Trepwise is a strategy consulting firm focused on unlocking the potential of purpose-driven organizations by aligning people, processes, and vision. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Trepwise founder and CEO Kevin Wilkins to learn more about the company.
Kevin Wilkins’ Background
Wilkins began with a wide-ranging corporate career, starting in brand management at Procter & Gamble (P&G), studying at Harvard Business School, and working for 20 years at both Fidelity Investments and as the managing director of State Street Research & Management. He explained, “In 2010, my family and I relocated to New Orleans, pivoting to a new direction in my professional life. I left large corporate environments behind to work directly with small business owners and nonprofits—or, as I call them, the backbone of the New Orleans ecosystem—which, in turn, transformed my own definition of work and purpose.”
Formation of Trepwise
Wilkins shared how Trepwise developed: “There were a significant number of nonprofits that emerged during post-Katrina rebuilding in the early 2010s, and many were trying to figure out their role and how they could sustain into the future and gain real community trust and buy-in. Trepwise was founded to work with these organizations, and for the past decade, we have been on a journey with them to determine how New Orleans can be the best place to live, work and visit. Trepwise will always be based in New Orleans, but our firm has expanded to have a national footprint, supporting purpose-driven organizations of all sizes and locations to unlock their potential.”
Favorite Memory
Wilkins reflected: “My most recent favorite memory is from November of last year. I found myself in the parlor of the Governor’s Mansion in Baton Rouge with the Governor and First Lady of Louisiana and more than 100 statewide child welfare leaders lauding my colleagues Palmer and Jacqueline for their impactful research and discovery work that identified the systemic challenges affecting our state’s children! It was a ‘pinch me’ moment. Trepwise was chosen to partner with Louisiana’s Bureau of Family Health to lead the creation of the Whole Health Louisiana Plan to prevent and heal childhood adversity and trauma.
“We spent the day co-creating a vision for the plan, gaining alignment and buy-in with agency and organizational leaders, and laying out the needs for an inclusive and human-centered planning process. This memory is particularly touching because I had seen my colleagues grow and stretch in their roles within our company and here they were gaining the trust and partnership of the Governor and First Lady. It felt impactful and inspiring. And now, one year later, we are putting the final touches on this plan that will impact the lives of children across our state and serve as a model for other communities.”
Core Products and Features
Wilkins explained: “When I built this firm, I did so with the mindset of creating a company where our team members would genuinely enjoy coming to work—because of their daily tasks and responsibilities, of course, but more importantly, because of their relationships with each other and our firm’s impact on the communities we serve. So, when I think of our firm’s core features, I don’t just consider that we are a team of incredibly smart and dedicated people who deliver outstanding results. I also believe that we have a one-of-a-kind culture where people genuinely care about each other and are deeply committed to living our values on a daily basis. At a team-building event a few years ago, a team member coined an aspirational vision for how we should operate at Trepwise: ‘Work shouldn’t suck.’
“At the time, it sounded tongue-in-cheek and a bit crude, but, in fact, it summed up my own aspiration to a tee. I never aspired to create a top consulting firm. I aspired to create a firm with the best possible culture and the biggest possible impact—and on that level, I feel like we have succeeded in ways I could not have imagined in 2013. We were named THE best small business to work for in New Orleans by our local business journal and have reached tens of thousands of people nationally—our clients, their constituents, and their stakeholders—through our work. Yes, we do organizational planning, systems coordination, and facilitation, but more importantly, we are a collection of smart, kind, and thoughtful PEOPLE doing work to improve other PEOPLE’s lives. I’m confident that this human-centered mindset is the secret to our success.”
Challenges Faced
Wilkins acknowledged: “The pandemic and post-pandemic periods have been a rollercoaster ride for society. We’ve experienced and rolled with this uncertainty from the early days of 2020 onward. The inflationary environment of the past two years has posed both challenges and opportunities for consulting firms. News of layoffs and hiring freezes by large consulting firms has been a cautionary tale, but 2023 was actually our best year ever.
“Aside from all the effort we’ve put into building our brand and reputation, my assumption is that we are succeeding, in part, because we are a boutique firm with less overhead and, as a result, we can effectively compete on price while still delivering world-class results. Nonetheless, we are seeing a lot of competition for every opportunity we encounter, with clients negotiating on price and pursuits taking longer to close. This reality is forcing us to innovate constantly in our business development, which will only serve to make us stronger in the long run.”
Significant Milestones
Wilkins cited several significant milestones for Trepwise:
Number of Strategic Plans Completed: 100+
Number of Orgs Served: 500+
1.) Launching Their Philanthropic Platform: Through “Trepwork for Good,” Trepwise harnesses their resources—financial, social, and intellectual—in service to their community so they can promote greater economic and social inclusion across the city of New Orleans. They have provided more than 1,600 hours of pro bono consulting services and donated more than $150,000 to philanthropic causes.
2.) Leading the Hybrid Consulting Model: Trepwise has adopted a number of digital facilitation and productivity tools, including the collaborative application Miro, through which they have become expert virtual meeting facilitators.
3.) Defining and Striving for the Ideal Workplace: The Trepwise team believes that work shouldn’t suck. To that end, work-life balance is essential. They are experimenting with a 4-day workweek model to allow their teammates to pursue their interests and have time to rejuvenate. They also have unlimited PTO, allowing team members to take the time off that they need to be as effective as possible in their roles.
4.) Awards and Recognitions: Trepwise was named one of the “Best Places to Work” in New Orleans by New Orleans CityBusiness for the last seven years—and they were chosen as “THE Best Place to Work” in 2018 and 2021. Wilkins has received a number of personal awards as well, including the Youth Leaders Council “Role Model of the Year” in 2019, “Louisianian of the Year” for Business in 2021, and most recently, he was named one of the Top 20 Most Dynamic Business Leaders by Corporate Magazine.
Customer Success Stories
Wilkins highlighted a number of customer success stories: “We help our clients unlock their potential through three primary strategies: organizational planning, systems coordination and facilitated Solutions Lab experiences. We’ve had exciting successes with many clients in each of these areas.
Organizational Planning
Our Goal: We build transformational plans.
We’ve built transformational plans for large nonprofits such as United Way SELA, Catholic Charities, Liberty’s Kitchen, Greater New Orleans Foundation, Jewish Federation and YouthForce NOLA, as well as for diverse foundations such as The Jazz & Heritage Festival and Foundation, Team Gleason, Chris Long, Jim Joseph Foundation, Southern Education Foundation and the Greater New Orleans Foundation.
Systems Coordination
Our Goal: We build systems to strengthen the community.
- We led the planning and implementation of the New Orleans Youth Master Plan to create a more healthy, equitable and safe New Orleans for youth and families.
- We spearheaded planning for a food insecurity task force that included the City of New Orleans, the Greater New Orleans Foundation, and more than 20 local community stakeholders. This effort resulted in a successful FEMA application securing more than $18M per month to support local restaurants and feed hungry New Orleanians.
- We’re currently working with the seven Cultural Districts in Houston, Texas, to elevate the visibility of arts and culture in the 4th largest city in America.
- We’re building new systems to address health needs through a trauma-informed health plan for the Louisiana Department of Health.
Solutions Lab
Our Goal: We solve the sticky challenges that organizations and institutions are facing.
- We worked with Tulane University to unpack some of the challenges students were facing on campus in relation to mental health. We led a collaborative research and design project to further a vision of a university where health is embedded into all aspects of campus culture—the administration, operations and academic procedures. The result was a pilot design for Wave of Support, a holistic framework being piloted across the university.
- We worked with the New Orleans Convention Center to understand what barriers stood in the way of a large institution developing a great workplace culture where new ideas are celebrated. We worked with staff to co-create an Innovation Lab that would break down silos across the organization and develop a culture where employee contributions are encouraged and celebrated.”
Funding
When asked about the company’s funding, Wilkins revealed: “Trepwise has been a self-funded firm and was profitable within its first year of operation. We have pursued a sustainable growth model, constantly investing in ourselves in order to be the best at what we do. In terms of the future, New Orleans is facing and developing solutions for issues that other cities are going to be spending the next decade working on. These issues include climate resilience, workforce and community development in a multiracial city, preservation of arts and cultural assets in the face of gentrification and tourism, and supporting youth and their families as they come of age in a very different society and economy than that of their parents.
“The work we have done in New Orleans and the lessons we have learned from the changemakers and community leaders here in the region have been key for us in solving similar challenges in other places. Our work with youth brought us to Chicago; our work in the cultural economy brought us to Houston and Boston; our work with foundations brought us to Chicago, Atlanta, and San Francisco; our faith-based work brought us to DC, San Francisco, Boston, and NYC.”
Total Addressable Market
Wilkins assessed: “The TAM for our target audience is extensive. We are looking to service mid- to larger-sized nonprofits seeking to maximize their impact via organizational effectiveness work and longer-term strategic planning work. We also want to work with larger community foundations that focus on systems work within their regions. Finally, we target larger national foundations that work within our core sectors—youth development, workforce development, faith-based spaces, the cultural economy, and trauma-informed care and mental health support—that are looking to transform or reimagine systems.”
Differentiation from the Competition
Wilkins affirmed: “We are the company that starts with the people, whereas the competition often starts with the numbers. We ask to see the organizational structure first before we look at the finances—because it often tells the most accurate story. Who are the stakeholders, how does the organization organize itself, how is it governed, who reports to whom, who is in the C-suite, who interacts with the external stakeholders, and so on?
“You see, organizations are always in motion—they move forward, backward or sideways—and that motion is driven by the people. So we embrace a human-centered approach: We put people first. We listen with empathy to all the stakeholder groups. We learn what is working and where the opportunities are. We seek to understand why the organization is moving in the direction it’s moving in, and we assess what needs to change in order to move in the desired direction—either to accelerate the motion or to change it.
“We are the firm that aligns people around a vision and brings real clarity to their purpose. Then we build a measurable strategic plan. Finances are important—we do not minimize that, and we will assess the finances as well—but the numbers will only tell you so much. At the end of the day, it is always about the people.”
Future Company Goals
Wilkins pointed out: “Moving forward, we are continuing to build out our work in Systems Coordination, the challenging and rewarding work of structuring forums and facilitating connections between nonprofit and public sector actors to build alignment around how the systems that shape our communities—the criminal/legal system, the cultural economy, the network of services and support that surround youth and families—could and should operate differently to actually put people at the center and be much more impactful.
“Meanwhile, I am in the process of writing a book about our experiences, and we are expanding our footprint to serve and learn from additional nonprofits and changemakers across the country. We continue to strive to put people at the center while building thriving and equitable communities.”
Additional Thoughts
Wilkins concluded: “We are experts on human-centered design. With everything we do, we put people at the center because it leads to better outcomes. We engage in planning and create organizational strategies that put team members and key constituents in the driver’s seat. We identify and challenge old patterns and mental models that get in the way of building organizations that are agile so people can do their best work.
“We grow mission-driven organizations by starting with vision and organizational culture. We harness a collective passion for organizational purpose by building shared values and practices and aligning organizations to live up to their values. We build adaptive organizational cultures that tap into the strengths of individual team members, meet employees where they are (hybrid), and allow organizations to pursue a roadmap for impact, regardless of what challenges come their way.
“We address social issues, which requires a grounding in broader societal changes and patterns. We zoom out from the specific problems organizations are working to solve in order to see how they are connected to broader structural barriers and opportunities. We look for opportunities to construct a roadmap that involves building coalitions, empowering participants to advocate, and incorporating purpose-driven approaches into each organization’s work.
“We acknowledge organizations as living systems that are constantly evolving and ripe for transformation. Whatever change an organization is seeking requires this thinking, whether it is within a single organization or across an entire field. We engage in a flexible approach to planning that acknowledges personal and organizational evolution—and we build a plan that is dynamic enough to manage it.”
