ANDREW TARSY

PRINCIPAL & FOUNDER

Andy Tarsy is Principal and Founder of Emblem Strategic LLC. Every day he draws on years of experience as an executive and advisor in business, government, higher education and not-for-profit/NGO organizations. His work combines elements of traditional strategy consulting with executive coaching, program design and hands-on implementation support.

Andy has held chief executive roles in a variety of complex organizations including  the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the U.S. Senate; the Alliance for Business Leadership; and the Anti-Defamation League of New England; and served as a senior executive in a digital technology company called Everseat (acquired by Relatient) and with education non-profit Facing History and Ourselves. Earlier in his career, Andy was a Trial Attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and in private practice.

Andy was awarded the NAACP’s Kivie Kaplan Humanitarian Award in 2008 and the Max Michelson Humanitarian Award from Jewish Family Service of Metrowest (Boston) in 2018. He has been appointed to roles in public service by both Democratic and Republican Governors of Massachusetts. Today, Andy is a Trustee of the Benjamin Franklin Cummings Institute of Technology and a Strategic Advisor for Boston’s Foundation for Business Equity. He is also a Lecturer at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business and he volunteers as a docent for the New England Holocaust Memorial and as a youth soccer coach.

Andy graduated from George Washington University Law School with Honors and received a Bachelor of Arts in Government from Cornell University’s College of Arts and Sciences. He is a graduate of the Roxbury Latin School. He was a Senior Fellow at the University of Massachusetts Boston’s McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies from 2014 to 2019.

René Redwood

René is CEO of Redwood Enterprise. She has spent over 30 years working with public and private employers and nonprofits on transformation in the workplace. René has a special focus on building and restoring trust with internal and external customers, including training, assessment and monitoring and strategic guidance on racial justice, gender equity and unconscious bias (for example as a member of the court-appointed Coca-Cola Task Force, Director of the Presidential Glass Ceiling Commission, and as current chair of the Equality Task Force of the U.S. National Security Agency). A graduate of Tufts University with a degree in chemistry, René combines multiple modes of rigorous analysis to her work. She has collaborated with Emblem on DEI engagements with clients in municipal government and financial services.

Doris Quintanilla

Doris is the co-founder and Executive Director of The Melanin Collective and specializes within the DEI field on educating, empowering and creating transformational change in the lives of womxn and gender non-conforming people of color in the workplace. Doris has over a decade of experience in empowering marginalized communities living at the many intersections of identity and oppression. She grew up in Santa Ana, California, and earned a a Bachelor’s in International Development from UCLA in 2008, with a focus on Latin America and the Middle East. Doris has done extensive work with complex workplace surveys and qualitative research. Throughout her career, Doris has focused on expanding access to healthcare and higher education and on championing social justice and sexual and reproductive health for all. She is currently designing a training program with us to deliver to a client in the investment management sector.

Omari Jahi Aarons

Omari is founder and Managing Partner of Aarons Group. He is a skilled culture change practitioner with 15 years of experience inside Fortune 150 companies who sees clearly the urgency that workplaces to be representative of the populations they serve.​ Omari has served as an employee resource group leader and has authored a number of business diversity strategic plans to attract, recruit and retain racially diverse talent. He is also the inaugural president of the National African American Insurance Association of Boston. Omari is one of the 2021 “40 LGBTQ Leaders Under 40” in North America as namedby Business Equality Magazine. He is a graduate of Xavier University in Cincinnati and is a Howard Thurman Fellow at Boston University School of Theology where he is pursuing a Master of Divinity in Global and Community Engagement. In a recent collaboration with Emblem, Omari designed and delivered a program together with Andy Tarsy to help an LGBTQ+ Christian group focus on anti-racism work.

Conscious Customers

Conscious Customers is a women and minority led firm which also includes Emblem’s Andy Tarsy as a partner along with Izzy Jacques, Gloria Porras-Velasquez and Arturo Velasquez. The Conscious Customers team focuses on supplier and vendor diversity, helping any size business or organization align spending and values. At the same time, Conscious offers a unique approach to deeply engage your employees and other stakeholders in doing the same with their personal and household spending. The aim is to produce measurable impact, elevate your entire culture, build meaningful business relationships and set you apart. Right now Conscious is working with fine companies like Cerevel, Synlogic, Matouk, Winn Residential and Finard Properties.

Imagix Studio

A partnership of Arturo Velasquez and Gloria Porras-Velasquez, Imagix Studio creates transformative marketing, design and communications solutions for clients in widely varied sectors including hospitality, consumer packaged goods, banking, healthcare, apparel and beyond. Making changes in how you operate is not as significant if you cannot communicate it effectively to those who need to hear and that is precisely where Imagix Studio shines. Imagix is the go-to partner for Emblem and many of our clients when it comes to graphic design, marketing, advertising, web design, video, photography, and mural design. Recent clients include Wework, Brookline Bancorp, Foundation for Business Equity, SEED Curated Cannabis Market and 3Islas Group Restaurants.