Savvy Strategic Partners, a C-suite firm founded by a Fort Collins-based entrepreneur, was recently awarded Better Business Bureaus’ annual Spark Award designated to distinguish businesses that are committed to honesty, integrity, and ethics, and are less than three years old in the states of Colorado and Wyoming. The award was presented at a ceremony that took place on April 22.
Savvy was founded in 2023 by Colorado local and long-time Fort Collins resident Jill Simonds. The company serves clients nationally across industries like operations, finance, revenue, people, marketing, and more. The firm specializes in serving growing organizations and businesses by pairing them with full-impact executive leaders that serve businesses on a part-time basis.
“A huge bottleneck of business growth usually stems from leadership issues and lack of capacity within leadership,” Simonds said. “Many business owners begin their journey seeking freedom, and they find themselves tethered and overwhelmed with scaling a business and managing day to day operations. Our fractional leaders serve as a bridge to the next level of growth in a business when hiring a full-time person isn't feasible.”
Simonds, 39, got her undergraduate degree at the University of Northern Colorado and her master’s degree at Colorado University. She began her career working in marketing positions within the corporate world and learned that she was hungry for “so much more.” She also served as a consultant for businesses for a good portion of her career until she “took a chance” on herself as an entrepreneur. Her goal was to be able to help more than one business at a time.
After nearly two years, her business now consists of 15 fractional executives who work remotely nationwide.
“I started Savvy as a firm because being in an executive position amongst businesses, I was constantly seeing gaps amongst those organizations’ leadership teams,” she said. “I knew we could equip that business better with the right leader in place. The process of full-time recruiting is cumbersome and flawed for small businesses to grow.”
She says that she hopes that the award will bring Savvy positive attention from the community. “Having the trust and recognition from the BBB and being recognized… enables us to do what we do and collaborate in the community,” she said.
