Harrison & Estes, LLC · Washington State
Organizational consulting, training, and research-grounded curriculum for mission-driven institutions that are ready to examine, not justify, what is happening inside them.
The founding ↓Scroll
The founding
I spent twenty-five years inside public education.
First as a classroom teacher. Then as a building principal.
From inside those institutions, I watched what happens to people when the gap between what an organization says it believes and how it actually operates is left unexamined.
I watched frontline staff carry critical information that never reached the people making decisions.
I watched the same behavior evaluated differently depending on who was being evaluated.
I watched capable, committed people leave careers they had given everything to, not because they failed, but because the structures around them did.
The problem was rarely the people. It was the systems they were operating inside.
Organizations that struggle are not usually led by people who do not care. They are led by people working inside systems that were never designed to produce the outcomes they say they want.
The gap between intention and outcome is not a values failure. It is a structural one.
Harrison & Estes exists to examine that structure. And to build a different one.
The methodology is called the Human Blueprint. It was developed from twenty-five years of direct observation inside institutions: watching what breaks, what holds, and what actually changes when an organization is willing to look at itself honestly.
About the work
Harrison & Estes was built to fix the structures that produce that failure. Every engagement returns to three commitments that distinguish an organization that keeps its word from one that doesn’t.
01
Every staff member knows what success looks like in their role in specific, observable terms. And they helped define it. Not vague. Not supervisor-opinion-based. Co-developed and consistently applied.
02
There is a real, working channel through which front-line input reaches decision-making. Four components: submission, acknowledgment, substantive response with reasoning, and a documented outcome. Remove any one and you have a suggestion box.
03
Mistakes are handled privately and specifically, never publicly, never vaguely. New systems come with grace periods. There is a written, documented distinction between a mistake and a fit concern, applied consistently across every person in the organization.
Services
Every engagement is delivered directly by Carla Estes. Not a junior consultant briefed on the methodology. The person who built the framework is the person who delivers it.
Workforce & Culture Alignment
A compressed three-week diagnostic for mission-driven organizations experiencing workforce and culture misalignment. Confidential interviews across all three organizational levels, written findings delivered directly to all staff, and a Priority Action Framework co-built with a representative cross-tier working group. Not a training. Not a survey. A structured diagnostic with a co-creation close.
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For new leaders who inherited a broken culture, organizations experiencing unexplained turnover, or mission-driven organizations whose internal treatment of staff does not match the values they publicly claim. Starting at $4,500.
Full Diagnostic Engagement
A three-phase organizational assessment: document review, tiered interviews, on-site observation, and a written Friction Inventory, followed by a structured rebuild and an eight-week calibration period with a live front-line voice channel.
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For organizations losing staff they want to keep, or where leadership and frontline describe the same institution in meaningfully different terms.
Rapid-Response
A compressed diagnostic for organizations in active crisis. Tiered interviews and a written Crisis-to-Clarity Report with a prioritized stabilization plan, delivered within ten business days.
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For organizations facing an active leadership crisis, staff exodus, or imminent board action who need expert assessment quickly.
Organizational Equity
A research-grounded consultation on how organizations identify, interpret, and respond to behavior differently based on race, and how to redesign the systems that produce those outcomes. Four sessions: The Evidence, The Lens, The Body, and The System, closing with a co-built Decision Framework. Not a diversity training. A structural intervention.
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For K-12 districts, charter networks, youth-serving nonprofits, and mission-driven organizations where documented disparities in evaluation, discipline, or referral require a structural response. Three formats available.
Leadership Training
A full-day working session for Tier 1 and Tier 2 leaders. Participants leave with a Clarity document, a Voice channel design, and a Dignity protocol, plus a bias-in-metrics analysis applied to their own evaluation instruments.
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For leadership teams in education, behavioral health, and nonprofit human services. Maximum 20 participants.
Staff Workshops
Half-day sessions for front-line staff. Introduction covers what Clarity, Voice, and Dignity mean for daily work. Reinforcement covers what leadership committed to and how to use the voice channel.
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For front-line staff at any stage of an H&E engagement. No participant cap.
Keynote & Speaking
The Organizational Cost of Silencing the Front Line / Building Institutions That Keep Their Word / When Your Culture Is the Crisis: What Mission-Driven Organizations Get Wrong About Staff Retention / ThrivePoint Academy: What Happens When You Build the Values In from Day One / Before the Pipeline: The Decisions That Happen Before the Referral.
For conference keynotes, board retreats, and professional development days. Available in 45, 60, or 75-minute formats.
The research
Every claim H&E makes is traceable to a primary peer-reviewed source. The evidence below reflects what organizations that claim equity-driven values actually produce for the people inside them. The research library is fully cited, with DOIs and access links, and is available to any client who requests it.
21%
of Black men report being evaluated on different criteria than their peers, compared to 3% of white men. Performance evaluation bias is documented, replicated, and structural.
Coqual, Equity at Work (2021) | McCluney et al., Cornell ILR (2021)
54
Black women are promoted for every 100 men promoted to manager. In 2024, that figure regressed to 2020 levels. A decade of stated corporate commitments to equity, undone.
McKinsey & Company / LeanIn.Org, Women in the Workplace 2024 (281 organizations, 10M+ employees)
7%
of C-suite positions are held by women of color, despite women overall reaching 29% of senior leadership. The racial gap at the top is as wide as the gender gap was a decade ago.
McKinsey & Company / LeanIn.Org, Women in the Workplace 2024
57¢
Latinas working full-time earn approximately 57 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men. Over a 40-year career, that gap totals more than $1.2 million in lost wages.
National Women’s Law Center (2024) | U.S. Census Bureau / Bureau of Labor Statistics (2023)
7 words
Hiring managers assess a candidate’s socioeconomic class after hearing as few as 7 words of speech, and rate higher-class candidates as more competent, recommending higher starting salaries and signing bonuses.
Kraus et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2019) | Yale School of Management
H&E maintains two research libraries: one for workplace equity and one for K–12 education. Both are fully cited with primary sources and DOIs. Available upon request to any client or conference host.
Principal, Harrison & Estes, LLC
Founder & Director, ThrivePoint Academy LLC
Instructor, School of Education, Seattle Pacific University
Director, EmpowerCare Foundation (501c3)
Carla Estes
Principal Architect, Harrison & Estes, LLC
Carla Estes spent twenty-five years inside public education, as a classroom teacher and as a building principal. She watched, from the inside, what institutional dysfunction costs the people who can least absorb it. She watched the pipeline operate. And she decided to build something that caught people before it reached them.
She is the founder of ThrivePoint Academy, a private vocational day academy in University Place, Washington, currently in development. ThrivePoint is designed to serve young adults with mild to moderate intellectual and developmental disabilities, traumatic brain injuries, autism spectrum profiles, and other neurodivergent presentations; populations that traditional vocational and transition programs have consistently underserved. The operational framework is built. The program is coming. To learn more or add your name to the interest list, contact engagement@thrivepoint.academy.
The Human Blueprint methodology at the center of every H&E engagement was not built in a research lab. It was built from decades of direct observation inside institutions: watching what structural failures cost the people least positioned to absorb them, and what it actually takes to fix them at the root.
Every H&E engagement is delivered directly by Carla Estes. No subcontracting. No junior associates. You work with the person who built the framework and the institution that proves it works.
Before you contact us
Read this before reaching out. If your answer to any single question is No, Harrison & Estes is not the right consulting firm for this engagement at this time.
Does leadership have the authority to implement changes based on the findings?
Not the authority to authorize a study. The authority to change evaluation criteria, personnel policies, and feedback mechanisms, and the will to use it.
Is leadership genuinely open to findings that may contradict the organization’s current understanding of itself?
Open specifically to the possibility that what leadership believes is true may not be what the evidence shows.
Is this engagement intended to improve organizational function, not to build a case against a specific individual?
H&E does not perform assessments designed to justify a predetermined personnel conclusion.
Will frontline staff participation be genuinely protected?
Leadership will not attempt to identify which individuals participated or what was said. This is a non-negotiable condition of every engagement.
Has the full leadership team, not just the champion who initiated contact, agreed to participate?
One leader wanting this and others tolerating it is not sufficient for a diagnostic engagement.
Is there board or executive authorization for this investment?
Authorization from someone with budget authority and the ability to commit to the engagement.
If the findings reveal that part of the problem is at the leadership level, is leadership prepared to hear that and act on it?
Every diagnostic engagement finds something in the leadership structure. The question is whether leadership will receive that finding or defend against it.
Is this organization in a position to implement the recommendations it receives?
Receiving a diagnostic with no capacity to implement is not a productive use of either party’s resources.
Contact
Harrison & Estes is currently accepting new engagements. The conversation begins with a 30-minute call to determine whether this is the right fit. There is no charge for the initial call.
Before reaching out, please review the Client Readiness Checklist above. The initial call is 30 minutes. We will discuss the organization’s current situation and whether the conditions exist for a productive engagement.
All engagements require a signed Services Agreement and deposit before scheduling. A complete Services and Investment Guide is available upon request.