Cedric Crocker
Partner
San Francisco, CA
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“My passion is helping enterprises – commercial and social venture – achieve, in Peter Drucker’s words, ‘both success and significance;’ that is, superior organizational performance and positive impact on customers, communities, employees, and investors. In my experience, businesses too often focus on financial performance alone, while not-for-profits can neglect financial and operational excellence in pursuit of their mission. Purpose and profit are both part of a healthy, high-functioning, and successful enterprise; businesses and non-profits benefit enormously when they strive for both.”
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Cedric Crocker works with start-ups, social ventures, and established media, digital learning, professional development, and publishing enterprises in the United States and Europe.
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Cedric advises clients on how to drive value-based growth through targeted product and services innovation, enabling alliances, and acquisition/integration of compatible businesses. He helps companies in transition get grounded for success. Transition may be driven by rapid growth, stagnation forcing change, the impact of new technologies, or a pivot to a new strategy or market. Getting grounded demands clear purpose, solid strategies, and focus. Purpose is the reason the enterprise exists (the value they create and deliver), strategies must be explicit with clearly measurable outcomes, and focus is the foundation.
Cedric’s industry experience is in media, publishing, and professional learning and development. He has worked with companies in executive and leadership development, professional education, and training, as well as with professional associations and universities.
Before joining Sage Partners, Cedric served in senior positions at John Wiley & Sons, Wiley, CBS/Viacom, and with communications consulting firms. As Vice President, Strategic Business Development for U.K./Europe at Wiley, a global professional learning and education company, he helped reposition the company from publishing to professional development solutions by developing new, digitally-based businesses with regional clients and partners. He headed Wiley’s leadership & training products group, where he guided the migration to digital products, the acquisition of e-learning and assessment companies, and the launch of the Talent Solutions group, Wiley’s fastest growing business. At Viacom, he led business publishing at Simon & Schuster/Jossey-Bass, partnering with business and consulting thought leaders and business schools globally. As Director of the technology practice at The Compage Company, he provided strategic communications services to hardware and software companies and, prior to that, founded and ran his own communications consulting business.
Cedric is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, where serves as District Chair, Europe/Middle East/Africa for the Alumni Association Leadership Award, as a Dean’s Seed Fund Grant Judge for the Haas School of Business, and Mentor at the Berkeley Haas Entrepreneurship Program. He is a Trustee of Common Purpose, a U.K. charitable trust devoted to developing leaders who can cross boundaries and is Senior Advisor to the European Learning Industry Group (ELIG), a European Commission-sponsored consortium of companies and universities committed to changing the way Europe learns.
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