
Cicero Strategic Consulting
Fix What’s Hard, Modernize What’s Old, and Move Your Business Forward
Your business has friction you've learned to live with and systems you've outgrown. We fix the first, replace the second, and make sure it's all built to scale.
Cicero Strategic Consulting
Operational excellence is achieved when people, processes, and technology work in concert. We take a fresh look at all aspects of your operations, identify gaps and redundancies, and implement high value changes to bring these elements into alignment.
Services
Operational Assessment
Process Design & Documentation
Systems Launch, Integration & Automation
AI Readiness Assessment & Adoption Roadmap
Technical Debt Remediation
Execution & Handover

Our AI framework breaks down how to understand AI adoption, how to modernize your business today, and how to prepare your business for tomorrow.
AI Readiness Checklist
Processes Documented
Systems Codified
Data Standardized
AI Tasks Defined
Change Management Established

User Stories
Over time processes pile up and business operators lose sight of the "why" behind each task. We reset your processes, automate tedious, low-value tasks, and put your people in the correct places to maximize their skills. Operational excellence frees up leaders to focus on decision making and empowers employees to act with clarity and intent.
When the CEO is the System
Marcus had built a thriving multi-entity financial services firm on the strength of his relationships and his ability to recruit the right people. The problem was that his entire recruitment process lived in his head, on handwritten notes, and in an inbox that could absorb hundreds of recruiter emails in a matter of days. No CRM. No digital record of candidate conversations. When things got busy, strong prospects slipped through the cracks. A recently hired banker working remotely had been onboarded into a system that didn't exist. Marcus had no way to know if he was on track without picking up the phone.
He wasn't missing processes. He was the process.
CSC mapped the full recruitment workflow end-to-end and built a real system around it. An existing CRM the firm had never configured became the foundation. Recruiter email triage was automated, pipeline stages were structured, and time-sensitive reviews got automated alerts. The whole system was built to be handed off — so the next hire could step in and run it from day one.
Marcus got out of the inbox and back to running the business. Candidates stopped falling through the cracks. And a recruitment engine that had been a single point of failure became infrastructure the firm could actually scale on.
From Bottleneck to Breakthrough
Jordan built a thriving entertainment company — booked weekends, a growing sales team, and a full AV rental operation. But as VP of Sales, he was also still DJing the weddings he sold, manually matching equipment to events from a patchwork of spreadsheets, and fielding every client inquiry himself. The business was growing. Jordan was the ceiling.
CSC mapped the company's processes end-to-end, giving leadership visibility they'd never had. Two priorities surfaced immediately: client intake and inventory coordination. We automated both — building a direct integration between the sales process and service delivery so that every signed contract automatically logged and checked required AV equipment against availability.
The result: Jordan got his time back. Less time coordinating logistics meant more time selling, more time pursuing higher-value clients, and a pipeline the business had never had capacity to build before. Inventory utilization improved, margins followed, and the company finally had a leader — not just an operator — running point on growth.
About Us
Cicero Strategic Consulting was founded by two operators who kept seeing the same problem: leaders with a clear vision and not enough operational capacity to execute it. Our clients aren’t looking for a report — they’re looking for someone to get in the weeds with them and make things happen. That’s what we do. We embed, execute, and leave things better than we found them.As two former management consultants and internal operators, we saw too many leaders bogged down by process to the point where they couldn’t lead. We also made (and continue to make) careers out of freeing them up to lead.
Richard Kugblenu
Richard is a senior operations executive with a decade of experience building the organizational infrastructure that lets leadership teams lead. Most recently, he served as VP of Business Operations at CommonLit — a high-growth edtech SaaS company — where he built the finance, HR, governance, and risk functions from the ground up. During his tenure, he launched the company’s first compensation program, developed an enterprise risk framework, and cut board meeting absences by 85% and accelerated key board decisions by a full quarter.Prior to CommonLit, Richard served as Director of Operations & Communications at Chemonics International, functioning as Chief of Staff to the EVP overseeing a $500M+ business segment with 3,200 staff in 70 countries. He also provided strategic advisory and IT project management support to Treasury Department leadership at Booz Allen Hamilton. Richard holds a PMP certification and an Executive MBA at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School.

Daniel DeMarco
Daniel is a senior data architect leader with 10+ years of experience translating complex operational problems into scalable data and systems solutions. Most recently as Sr. Manager of Data Solutions at YMCA Retirement Fund, he led an org-wide data transformation — unifying disparate systems into an automation-driven architecture, overhauling a reporting environment of 250+ reports, and building out a full data warehouse from the ground up. His focus has been eliminating manual work, surfacing the right information, and building sustainable systems.Before that, Daniel led data and analytics engagements at Avanade — a Microsoft and Accenture joint venture — where he modernized outdated business processes for enterprise clients. He started his career at Deloitte, focused on technical design, agile adoption, and change management. Daniel holds seven Microsoft certifications spanning Azure, Power BI, and SQL, and a BS in Business Analytics and Information Technology from Rutgers University.

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