Who we are
THRIVE Strategy Partners is a Philadelphia-based consulting practice built on a simple but powerful premise: when people feel they belong, organizations perform.
We work with nonprofits, educational institutions, and mission-driven organizations to build the internal conditions that make belonging, retention, and high performance possible — not as a standalone initiative, but as the foundation of how the organization operates every day.
Across more than 50 combined years of experience in higher education, nonprofit management, corporate environments, and professional associations, our team has sat at every seat at the table. We have built programs from scratch, turned around disengaged teams, navigated culture through merger and transition, and helped leaders at every level understand that culture is not a symptom of strategy — culture is the strategy.
The organizations that will win the next decade are not the ones with the best programs. They are the ones with cultures strong enough to keep their best people — and honest enough to make them want to stay.
RAQUEL M. ARREDONDO
Founder & CEO
MICHELLE JORDAN
Senior Consultant
Raquel is the founder and CEO of THRIVE Strategy Partners and an organizational development and culture strategist with more than 30 years of experience in higher education, corporate human resources, and organizational leadership. She has spent her career building the internal conditions that make belonging, retention, and high performance possible — not as a standalone initiative, but as the foundation of how organizations operate every day.
Raquel’s career spans three sectors and reflects a rare combination of practitioner depth and institutional breadth. She has held senior roles at the University of Pennsylvania, Penn State University, Rutgers University, and Drexel University — delivering educational, professional, and organizational culture programming and initiatives across each institution. She also held roles in corporate human resources as a training consultant, designing and delivering professional and leadership development programs, and led a university relations recruitment team — creating strategies to develop diverse talent pipelines from regional colleges and universities.
Raquel has been honored by the Philadelphia City Council and El Sol Media for her leadership in education and her commitment to Philadelphia’s Latino community. She has also been recognized by Prospanica with the Brillante Award and named a Woman at the Top by Al Día News Media. She serves on the boards of City Year Philadelphia and PHLDiversity, a division of the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau.
A first-generation Cuban-American and proud daughter of the Bronx, Raquel holds a BA in Psychology from George Mason University, an MA in Higher Education from Rowan University, and professional certifications from the University of Michigan and Cornell University.
Michelle is a Senior Consultant at THRIVE Strategy Partners and a corporate community relations strategist with more than 25 years of experience in stakeholder engagement, strategic partnerships, philanthropy, and diversity outreach with Fortune 100 corporations. She has spent her career building the external and internal conditions that make organizational culture, community trust, and stakeholder alignment possible not as isolated programs, but as measurable drivers of business performance and lasting organizational impact.
Michelle's career spans the corporate, nonprofit, and public sectors and reflects a rare combination of C-suite access and community-level practice. She has held senior roles at PepsiCo and Aramark , two of the largest corporations in the world, leading national community initiatives, developing cross-functional teams, and building the business cases and metrics frameworks that made culture and community investment legible as organizational strategy. Most recently, she served as Senior Director of External Relations for Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts, where she designed and led a statewide civic education campaign building coalitions across communities, schools, and institutions.
Michelle has served as past chair of the National Hispanic Corporate Council and the Corporate Community Contributions Council of Westchester, NY. She is a founding member of the National Association of Female Executives, a board member of YMCA Camping New York City, and has advised the League of United Latin American Citizens, the Organization of Chinese Americans, and the Corporate Executive Development Program, an executive leadership institute developed in partnership with Southern Methodist University focused on high-potential Latino and Latina executives.
A certified Corporate Community Relations practitioner from Boston College, Michelle is best known for her pioneering work in metrics management and the ROI focus on community development, bringing the rigor and the track record to demonstrate that belonging, trust, and stakeholder engagement are not aspirational ideals. They are measurable organizational outcomes.