The 2025 Best Firms to Work For: Centric Consulting

CONSULTING SERVICE LINES: Strategy, Operations Management, HR, IT

Centric Consulting is the right partner — committed to delivering tailored solutions and unmatched experiences.

For 26 years, the international management consulting firm has combined the benefits of deep experience, flexibility and cost efficiency to solve its clients’ toughest problems. Its teams include strategic advisors and the best talent from across the United States and India with expertise in areas like artificial intelligence, cyber risk and compliance, people and change, business applications and more. The firm builds teams that can scale up or down quickly based on client needs, industry and desired outcome.

CMAG: What characteristics and elements would you attribute to your firm’s inclusion as a Best Firm to Work For?

At Centric Consulting, our employee experience is built on what we call the Three Cs: our Culture, our Core Purpose, and our Core Values.

From day one—now more than 25 years ago—we’ve been intentional about creating a workplace where individuality is celebrated, collaboration thrives, and genuine relationships can grow.

Our Core Purpose is straightforward but powerful: To create unmatched experiences for both our clients and our employees.

Finally, our seven Core Values define our commitment to what is most important to our team members and clients. They range from living a balanced life and our sense of integrity to how we deliver value to our clients. Last year, we asked team members to share what our values mean to them in their own words—their reflections, available on our website, truly bring to life how we strive to be true to our values every day.

At Centric, our Culture, Values and Purpose go much deeper than slogans or wall art. They’re lived out daily in the way we work, collaborate, and support one another. They define our shared experiences and keep us connected as one Centric community.

CMAG: Are there any specific programs or initiatives that contributed to you being included as a Best Firm?

This year, we’ve expanded and matured our collection of Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) and Centric Community Groups. Created and led by employees, these groups celebrate our diverse communities, promote understanding and offer space for networking, mentorship and support. A sample of our ERGs includes:

• BlackEmployees@Centric, which focuses on career growth and advancement while providing a community where Black employees can engage, empower, and advocate for one another.
• EmpoweringWomen@Centric, which fosters inclusivity, connection and collaboration for women at Centric, helping them grow their skills and leadership potential.
• Pride@Centric, which unites LGBTQIA+ team members in building a workplace where everyone can thrive, influence inclusive policies and be their authentic selves.
• Neurospicy, which builds community and support for neurodivergent employees and family members across Centric.
• NextCen, which focuses on community-building and professional development for Centric’s emerging professionals.

We also encourage employees to contribute beyond the workplace, both as volunteers and as professionals, to their local communities. From food drives and natural disaster relief efforts to pro bono technology solutions for nonprofits tackling homelessness, ending trauma and supporting people in crisis, our teams put their talents to work where they matter most.

This year, Centric has also made an effort to improve internal communications through regular town halls and the Centric Weekly Relay, an email that cuts through the communication chaos to deliver a consolidated list of take-action items and important information. Feedback from employees has been overwhelmingly positive. One employee said: “Honestly, it is the best corporate email I have ever received. Cutting through the fluff when you are busy is so appreciated.”

Together, these efforts reflect our mission to deliver unmatched experiences for our communities, our clients and each other.

CMAG: In describing your firm, what would you say sets it apart from other consulting firms?

Belonging is a basic human need and is a cornerstone of the employee experience we strive to create. We’re deeply committed to building an environment where everyone truly feels like they belong.

The challenge? Belonging looks different for every person. There’s no one-size-fits-all formula. And it’s not grand gestures that create that sense of connection. Rather, it’s the everyday mindset and small actions that add up to a lot, like:

• Seeing each person for who they truly are, encompassing their unique personality, talents, and skills they bring to Centric.
• Remembering that behind every interaction is a human being with their own perspective, background, fears and dreams. Instead of overlooking these, we take time to understand and appreciate them.
• Choosing meaningful conversations over transactional exchanges.
• Leading with empathy and kindness and setting ego aside to make space for authentic connections.
• These practices aren’t always easy, but the patience required is always worth it. We believe every moment is a chance to show someone they belong. Through all the ups and downs of business, our goal is for every Centric team member to feel, deep in their core, that they are valued and truly belong here.

Successfully managing our teams in professional services—engaging employees, nurturing loyalty, providing meaningful career paths, and enabling our people to deliver exceptional client service—is an evolving challenge.

Right now, like most of the business world faced with the AI evolution, we’re in the midst of transforming many parts of how we operate to become an AI-first firm. This evolution will touch every area of the business, from how we lead and deliver work to how we operate internally and train and support our people.

Our goal in 2025 and beyond is to invest thoughtfully in AI, where we see strong growth potential and an opportunity to empower our employees to gain new skills and prepare for an AI-powered future. Just one aspect of our AI investment plan is retraining our entire workforce on leveraging AI in their jobs. This applies to both consultants who deliver client solutions and our operations staff. Our hope is to build sustainable career paths, reduce mundane work and improve employee satisfaction.

One way we’re training employees in AI is through LinkedIn Learning, which provides hundreds of AI courses. Late last year, we also held an AI literacy competition. For a chance to win prizes and bragging rights, employees completed a five-hour course of essential AI content, broken into short modules. More recent efforts include new LinkedIn Learning courses on prompt engineering for ChatGPT and Copilot and an AI for project management course using our leading project management and AI expert as an AI avatar. We’re also developing a leadership series on the AI mindset, focusing on balancing AI with human experience and design thinking.

Our efforts at training all our team members in AI fit right in with our culture of innovation that celebrates challenges and learning new things.

CMAG: What opportunities do you see as the most promising?

Technology is more embedded than ever in every organization. Layer on top the disruptive power of AI, and the stage is set for an unprecedented evolution that will make its mark on all industries.

In the coming years, organizations will need to undergo major transformations in their operations, technology and data capabilities to fully embrace AI’s potential. This shift poses significant challenges, but it also opens the door to enormous opportunities, both for businesses aiming to stay competitive in an AI-powered world and the consulting firms guiding them through this transition.

With our talented teams, deep commitment to innovation, and strong partnerships in the tech ecosystem, Centric is uniquely positioned to help clients—and our own employees—harness the transformative power of AI. To illustrate just one exciting way we’re diving into AI: We’re developing a series of agents focused on culture, client delivery, strategy and sales that will help us integrate AI into everything we do. This will benefit not only Centric, but also our clients.

CMAG: What market forces do you see as the most challenging?

The consulting industry has faced several significant challenges in recent years, leading to a slowing of the rapid growth consulting firms once enjoyed. That said, we do anticipate the industry’s return to steady, sustainable expansion. The core drivers remain strong: evolving technology and the ongoing need for businesses to adapt and transform.

AI is, no surprise, another major challenge that is contributing to a rapidly evolving consulting industry. The technology is changing everything about how we deliver work, so it’s crucial we rethink the tools and techniques we use to ensure we continue to make an impact for our clients.

AI is also causing us to rethink how we develop talent. With AI able to take on many traditionally entry-level tasks, we’ll be reimagining how we hire fresh talent and what their leadership pathway looks like.

At the end of the day, we want to be an AI leader without losing the relationships and human touch that has differentiated us from day one.

CMAG: What impact do you think Best Firm to Work For honors will have on your employees? The firm overall? Clients?

Building and growing a culture that puts both employees and clients at its heart is incredibly rewarding, but it’s no small feat. Achieving this on a meaningful scale validates the effort we pour into living out our culture, core purpose and core values, showing that we’re bringing them to live in real, impactful ways.

The greatest reward, however, is witnessing the positive difference our culture makes in the lives of our team members and clients. This gets to the heart of why we founded Centric in the first place. I wrote about this in my book, Office Optional: “We began dreaming up a company where we could do great work but still have a life, a company with a fun culture that treats everyone like family and operates with honest and deep relationships. This was the start of the Centric business model and the underpinnings of the culture we have today.”