Strategic Advisory

For technical leaders who are done diagnosing the problem and ready to rebuild the system.

Moving Beyond Traditional Executive Coaching

Most leadership consulting treats organizational dysfunction as a people problem — a communication issue, a mindset issue, a culture issue. Lisa Akers treats it as a structural one.

After three decades in aerospace, most recently as a Chief Engineer on NASA's Artemis program, she has spent her career inside the specific conditions that break technical organizations: impossible timelines, competing stakeholders, decisions made with incomplete information, and the steady accumulation of emotional labor on whoever is willing to carry it.

Advisory engagements aren't coaching sessions. They're structural interventions — root cause analysis applied to the human layer of your organization, followed by a redesign that actually holds.

Exclusive Engagement Models

Because Lisa maintains active engineering commitments and focus on The Emotional Architect frameworks, she accepts a strictly limited number of strategic advisory clients each quarter. Engagement is available through two highly curated models:

  • A single high-intensity engagement designed for executive teams that need to move fast. Before the session, Lisa conducts a diagnostic of your organization's current friction points — where decisions stall, where accountability breaks down, where your best people are absorbing what the system should be handling. The day itself is a working session, not a presentation. You leave with a specific blueprint for what needs to change and how.

    Available virtually or on-site.

    Best for: Executive teams navigating rapid scaling, organizational reset, or persistent cultural friction that hasn't responded to previous interventions.

    Investment: $25,000 Includes pre-intensive diagnostic, full-day working session, and a written Technical Architecture Blueprint.

  • A monthly advisory partnership for leaders who need a rigorous, confidential thinking partner for the decisions that don't have a playbook. Not weekly check-ins. Not accountability coaching. One substantive session per month — the kind of conversation where you can say what's actually happening — plus direct access when something time-sensitive can't wait.

    Limited to two engagements at any time.

    Best for: Newly appointed or high-growth CTOs, VPs of Engineering, and technical founders navigating major restructuring, board dynamics, or organizational risk.

    Investment: $7,500 / month, three-month minimum Includes one 90-minute monthly session and asynchronous access via private channel.

Who this is for

Advisory works when the person in the room has the authority to actually change something. That means you're an executive with real decision-making power over team structure, workflow, and organizational culture — not someone who needs to take recommendations upstairs for approval.

It also means you're willing to look at your own organization honestly. The leaders who get the most from this work are the ones who already suspect the problem is structural and are ready to stop hoping it will resolve itself.

If that's where you are, the application form is below.