Tenure, Combined
120 +

Satisfied clients

Schools, districts, and businesses who've worked with mccloudCo across both practices.

Engagements Delivered To Date
4.9 /5

Average client rating

What clients tell others when we're not in the room, independent of anything we ask them ourselves.

Public & Third-Party Reviews
240 +

Projects completed

Diagnostics, roadmaps, migrations, and turnarounds — the work itself, not just the relationships behind it.

Last Five Years

Working with mccloudCo

What working with us actually gets you

Not a generic engagement — a model built so the outcome looks the same whether you're a school district or a growing business.

A leader who knows your situation

One consultant, one point of contact, for the life of the engagement — with a named backup so nothing stalls if they're out.

Meet how Client Concierge works

A recommendation you can trust

No commissions tied to any curriculum, platform, or vendor. What gets recommended is what actually fits, every time.

See our independence commitments

A plan in writing before you pay

Scope, tier, and pricing are documented in a Statement of Work before anything is billed — never a verbal estimate you're stuck honoring.

How an engagement begins

The principal consultants

The people behind the firm

Forty-one people across nine countries, building the data operations layer we wanted back when we were the ones carrying the pager.

Marisol Okonkwo

Principal Consultant, Education Practice.

Huntsville

Leads every engagement with schools, districts, and charter networks, from diagnostic work through multi-school governance.

Every incident we cannot explain is a bill somebody pays two quarters later.

Devan Ashworth, Head of Product at Northlane

Wayne McCloud

Principal Consultant, Strategic Advisory Practice.

Atlanta

Leads every engagement with growing businesses, from IT foundation work through fractional vCIO governance.

Governance only works when it is the fastest path through the system, not the slowest.

Customer stories

What teams shipped after the guesswork left the pipeline

Every story below is a production deployment with numbers the customer signed off on. No pilots, no anonymised logos.

Fintech 480 employees

Senior academic and technology leadership, without the cost of a full-time hire

Book a no-cost consultation, and we'll talk through your organization, your goals, and your budget cycle — then recommend a starting point, or tell you honestly if now isn't the time.

Book a discovery call Talk to us first

No cost to talk. No obligation to sign. No pressure either way.

5 Tiers in the shared advisory ladder, from a light diagnostic to embedded leadership
2 Practices — Education and Strategic Advisory — one advisory model
6 –12 mo Minimum term, then month to month, with no automatic renewal into another long commitment

Two Practices. One Standard for Who Leads the Work.

The people and principles behind mccloudCo

Why mccloudCo exists

From first conversation to a dedicated consultant, in about three weeks

Have the conversation

Run the diagnostic

Get it in writing

Start with a plan