Consulting & Advisory

PINEHURST, N.C. -- November 12, 2026 -- The U.S. Department of Labor has awarded Veterans Guardian VA Claim Consulting a 2026 Gold HIRE Vets Medallion Award, the company said. The company says it has won the medallion every year since 2019, which works out to eight consecutive awards through 2026 by FairsOnline's calculation.

The company describes the HIRE Vets Medallion as the only federal award honoring employers for recruiting, employing and supporting veterans. It says the Gold tier goes to employers that also back veterans' career development, not only hiring.

CEO and founder Scott Greenblatt, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, says the firm has worked to support veterans moving into civilian careers since 2019. The award covers Veterans Guardian's employment practices. It is separate from the company's core business of helping veterans pursue VA disability claims.

MILWAUKEE – November 13, 2026 -- Advisers at Wipfli have set out four enterprise risk priorities for the next 90 days, starting with a check of the five performance reports leaders rely on most. The recommendations come from a Wipfli leadership panel that treats AI adoption, cybersecurity and data risk as one enterprise risk problem rather than separate silos.

The first priority is data: confirm the sources behind those five reports and agree on metric definitions. The second is cybersecurity. Panelists named four baseline controls: multifactor authentication, advanced endpoint detection, employee training and tested backups. Organizations that already have them should validate them through penetration testing and social engineering exercises. The third is a review of critical business processes, to find what could block major initiatives. The fourth is aligning risk tolerance and planning with business objectives.

Orange County – November 10, 2026 -- KLC Leadership Advisory is offering a six-week live virtual program, Aesthetic Business School (ABS), to help female aesthetics and wellness practice owners build and lead multimillion-dollar companies.

ABS targets the shift from practitioner to CEO

The curriculum addresses owners who built their practices as practitioners and now must run them as companies. Core disciplines are financial performance, team productivity, leadership and accountability, operational systems, patient growth and strategic planning.

Participants attend live group sessions, receive private coaching and apply the material to their own businesses through guided implementation.

Munich – November 10, 2026 -- AdEx Partners and Vienna-based CONSULTING AG are combining forces to form a consultancy of about 350 employees across the DACH region, adding public-sector and healthcare expertise to AdEx's portfolio.

CONSULTING AG brings about 50 staff and a public-sector focus to AdEx Partners

Founded in 1992, CONSULTING AG is an Austrian management consultancy specializing in the public sector and healthcare. It employs about 50 people and has long-standing client relationships. AdEx Partners combines strategy, technology-based transformation and AI in its offering.

Stefan Rieder, Managing Partner at AdEx Partners, said the combination will make both firms top players in their Austrian market segment and deliver a clear jump in revenue and headcount. The announcement gave no revenue figures or deal terms.

Frankfurt am Main – November 09, 2026 -- 64% of MDAX companies appointed at least one new supervisory board member, against 25% in the DAX40, according to the first standalone MDAX governance report from executive search firm Spencer Stuart.

The 50 MDAX companies added 87 new board members. The DAX40 added only 16. The study draws on annual reports and corporate governance disclosures for fiscal 2025. It is benchmarked against the Spencer Stuart Board Index 2026 for the DAX40, published in June.

MDAX boards are younger and open the door to first-time members

Members under 50 make up 21.8% of MDAX supervisory boards, versus 12% in the DAX40. At 22 of the 50 companies, that age group holds more than a quarter of board seats. Of the newly appointed MDAX members, 23% hold their first supervisory board mandate.

MILWAUKEE – November 07, 2026 -- Democrats' recapture of both chambers of Congress in the midterm elections will hand them control of the tax-writing committees in the new year, but Wipfli advisers expect the President's veto to confine enacted change to areas of bipartisan agreement.

Those areas include improved IRS services, housing, healthcare affordability, digital assets, retirement and domestic investment, according to Brian Coddington, senior manager at Wipfli. He advised businesses to track tax, AI, financial services, tariffs and healthcare together, because a change in one can carry operational and financial consequences beyond the tax function.

Immenstadt – November 06, 2026 -- Mercedes-Benz plans to let managers require full-time employees to work in the office up to four days a week without justifying the order, with the rule expected to take effect on January 1, 2027.

Michael Fuchs, founder of consultancy Five4Success, argues that attendance quotas do not fix leadership problems. In his view, the quality of collaboration depends on how a company organizes it, not on where staff sit.

Four mandatory office days do not improve communication on their own, Fuchs argues

If employees spend office days at screens, answering e-mails or joining video calls, physical presence adds little value, according to Fuchs. He adds that AI already handles tasks that once required several people, including data analysis, report drafting and first-draft solutions. Those tasks mainly require quiet and few interruptions.

Redmond – November 06, 2026 -- Harbinger Group, a global workforce technology and digital engineering company, has launched a Performance Enablement practice that pairs advisory work with domain-specific, AI-powered digital engineering to locate and fix operational value leakage.

Harbinger targets the gap between enterprise technology spend and workforce results

The company attributes weak returns on technology investment to disconnected systems, inefficient workflows, prolonged time to value, and a widening gap between the pace of technological change and workforce readiness. Symptoms it cites include stalled sales productivity, slow hiring and onboarding cycles, retention problems, and AI adoption that fails to scale.

Founder, Executive Chairman and CEO Dr. Vikas Joshi said the practice treats people, workflow, technology and data as one system, so that investment "becomes a decision you can justify."

San Francisco – September 22, 2026 -- Whipsaw, the design and innovation firm behind Tonal, Owala, and Brita, has launched a new 10-week cohort of The Workshop, its accelerator for early-stage hardware founders, with a Demo Day set for December 2026.

New cohort targets health, wellness, and home hardware startups

The program, which kicked off earlier this month, brings together early-stage founders building products across health, wellness, and home categories. Unlike traditional accelerators built on lectures and pitch competitions, The Workshop pairs founders directly with Whipsaw's multidisciplinary team of industrial designers, experience designers, engineers, strategists, and brand experts.

Brooklyn, N.Y. – September 22, 2026 -- C&C Branding has launched Titan SoundSM, a newly service-marked offering that merges leadership development with brand strategy for executives and rising leaders.

Titan Sound targets two distinct executive moments

The service is built for leaders pursuing new roles, helping them identify industries and situations where they are best suited while shaping a voice that boards, teams, peers, and customers can trust. It also serves leaders navigating organizational transitions, forming the narrative and strategy needed to drive change internally and externally.