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Our Team

Leamon Crooms, MBA - Chief Advisor & President

The seeds of Strategic Growth Advisors were planted over 10 years ago while I worked as a bank branch manager. During that time I had the opportunity to closely support the growth of many small to mid-sized businesses. Specifically, I would work with my clients to pro-actively integrate their banking needs with their plans for growth. I very often found myself working on business strategies, reviewing financial plans and suggesting productivity improvements. I believed that anything I could do to support the growth of my clients would in turn support the growth of the local community and ultimately my branch. Fortunately, that turned out to be true.

I soon realized that I was most passionate about directly contributing to the growth and success of my client’s companies. I devoted 2 of the next 10 years acquiring an MBA and learning how to help companies grow. The remaining 8 years I worked as a global management consultant with Ernst & Young, KPMG and Cap Gemini helping to grow some of the best companies in the world. Today, our team applies our knowledge and experience to growing small and mid-sized companies like yours. We believe that our work with small to mid-size companies helps build strong local communities.

I am a former board member of the University of Arizona, Eller MBA program, the Arizona State Parks Foundation and of the National Association of Youth Service Consultants. Currently, I serve on the board of trustees of St. Gregory College Preparatory School, and I am proud to be an active member of the Centurions. I hold a bachelors degree in English and a minor in Economics from the University of California at Davis. I received an MBA from the University of Arizona where I was the Centennial Award recipient as an outstanding graduate student, and honored as an outstanding MBA alumnus.

Lisa Ordóñez, Ph.D. - Managing Advisor & VP

I am a tenured Full Professor and the Levine faculty fellow, in the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona. I hold faculty positions in the departments of Management & Organizaitons, Marketing, and Psychology. My Ph.D. is in quantitative psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, and I hold a masters degree in marketing from the Haas Business School, University of California, Berkeley. Currently, I teach business statistics in the MBA program in addition to maintaining the role as Vice President of Strategic Growth Advisors, LLC.

As a decision scientist, I know that outcomes are very often related to the process used to decide among several options. Your choices may be to follow the pack, take the road less traveled or forge your own trail? More importantly, how do you decide among the 3 options?

If you don’t have a process that guides your decision making then you won’t be able to decide among options to develop the best strategy or tactical plan. I ensure that we apply analytical tools and quality research toward improving your decision making processes and getting better outcomes.

Vinay Kulkarni, MS, MBA - Senior Advisor

One of my earliest and most significant memories is my attempt to understand the system within which things work by literally taking apart my father’s watch. I wanted to understand how the inner workings connected and why a regular and consistent output was achieved. What I ended up learning about astronomy, relativity and physics from that exercise helped me to understand that everything that exists is connected within a larger system, and if you understand the system then the purpose of the smaller components will become clear.

Today, my background in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering combined with an MBA, enables me to apply this “Systems Thinking” perspective to solving business problems and creating solutions that work. I view companies as individual value generating systems that exist within a larger industry system. That perspective helps me design customized solutions that build value and help companies grow. Yes, I finally did get that watch back together and it keeps time just fine.