Eric Larson is the founder of The Organizational Detectives. As an experienced company CEO and nonprofit administrator with brief forays in academia and government, he is committed to helping organizations thrive. “When teams are winning, many of the supposed issues evaporate. I love working alongside leaders and their team managers to investigate, identify, and solve the problems facing their organization.” Eric graduated summa cum laude from Duke University in 1993. In 2015, he earned his MBA and a Graduate Certificate in Healthcare Management from East Carolina University and developed a number of soft skills and leadership growth programs for CompTIA, the world’s largest IT trade association. A fan of puzzles and games of all types, he is the author of the Rett Swinson Mystery novels under the pen name Eric Lodin. He lives with his family in Raleigh, NC.

Rodrigo Herrera joined The ORG Detectives in December 2023 as a full partner. He is simultaneously the President and Principal Consultant of Telos Strategy LLC, and he has built a career around a passion for helping organizations and individuals achieve more than they believe is possible. His record of enabling greater client success is founded on identifying and removing barriers to performance, as well as building capability around natural strengths at all organizational levels. 

In the past decade, Rodrigo has demonstrated client impact in education, construction, utilities, logistics, software, insurance, and telecommunications as well as nonprofit organizations. He is highly effective at developing cross-organizational collaboration in national and international settings with a proven record of generating tangible results.

Rodrigo’s business experience began in McKinsey and Co. in 2000, followed by helping to establish the Houston office of Katzenbach Partners LLC. Over an eight-year period he helped executives achieve breakthroughs in leadership pipeline development, salesforce effectiveness, operations efficiency, partnering strategies, and new product development. Following working in the consulting sector, he served as the Chief People Officer of the fast-growth education non-profit KIPP Houston, where he deployed his energies toward leadership development, employee engagement, and executive effectiveness, all within an overall talent strategy. 

The common thread through all these assignments is a focus on data-driven analysis combined with a deep awareness that people make the difference.

Rodrigo first met Eric in the early 1990s at Duke University where they both completed bachelor’s degrees on full-ride merit scholarships. Rodrigo also holds a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from the University of Texas at Austin. 

Specific examples of Rodrigo’s work include:

• Post-merger integration stabilization and policy alignment for an international drilling services contractor.

• Organizational design for a top-3 national food and facilities services provider.

• Talent management strategy development for a $2B construction company.

• Sales force effectiveness analysis and capability development for large commercial accounts for a $9B utility company.

• Identification through quantitative and qualitative methods of different profiles of sales success and sales training program to improve results.

• Operations performance improvement for coal-fired utility plants resulting in significant cost-reduction and margin-improvement proposals.

• New product and sales strategy development for a top 5 national insurance company.