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| © 2006-2010. Sigrid Caroline Schroder. All rights reserved.  Sigrid Caroline Schroder, JD I know what wakes you up at night. Or should... Whether progressing healthily or confronting crisis, you need realistic, straightforward assessment. I help you assess your success and face difficult realities. I identify the facts and weight, weigh and balance the important factors to derive the best solutions for your clearest path to real, sustainable success. CAROLINE Who You Meet Is Who You Get. Unlike other advisors, I don't slide you off on staff or a network. Who you meet is who you get. Your business is personal to you. Your advisor has to get personally involved in your business. I share years of insights into the workings of senior level decision-makers regarding business strategies, personal hiring considerations, problem solving, and positioning both business and self in the changing markets. I can read a situation for the hidden messages and advise on business style and aesthetics, goal development, and direction. What Exactly Do I Do? Crisis Management is not massaging crisis into palatable form through PR and manipulation. Crisis has a lifecycle which actually looks more like a sine wave. Facts and factors build and create an environment. Decisions are taken in the beginning which lead to natural consequences and other decisions. The atmosphere of known or neglected or misunderstood risk grows until the crisis erupts: the bank fails, the CDO's implode or the well blows. The existing crisis is managed, or not, with varying success in responses, solutions, panic and loss. Eventually the crisis eases and even ends, but the new cycle to the next crisis begins. The more complex the organization and its environment, large or small, the more likely there are to be parasitic waves due to localized, individualized and very personal effects.
I analyze and advise on business models, business plans, investor presentations, marketing, branding, strategic alliances, operations, crises, sales and acquisitions, and investor acquisition screens. I guide managers and entrepreneurs through dilemmas. I also turnaround organizations and shape alignments. I develop models, organizational structure and function, and competitive product and market analyses. I strategize the development, protection and defense of your ideas, innovation, invention, trade secrets and IP. I help you drive your governance. I help you originate acquisitions and contemplate sale. Tell me the area in which you need help; we will resolve it at depth. BACKGROUND  WHY SULGRAVE?
Sulgrave was the ancestral home of George Washington, arguably the original CEO, who built the foundations not only of a country and a Presidency but the executive branch and the U.S. military forces. He changed the future of the world. His detractors say he was lucky. Luck plays a role in all greatness: it was luck, back then, to survive infancy and childhood alone, as Washington quite nearly did not. There were undoubtedly other strokes of luck, connections, and timing such as those which play a role in establishing all great people, deeds and entities of governance and business. Courage, perseverance against the odds all played a role as they do every several generations. Beyond his role in leadership of a rebel colony and establishment of a new world order which was nothing less than rationally utopian, Washington developed and continued various businesses, trying new methods, developing others, working the hand which he was dealt in a rigorous environment. All this he did largely self-taught and halfway tutored, deprived of the university education of a Jefferson (William & Mary) or an Adams (Harvard). He was forceful, determined, introspective and committed. Somehow he balanced demands of business, family, war and government and left a complex legacy. The legacy has its roots in the Northamptonshire wool trader's manor farm from which Washington's great grandfather, ironically a Royalist, fled the English Civil Wars. Where is the original Sulgrave? Northamptonshire, close to Banbury in Oxfordshire, off the M1 and the M40 north of London. Virtual Visit Look for the Washington coat of arms, three red stars and two red bars on a white field, in the windows. Coat of Arms and History Image Above After © Robert Pernell.iStockPhoto  WHY THE HORSE MOTIF?
George Washington lived and died by his horse. What could be a better metaphor for business than riding? You cannot succeed unless your business succeeds just as a rider cannot succeed without the horse. Riding like business entails risk. When you ride, you may always fall--or worse. If you overthink the risks, you will never ride. If you ignore the risks, you could die. You have to know where you are going as well as where you have been. Before you turn, you have to look to where you want to go, or you will never get there. Or your horse will not get there with you. You have to be aware of everything around you as everything around you is in constant change, raising new and sudden risks without warning. The surface changes, the ground is soft, the grass gives way to dirt and the embankment gives way beneath the horse's hooves. The wind changes, the branches rustle, a paper blows across your path and spooks your horse. Other horses, other riders, a drifting paper, a sudden noise change the horse's equilibrium in an instant. You have constantly recalibrate. The ride changes and you have to rebalance instantly and keep your horse beneath you. Just as you have to stay with your business, you have to stay with your horse, and be not ahead, not behind, and definitely not going left while the horse is going right. Business is a race. Image © Robert Pernell.iStockPhoto
Image©LiseGagne.iStockPhoto
SIGRID CAROLINE SCHRODER
Founder of Sulgrave Strategies LLC, Caroline has a hands-on business background in technology, design, energy technology, energy, and the environment. She has worked with entrepreneurs, developing companies, and private equity investors, guiding strategies, development, and problem resolution. She has worked withprivate equity firms in New York, London and Texas while also rising her sons. Her legal background includes board leadership, governance, intellectual property law and business law. She has helped clients draft and negotiate contracts, assess real estate and prevent and resolve employment issues. Also educated as an earth scientist, her interests include economic geology and environmental assessment. On a personal level, she is fascinated with the interfaces between a company and its technology, its employees, and its customers. With a cross-disciplinary background, she can solve the challenges business leaders face in understanding another silo's technical jargon and process. Particularly attuned to the dysfunctional communications which result when business leaders are overwhelmed by technical information and decision-making, she helps clients organize, clarify, and prioritize information and actions. She partners with clients to craft successful long-term business strategies amid the dynamic uncertainties of global regulatory, technological, cultural, and economic environments. She helps you get where you want to go. Caroline and her family live in northern Virginia. Specialties Her tactical and strategic guidance includes competitive analysis, secure brand development, intellectual property capture and strategy, risk assessment, environmental assessment and real property assessment and strategy, substantive governance analysis, executive employment and personnel guidance. She'll also help you think through your contracts. With a number of foreign expatriate clients, she has an additional feel for the cultural differences and business challenges these leaders encounter in the U.S.. E-mail: Caroline @ Sulgrave LLC.com (877) 462-4035
BIOGRAPHY: Marquis Who's Who: Who's Who in America Who's Who in the World Who's Who in American Law Who's Who Among American Women Sulgrave Resources & Research LLC, Founder, 2001 Houston, Texas 2001-2006; Mercer Island, WA, 2006-2008 Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area, 2008-Present. Publications include: Article: Small Ponds Aren't For Everyone, Harvard Business Review, April 2006, Vol. 84, No.4, pp, 24-26. Letter to the Editor: Intellectual Property Rights Dangers of "Collaboration Rules," Evans and Wolf, July-August 2005. Bar Admissions: District of Columbia; Texas.
Member, College State Bar of Texas
Member: DC Bar Association American Bar Association, Alternative Dispute Resolution Section
Community Development Guidance: UT-HSC Biotechnology Incubator (Research Park) Houston Technology Center Cornerstone Sponsor Texas A & M Institute of Biosciences & Technology Past Boards: Dallas Chamber Orchestra (Secy, Chair, Legal Comm.) Allegro Dallas (Society for the Performing Arts(SPA))
Columbia University Alumni of South Texas (Houston), Founding Presiden
Various civic, alumni, business groups. Private Law Practice: Dallas, Texas 1988-1990 Houston, Texas 1990-2007 Law Offices, Schroder Law Firm, PLLC Intellectual Property, Trade Secrets, Governance, Employment, Noncompetition & Executive Immigration (E, L, Citizenship) Real Estate and Environmental Risk.
Columbia University, Barnard College, N.Y., B.A. Honors in Geology, Distinction in Senior Paper, Climatological Study of Lake Chad S.M.U. (Dedman) School of Law, Dallas, J.D. Alan R. Bromberg/Jenkins Gilchrist Securities Award Marymount School, Tarrytown, N.Y. Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. (CAS) HISTORY Caroline was practicing law in Houston when she founded Sulgrave Resources to identify technology for commercialization and distressed power assets for acquisition by European and U.S. investor groups. In doing so, she also met companies and their chief leaders, directors and founders who asked her for strategic and tactical guidance for transactions, business development, equity capital and employment problems. While still practicing law, she gradually moved her business in this new direction. Caroline is now based in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. Licensed in both District of Columbia and Texas, she is a member of the D.C. Bar, the College of the State Bar of Texas, and the American Bar Association. She has served on several major nonprofit boards and has been dedicated in giving back to her communities through development and strategic guidance of biotechnology and technology incubators and various civic efforts.
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