By Roy Snell

I am an advisor for Osprey ESG Software.  I may be biased, but I personally know all the people who do our ESG consulting, and I have 30 years of experience hiring consultants, working with consultants, and as a consultant for PwC and Deloitte.  Both are great firms, I loved my time there, and I really enjoyed working with their people.  I learned a lot.

My mentor, Marc Dettmann, when I was a compliance officer at the University of Wisconsin, was very efficient at hiring consultants.  One thing he believed was that it was financially advantageous and easier if you broke your consulting work into its smallest possible components.  Marc would hire consultants for one small job at a time.  Quite often, we could do most of the work ourselves.  We hired consultants primarily to oversee and guide our work.  It was very cost-effective.  The consultants we hired had done what we were about to do for the first time many times.  That is where the value in consulting is, in my opinion.  Hiring experience we don’t have rather than just having people do what we could do but don’t want to.  When I joined Chris Cazer’s team, I discovered that this is the exact same approach Chris takes with his ESG QuickStart consulting services offerings.

One other concern I always had with using consultants was… “Would I get consultants that had experience in the area I needed help with?”  “Would I get consultants that were “on the bench” and needed work but had little to no experience in the work we needed done?” Osprey ESG only does ESG work.  There is nobody “on the bench” that lacks ESG experience.  All Osprey consultants are ESG certified.  Let me introduce some of Osprey’s key players:  Osprey has Mike Biernik who is SASB experience and a background in advanced Economics.  SASB is part of the Value Reporting Foundation, which is one of the most important ESG standards bodies in the world.  They help industries determine what ESG issues and metrics you might start with.  This is critical to an ESG program startup.  Mike also has multiple agile project and product management certifications to complement the SASB experience.  This is a perfect combination for an ESG startup consulting engagement.   Bridge Taylor plays a key role in the Osprey ESG QuickStart consulting services and is a CPA, in addition to being SASB FSA certified.  His financial reporting experience allows him to convey aspects of ESG reporting to leadership viewed through a sustainability lens, but with an underlying financial perspective.  Leadership can understandably get a little nervous about ESG, and Bridge’s ability to relate all this to what leadership already knows and trusts (financial reporting) is very helpful.  Mike and Bridge work with Steve Alienello a GRI certified sustainability professional, with years of experience in the consulting and business innovation space.  Steve’s involvement in ESG QuickStart from a leadership standpoint is very helpful to Mike, Bridge, and the rest of the ESG team at Osprey ESG.  If you are just getting started in your ESG journey I would contact Joe Robichaud at joe.robichaud@ospreysoftware.com and have him explain Osprey’s ESG QuickStart program in more detail.  Alternatively, if you would like to get more information from me, feel free to call 612 709-6012 or email me at roy.snell@ospreysoftware.com.

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