Gail Thakarar

Sophia Network is a network of consultants with expertise in Organizational Change and Transformation; empowering organizations to grow, expand and transform as they face disruptions that cause uncertainty. We work with organizations to shift their culture to focus on organizational alignment and employee engagement. The established intentional culture enables leaders and their teams to cause accelerated growth, expansion, and positive community impact in the face of any circumstance.

Founded and lead a high impact advisory/consulting firm working with CEOs, Boards, private equity, venture capital, and portfolio companies - from early stage to Fortune 200 - to drive growth, transformation, and value creation. Brought in where organizational transformation must move beyond strategy - to reset operating models, drive adoption, and drive results under real business pressure. . Work directly with CEOs and leadership teams to develop business strategy. Drive execution across strategy, organizational design, culture, leadership, and AI enabled workforce transformation. Step in as a hands-on partner during critical inflection points - driving implementation and sustained adoption. . Build and scale human capital functions; advise and implement M&A due diligence and cultural integration and preparation for an IPO. . Design executive compensation, equity, stock options, long-term and short-term incentive plans aligned to individual and business performance and governance. . Translate AI potential into workforce strategy, and help leadership align innovation with ethics, culture and long-term value. . Redesign all aspects of a global company's people agenda to shape a culture of continuous learning, innovation and agility. Representative clients include UnitedHealth Group, HD Supply, Bimeda, Lancium Technologies and venture backed startups. (Firm previously active 2000 - 2008)

As a business-aligned strategist, working with the CEO executed a multi-year organizational transformation, embedding new operating rhythms, leadership expectations, workforce planning, and structure for one of the nation's largest nonprofit home- and community-based healthcare organizations during a period of significant industry disruption. . Served as a trusted partner and a business-aligned strategist to the CEO and Executive Leadership, leading enterprise people strategy across talent acquisition and retention, leadership development, engagement, organizational design, change management, compensation, performance and learning. . Transformed the people function into a strategic, technology enabled operating capability, delivering measurable business impact . Achieved Crain's Best Places to Work recognition in 2024 and 2025. . Surpassed national healthcare benchmarks in employee engagement and participation, reaching the 90th percentile among top performing healthcare organizations. . Raised the bar in the quality of the talent and the number of hires, especially clinical, through implementing focused onboarding and customized behavioral training for recruiters and managers. . Built VNS Health Academy, aligning career paths, leadership development, and learning - embedding organizational AI literacy and AI enabled learning tools. . Redesigned organizational structures, job architecture, and compensation programs for clarity and accountability: updated short- and long-term incentive plans to drive organization performance. WOrked with the Board on executive compensation.

Member of the Board provide functional human capital expertise to this global, privately-held, fast-growth, technology company. Drive growth through market-driven strategy and effective operations. Reppify offers a social referral platform that aggregates and leverages employees' social connections to redefine talent sourcing and sales leads generation. Reppify Talent helps companies achieve results and growth in referral hiring while reducing overall recruiting spend and increasing candidate quality. Reppify enjoys strategic partnerships and integration with leading software companies including Oracle, IBM, Infosys, Accenture, Deloitte and Salesforce.

Built and drove the integration and execution across five legacy businesses and one new business establishing a unified operating model and culture for a private, high-growth start-up company in construction and infrastructure, reporting to the CEO and Founder. . Unified five legacy companies and acquisitions into a single operating platform and culture. . Created a centralized "Partners" organization composed of HR, IT, Finance and Operations) as a separate shared services company supporting portfolio growth. . Led enterprise strategic planning and branding, supported 4x revenue growth to $1B in five years through organic and acquisition driven expansion.

Global Chief People Officer and member of the executive leadership team in a disruptive energy-efficient technology company. . Drove major change management efforts and led enterprise-wide restructuring and global organizational design to support go-to-market strategy and innovation. . Transformed the human capital platform to enhance employee engagement and build a global visionary business. Built global leadership and engagement capabilities. . Established a subsidiary in India, securing a $10 M contract through partnerships with manufacturers, OEMs and government stakeholders. . Supported international expansion in Qatar and Argentina.

Reporting to the CEO, scaled leadership and talent strategy for a private telehealth company disrupting healthcare delivery through remote patient monitoring. . Partnered with the CEO and executive leadership to align employee lifecycle including talent, leadership, rewards, and organizational design to rapid growth. . Built sustainable executive and leadership pipelines during industry transformation from episodic to continuous care. . Featured in American Health care Leader for organizational transformation work. https://issuu.com/guerrerohowe/docs/ahl2_issuu_0aa1e14afd6458/94

Led Human Resources & Payroll through intense change, including three CEOs in two years and transition from public to private equity ownership. . Led change management and cultural integration efforts to continually ensure the culture was action- and customer-focused through sustained disruption. . Provided strategic counsel on leadership, culture, and integration during governance and ownership shifts. . Presented to the Fertility Physicians Group - June 2015 DRIVING BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMANCE IN THE NEW WORK ENVIRONMENT

Built and led people strategy for a venture backed healthcare start up developing, building and operating proton therapy centers. . Partnered with the CEO and CFO beyond HR on financing, business development, and operations. . Scaled the organization from 40 to 500 employees in two years, recruiting globally and launching five centers. . Partnered with the CEO to establish mission, vision, and values foundational to growth.

As Managing Director and Founder of GRT International, built best in class human resources functions for early stage and Fortune 200 enterprise companies. Led consulting assignments on strategy, change management, cultural transformation, compensation and benefits, performance management, and executive coaching. Critical focus on long-term consulting with companies that need unparalleled access to exceptional talent leveraging multi-industry and enterprise experience.