Nearly five years ago, RedCloud’s very own Managing Partner, Brett Clifton, joined the advisory board of the University of Washington Foster School’s Consulting and Business Development Center (CBDC) as an avenue to support youth education in our local community. Throughout the years, there have been many opportunities for our team members to join in Brett’s generosity to help the organization, which offers real-life experience for UW undergrad and MBA students. The CBDC is all about preparing their own for what’s to come in the workplace after graduation, and we couldn’t be more supportive of that mission. Today, we’re taking a look back on what 2021 brought our way with CBDC and celebrating all those who dedicated their time and resources to the students this year. With the ongoing virtual environment, we are grateful for the opportunity to continue supporting the program and for the fact that it is still offering students the same caliber of experience. Impact Awards Taking place last month as an annual wrap-up event, the CBDC virtual Foster School Impact Awards recognized business, civic, and student leaders who are committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion in business and have made a substantial impact in growing companies in underserved communities as well as accelerating student careers. RedCloud was proud to sponsor the event in the great company of other sponsors. A big congrats to Ovation Technology on their William D. Bradford Minority Business of the Year Award. The Bradford Award, named for former Foster School Dean William D. Bradford, is presented to an outstanding business owned by a person of color who has demonstrated leadership through its revenue growth, management quality, and investments in community efforts. Macadons was the winner of this year’s Client of the Year Award, sponsored by Harborstone Credit Union. The award is presented to a company that has grown substantially by utilizing several of the Center’s programs. 2021: A Year of Mentoring Earlier this Spring, we recapped the exciting wrap-up of the CBDC Business Management Consulting Program. During this exciting and enriching student program, four talented RedCloud mentors, Marie, Sophia, Mary Anne, and Scott helped guide and advise small student teams (4-6 members each) as they navigated real-life client challenge scenarios, creating their own plans and strategies for solving them, implementing all that they have learned so far in business school. The program kicked off at the New Year and the student teams each completed their client presentations late March. From spring into early summer, final meetings took place with the clients to guide the implementation of the student team recommendations. We thank CBDC for all they do to help students pursue successful career journeys and look forward to our upcoming support in 2022!

It is with great excitement that we announce RedCloud’s acquisition of Denny Mountain Media (DMM), a digital staffing agency that specializes in digital content, design, and marketing. “We extend a warm welcome to the DMM team as they join the RedCloud family! We recognize the value of every consultant who works with us. We strongly believe every person brings their own unique blend of skills, experience, and personality to our team, which is why we’re more excited than ever for the future of our team,” said Brett Clifton, Managing Partner of RedCloud. As the DMM team members remain on existing projects in their current roles, they will be provided with a wider range of future opportunities across RedCloud’s diverse client base in healthcare, fintech, and e-commerce, from Fortune 500s to startups and small businesses. Our new teammates are savvy professionals who enable us to serve more of our clients' project immediate needs while well positioning us for ongoing expansion amidst a once-in-a-generation labor tightening. DMM shares RedCloud’s culture of client service, ensuring that existing and new clients will remain a top priority as the companies merge and move forward. “Our decisions on growth are driven directly by the needs of our clients, with a keen eye on ensuring the high level of client service we’ve built the firm on stays intact. Bringing DMM’s team of experts into the RedCloud fold immediately bolsters our ability to serve our clients in a historic time when the regional labor market is extremely tight,” said Brett Alston, Managing Partner of RedCloud. “The combination of our firm’s proven success, along with new, top-notch talent, will provide our clients with a more complete consulting experience, encompassing a full suite of services including strategy, data, and design.” Over the last 17 years in the Pacific Northwest, DMM has always led with stellar client service and creative solutions. This approach is now supported by RedCloud’s award-winning employee and client processes and community programs. Bringing a Seattle-based firm under the RedCloud umbrella only strengthens our local roots, bringing local talent and businesses together to drive innovation and economic opportunity collaboratively. To read the full press release on this acquisition, click here.

Wow, what a year! We can’t believe we’re already wrapping up 2021 and looking toward all of our 2022 plans that are taking shape. A lot happened at RedCloud despite another year of uncertain and uncharted waters in the world around us. As we are thankful for our collective success in 2021, we are proud to have stayed dedicated to our community - particularly as we acknowledge the pandemic continues to have rippling effect in our local communities. At the end of 2020, we made the exciting announcement that we were committed to supporting Solid Ground’s Broadview Shelter & Transitional Housing for the whole year ahead. We’re looking back today on all that was accomplished with our support and rounding it up in celebration. For those unfamiliar with Broadview - this Seattle-based organization exists to provide a safe haven to families, mostly mothers and their children, with a secure home location while experiencing homelessness or domestic abuse. Broadview is a positive environment that families can use to transition, but being a resident comes with a lot of uncertainty and challenges. The families seeking an apartment are often going through the toughest part of their lives, and can sometimes lack the basic needs that we take for granted. That’s where RedCloud stepped in! Our Year of Broadview, as we like to call it, started with a donation of new technology to support remote learning for the children living at Broadview during the pandemic. The technology included Microsoft Surface tablets, Microsoft Office software, and mic headsets. But we didn’t stop there. We promised to continue the support where we saw opportunities. In February, we attended a Lunch and Learn to download our team with details about the shelter and its residents. Throughout the middle of the year, our support continued with the help of our recruiting team, who provided their dedication, support, and helpful resources in the form of a Career Day. As a follow-up to Career Day, the team made themselves available to residents with 1:1 support as needed. In May, we surprised the residents with a special Mother’s Day delivery. This past summer, we hosted a fun, professional photoshoot for families at Broadview with local photographer Toni from Pinto Portrait. As the new school year rolled around, we partnered with Toys for Kids (TfK) again in providing backpacks for the Broadview students to send them on their way for a successful year ahead. Finally we’re wrapping up the year with a new coat and holiday present drive, currently ongoing through our RedCloud team. In each of our efforts, we led with the desire to take stress away from the Broadview families, thinking of small yet impactful ways to make their days easier. As we look forward to another year of community effort at RedCloud - including staying a phone call away from our friends at Broadview - we are grateful for the opportunity to extend our support throughout this entire calendar year to focus on making a deep impact for many families in need. While our day-to-day business focus stays at the forefront, it will always remain a core value of RedCloud to look up and look around for ways to give back.

‘Tis the season of giving, and we’re excited to kick it off with great news! East Valley High School (Yakima) Senior Emma is the recipient of the 4th Annual RedCloud Consulting/Dave “Hendu” Henderson Educational Scholarship. We were thrilled to recently present our $5,000 scholarship award to her at school with Toys for Kids Founder and dear friend of RedCloud, Rick Rizzs (aka the 425 Citizen of the Year!). Emma is on her way to a successful future. She is involved in basketball, tutors students and has always had straight A’s on her report cards. Emma also values her community and has logged over 300 hours of volunteer time - wow! She just was accepted to Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University – Prescott and plans on studying Forensic Accounting. In her winning essay, she said: “By furthering my education, I could achieve my dream of being someone important and setting an example, and the thought of this makes me smile every single day.” We wish Emma all the best on her continuing education journey and cannot wait to see what she becomes and all that she achieves. We’re honored to be involved for six years in our partnership with Rick Rizzs and Toys for Kids (TfK) not just during the holiday season but also throughout the year with help like extra boosts during the pandemic and a year of support to Solid Ground’s Broadview Shelter - one of TfK’s key community partners. We extend a big thank you to Rick leading the way and rallying this circle of supporters together. To read more about the scholarship surprise at Emma’s high school, read the full article in the Yakima Herald, click here. Check out the inspiring video below.

Our newly developed learning series continues. Read on for tips from Yusuf on taking your Canvas App dimensions to a new level. As you dive in, be sure to leave your questions at the bottom in the comments section, or feel free to let us know what else you’d like to see. ​ Whether it be a Power App or a Power BI report, components or visuals that don’t line up perfectly can easily degrade the user’s trust in your process or data. I mean, come on, if the time couldn’t be taken to line up two graphs, who’s to say you took the time to double-check your data accuracy?! For that reason, I have made it a habit in my own Canvas App development never to have a hard-coded X, Y, Width, or Height property. In the past, this was even more important when containers weren’t available (all hail containers!), but even with containers, systematically setting your dimensions can add a huge value. As with many things, I have discovered patterns and common best practices. I have listed below the ones that I find myself using most frequently. Stay at 0 Often times you’ll have to copy and paste components to different screens, and you don’t want the X and Y value to increment by 40. Instead of 0, use Min(0). Centering Often you want to center horizontally and/or vertically. You can use the align feature, but that’s not smart enough when you then change the width or height! Instead, set: X = (Parent.Width - Self.Width) / 2 Y = (Parent.Height - Self.Height) / 2 This is a great trick, because it also works within containers! Creating a Buffer To bring continuity, set a global variable to act as your standard buffer between visuals. My go-to is Set(gblBuffer, 20). I also suggest turning off the non-blocking OnStart rule. This will ensure that all the visuals render without a freaky transition. Cascading Visuals As I mentioned above, I try to never hard code dimensions and a key to that is referencing other visuals dimensions. Just as the eye tracks, I set dimensions starting on the top, and then cascade down and to the right (F – pattern). Therefore, if you have two Labels, Label_Title and Label_Subtitle that sit one above the other, set the second labels X and Y variable as follows: X = Label_Title.X Y = Label_Title.Y + Label_Title.Height + gblBuffer See how I snuck in the gblBuffer! With that there's no guess work. ​ Stretch it to the Bottom Sometimes you want a visual to stretch all the way to the bottom of the page. That’s easy with: Height = Parent.Height - Self.Y But, if you’re using a buffer: Height = Parent.Height - Self.Y - gblBuffer This works just the same with widths: Width = Parent.Width - Self.X Width = Parent.Width - Self.X - gblBuffer Now what if you have a footer at the bottom of the page and you can’t stretch the visual all the way to the bottom (and you can’t use a vertical container)? No worries, you can reference the footer to adjust the height too! Height = Label_Footer.Y - Self.Y With these quick dimensional tricks, you’ll be surprised how quickly and neatly you can transform a Canvas App screen into a dynamic masterpiece!

Danny is back with us today! We were excited to track him down for a special Alumni Q&A session so we could share his career path and his whereabouts since his time working at RedCloud. Before Danny came to us, he had extensive consulting experience with some of the Pacific Northwest’s biggest brands including Microsoft, Accenture and Premera Blue Cross. To no surprise, he brought his expertise and nailed his client projects here at RedCloud. After his time with us, he’s moved on to impressive projects with two more large companies and is here to share some reflections with us today. Thanks for taking the time to chat with us, Danny. What position did you hold at RedCloud, and what position do you hold now, and with what company? During my time at RedCloud from 2018-2019, I was a Senior Associate of Enterprise Solutions, working as an advisor. After my time with RedCloud, I headed to Twitter for almost 3 years as a Lead Program Manager. I recently joined Rivian as a Sr. Digital Program Manager focused on partner integrations within the commercial business unit. I'll be helping the team to deliver on the massive order of 100K EV vehicles for Amazon! I'm super excited to dive deep into the automotive and EV industry and apply the program management frameworks and best practices I learned during my consulting career to add tangible impact while growing personally and professionally! What kind of projects did you work on at RedCloud? At RedCloud, I had the chance to help CTO's leadership team at F5 evaluate the best 3rd party solutions to effectively manage their global engineering workforce. I delivered on multiple strategic products for the company. I also partnered with the chief medical officer at Premera Blue Cross and his leadership team to build out a 3-year strategy to help the company leapfrog their impact while staying competitive in the market. Did you have any experiences with RedCloud's community partners/charitable giving? I did. I actually had the honor of attending the 2018 Toys for Kids Christmas fundraising gala in Bellevue. RedCloud’s dedication to helping their community and committing time to support those around them has always stuck out to me. Your favorite part about the RedCloud team members? At RedCloud, everyone is approachable and willing to help. The leadership team is super accessible and open to new ideas. That makes a big difference in doing your best work and delivering top-notch results. What were some skills you learned at RedCloud that you took with you to your next job? I learned about the capability maturity model [CMMI] and how to use that when developing a growth strategy focused on high performance. CMMI helps businesses and organizations understand their existing capabilities so they can optimize business results. What would you say to someone who was thinking about working for RedCloud? I would say it's an opportunity to truly accelerate your professional growth since each project is very unique in terms of the problems you'll be helping solve, the people you will work with and the frameworks you will use to build a solution.  If you love variety, creativity, intensity and learning on the job, this is definitely a great place to give it a shot! The one thing you miss or look back fondly on the most about RedCloud? The autonomy to operate independently and deliver creative solutions with management support rather than inefficient process red tape.

Power Automate provides several ways to monitor cloud flow activity. Periodic emails notifying flow owners of recent failures and the Cloud flow activity dashboard are available. However, we have found that when operating business-critical flows, we need to be far more responsive when a flow fails. As a result, our Power Automate team at RedCloud has developed a method to quickly and easily log flow failures and notify the flow owner. Admittedly, there are gaps, which I will address later, but this method has greatly improved our responsiveness to failures and identification of core issues. ​ Setting the table Perhaps we have a simple flow that retrieves SharePoint items on a schedule and sends one reminder email. We also want to be immediately notified when the flow fails. To do that, we start creating a Scope to encapsulate the flow failure logging actions. This also makes it incredibly easy to copy and paste across flows. More critically, we need to set the Log flow failure scope to only run when there is a failure. You do this by changing the scope’s Configure run after settings. By default, all actions run after the previous action ‘is successful’. In our case, we want the scope to run when the prior action ‘has failed’, ‘is skipped’, or ‘has timed out’. These three outcomes cover scenarios such as these: Has failed: the scope will run if the previous action has failed Is skipped: the scope will run if the previous action was skipped because a prior action failed. For example, the ‘Get items’ step failed and the ‘Send email’ action was never initiated. Has timed out: the scope will run if the prior action timed out. This commonly occurs when an approval is not completed within 30 days. There are times when you may only want the Log flow failure scope to run after the previous action has failed, so use your own business case to set the run after settings. ​ Getting workflow details Now that the scope will run when desired, we need to capture critical flow run details. There is a handy flow expression called workflow(). As you will see, the output provides flow run details that allow you to generate the link to the particular run! I have underlined the critical values. { "id": "/subscriptions/de199c31-4f16-4099-87e6-0b5042c8bada/resourceGroups/F24185AE9B1C4 DAA8E323BC7BA68B0C3-0845F0C2652041ED9E6FB4FCDBA1C2D0/providers/Microsoft.Logic/wo rkflows/5c215c10-fe2e-46e6-a79a-8e8f4d77ed06", "name": "5c215c10-fe2e-46e6-a79a-8e8f4d77ed06", "type": "Microsoft.Logic/workflows", "location": "westus", "tags": { "flowDisplayName": "Demo Flow Failure Log", "environmentName": "Default-f24185ae-9b1c-4daa-8e32-3bc7ba68b0c3", "logicAppName": "5c215c10-fe2e-46e6-a79a-8e8f4d77ed06", "environmentFlowSuspensionReason": "Default:2Df24185ae:2D9b1c:2D4daa:2D8e32:2D3bc7ba68b0c3-None" }, "run": { "id": "/subscriptions/de199c31-4f16-4099-87e6-0b5042c8bada/resourceGroups/F24185AE9B1C4 DAA8E323BC7BA68B0C3-0845F0C2652041ED9E6FB4FCDBA1C2D0/providers/Microsoft.Logic/wo rkflows/5c215c10-fe2e-46e6-a79a-8e8f4d77ed06/runs/08585684983136468297173891175CU 86", "name": "08585684983136468297173891175CU86", "type": "Microsoft.Logic/workflows/runs" } } Now we can generate a flow run url from the following format: https://us.flow.microsoft.com/manage/environments/{tags.environmentName}/flows/{name}/r uns/{run.name} With another simple compose set, we have the flow run url then be logged and enable the owner to quickly access the run! https://us.flow.microsoft.com/manage/environments/@{outputs('Get_workflow')?['tags']?['environment Name']}/flows/@{outputs('Get_workflow')?['name']}/runs/@{outputs('Get_workflow')?['run']?['name']} ​ From there, all that is needed is logging the failure into a centralized list. There are numerous data sources you could use, and we have used a few of them. In some cases, we use a simple SharePoint list. In others we log a bug in Azure DevOps or create a record in Dataverse. What is nice about DevOps is that it automatically notifies the bug owner that it has been created. Alternatively, you could create a flow that sends a notification when the failure is logged in a SharePoint list. Unfortunately, creating this log flow failure function will then mark a run that fails as a success in the log. This may be okay with you, but if you want those runs to be accurately marked as a failure, I suggest then adding a terminate step within the scope. Wrapping up With all of this done, you now have a simple method: ​Generate a flow run url by using the workflow() function and doing so only when a flow fails according to your criteria Log failures for immediate action Create a failure log to analyze and find trends Let us know what other methods you and your team have used to manage flows!

This month we’re giving a warm welcome to Sr. Recruiter Jordan Shaw and Recruiter Lindsay Hornsby - two new members of the RedCloud recruiting team tasked with finding the region’s top talent to help our clients solve their most pressing business challenges!  Jordan joins our team with more than 15 years of experience in Recruiting across varying industries, and Lindsay with 5+ years of experience focused on account and business development. We are honored to have their talents join our recruiting team and we can’t wait to see who they bring to the RedCloud roster in the coming months! Briefly describe your role and how long you've been at RedCloud. JS: I’m a Senior Recruiter and I joined RedCloud in September of 2021 with a focus on finding and connecting with technical consultants in the fields of data analysis, business solutions and intelligence. LH: I’m a recruiter on RedCloud’s corporate team and I also in September of 2021, the same week as Jordan! Initially I’m focusing on uncovering the best talent to serve as project/program managers, marketing experts, and related skills that can apply to a wide range of our client projects. What was it like to join RedCloud (onboarding process)? JS: Onboarding was smooth...everyone on the team has been extremely generous in helping explain the nuances of RedCloud’s approach, tools and technology. LH: The process was efficient! I interviewed with the Managing Partners over a few days, and within a week I had a job. There was an hour with the firm’s head of HR on my first day, plenty of training on the RedCloud processes, and tons of support since! Given your background and other experiences, what stands out to you with RedCloud? JS: RedCloud is a true boutique management consulting firm working primarily locally. I’ve worked for large international consulting firms and local staffing companies masquerading as consulting firms. RedCloud is the real deal and has excellent consultant satisfaction which is huge when selling a new prospective candidate. LH: RedCloud’s professionalism stands out to me - differentiating employee from consultant. So far, I enjoy working collaboratively as opposed to owning a request to completion. On our team, having five recruiters all work on a role gives us a better chance of getting a variety of candidates. We each have different contacts and do different searches so we will get a broader selection of candidates for our clients. What originally drew you to RedCloud? JS: Their great reputation as an industry-leading local boutique consulting firm. LH: Different industries, services, and candidates. It is going to be a challenge, and a huge opportunity for me, as my experience in recruiting has been different from my current focus at RedCloud, but I’m up for the challenge and feel well supported! Where do you see the future of consulting or the future of RedCloud? JS: I see myself continuing to take on more responsibilities and grow within the team; for example, propose new recruiting tools for sourcing and email campaigns. LH: In the future of RedCloud we are… Kicking (you know what)! Name one piece of technology you couldn’t live without and why? JS: My wireless mouse! Using the touchpad is so slow and cumbersome. LH: Home heating systems… It’s cold up here in the PNW! What are you looking forward to the most this year with RedCloud? JS: More consultant placements and gaining momentum to help our clients succeed! LH: I look forward to getting people on projects and the continued growth of our teams.

Brand New Series Alert! We're thrilled to introduce a fresh, education-centric series on our blog. Leading the way in this exciting initiative are RedCloud experts Benny Swedberg and Yusuf Shariff, who are diving into their preferred techniques for embedded galleries in our inaugural installment. Canvas app galleries are incredibly useful for both displaying data and creating table-like input forms that would typically be found in Excel. Like everything else in Power Apps, it is easy to throw together a gallery and make it work, but it can then turn more into to an art to improve the UI and make it look as if it’s not a Power App at all! Once you’ve mastered the gallery basics, you can take it to the next level by embedding galleries! This is a great way to replicate the ‘Group by’ functionality you might see in a SharePoint list or document library. Here I’d like to share some of my canvas app formatting best practices. Template Padding ​ By default, each gallery has the TemplatePadding property set to 5. If you’re not familiar, this is the space that is forced on each row of the gallery. Below is a screenshot of a gallery with the default TemplatePadding and a text label that is set to take up the entire space of the row (X:0, Y:0, Width:Parent.TemplateWidth, Height: Parent.TemplateHeight). Alternatively, setting the TemplatePadding to 0 results in this: Personally, I prefer to always set the Template Padding to 0. This allows me to format the gallery components more easily and perfectly fit where I want them. This will become more apparent when I discuss gallery height. Gallery.Size vs Self.Height vs Self.TemplateHeight Formatting a component within a gallery to the row height can be very useful. Unfortunately, this becomes a little more complicated in a gallery. First, the Height property of the gallery is the overall height of the gallery. Then, to set the row height of a vertical gallery or the width of a horizontal gallery, you must set the TemplateSize property. However, you cannot reference Template.Size within formulas! Instead: Vertical Gallery: TemplateSize -> TemplateHeight Horizontal Gallery: TemplateSize -> TemplateWidth Therefore, get used to mastering .TemplateHeight and .TemplateWidth when setting dimensions of gallery components. Dynamic Gallery Height Sometimes, it works great to set the gallery to the exact height it needs, therefore removing the pesky scroll bar. This comes down to simply setting the height of the gallery to the product of the TemplateHeight and the number of items in the gallery! Womp, womp… The TemplatePadding got in the way! The quick and easy fix is to set the TemplatePadding to 0. But, if you really want the automatic padding and also have the perfect height, you can adjust! That’s right, with a little bit more math, you can have your cake and eat it too. Height = CountRows(Self.AllItems) * (Self.TemplateHeight + Self.TemplatePadding) + Self.TemplatePadding Remove the Scroll Bar ​There comes a time when you just can’t remove the scroll bar by dynamically adjusting the height of the gallery. Personally, I don’t like the look of the scroll bar because all of a sudden, your padding disappears, or your icon gets partially covered. Instead, I suggest ShowScrollbar = false and ShowNavigation = true. Now your padding is still showing, and users can still be visually queued that there is more to see! Embedded Gallery Basics ​Here it is, the basics of embedding galleries: That’s all it is. Start with a flexible-height gallery. Then, add a text label as the title or header of each repeating gallery. Finally, insert a regular vertical gallery into the flexible-height gallery and use the instructions in the above Dynamic Gallery Height section. ​ Here, you can see the quick results of 10 minutes of formatting. These are only a few best practices that I have found myself using regularly. Let us know what best practices or common techniques you find yourself using!

Through multiple acquisitions, a global e-commerce company found itself with an unmanaged information security landscape, creating large scale vulnerabilities for the company and its private data. THE CHALLENGE After eight years of unconfigured and unmanaged data, the company lacked not only data storage practices, but access to it and the ability to act upon data coming from a multitude of different security tools, putting it at risk of future breaches. The company was spending 65% of its team's time solely on vulnerability containment and remediation, leaving little time and resources for detection and prevention. To solve this issue the company turned to RedCloud consultants to develop a clear and full picture of their information security landscape, from which vulnerabilities be identified, contained, and mitigated prior to impact. Ultimately, the goal was to reduce the risk of security breaches and their cascading business impacts. "[RedCloud is] incredibly knowledgeable in their field and are able to communicate various levels of information across the resource spectrum, from SVP down through the execution level. It’s always a pleasure to work with people who have mastered their craft." - Client Representative THE SOLUTION RedCloud began with an in-depth audit of the numerous security platforms across the company from which data was being pulled and stored, as well as the existing Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) software being used to provide real-time analysis of security alerts. The audit exposed that the company’s data quality was subpar, so RedCloud set out to clean existing data sets and prepare it for migration to a common data storage platform from which real-time reporting dashboards were built. In parallel, RedCloud developed processes for hardening the company’s security surface area including networks, code, applications, and third-party tools – documenting steps along the way to create new comprehensive data dictionaries and playbooks. Finding that all security data was stored locally, RedCloud then developed and implemented a transition plan for moving all of the company’s security data to a leading hosting solution in order to assure redundancy and reliability. THE RESULTS Through the process of bringing clarity and consistency to all of the data sources, RedCloud helped the client to secure private data, have a true, real-time picture of its security landscape, protect critical infrastructure, and ultimately prevent the loss of customer, financial, and human resources data. ​With data now stored securely in the cloud, the company ensured access to and redundancy of this critical piece to operations, strengthening trust with partners and customers and enabling ongoing business success.

Back to school? We can’t believe it either! Those three words mark the end of summer and the kickoff to a new season of learning (our favorite!). As we look forward to rounding out the year and starting 2022 with momentum, we continue our dedication to supporting important organizations in our community with ongoing support to Solid Ground’s Broadview Shelter & Transitional Housing. As our team learns more about the needs of the children and families at Broadview, we always have our radar on for opportunities to help. Broadview does an amazing job of providing a safe haven to families, mostly mothers, and their children, with a secure home location in Seattle while they experience homelessness or domestic abuse. Broadview is a place to start over, but being there and away from home certainly comes with challenges, even with some of the basics for children that many of us take for granted, like school supplies. To get the new school year off to a good start for the children at Broadview—many of whom haven’t been in person at school for a year and a half due to the pandemic—we were thrilled to partner again with Toys for Kids (TfK) to provide back-to-school backpacks for the Broadview students as part of TfK’s annual campaign. We all remember the feeling of fresh crayons, a new set of folders, a binder of new, crisp writing paper, sharp pencils, and, of course...a backpack with style. That excitement is one that every student deserves, so we jumped at the opportunity to partner with TfK to provide 30 fully stocked bags, all ready to go for the new year ahead. Supplies help each student feel prepared and equal in their classroom and take some of the stress off of attending school during a tumultuous time at home. This is the latest in a series of projects we’ve supported in 2021 - our Year of Broadview, as we like to call it. We started with a donation of new technology to support remote/pandemic learning (Microsoft tablets, Microsoft Office software, and mic headsets) - and we vowed to continue the support all year. In February, we attended a Broadview Lunch and Learn to hear all we could about the shelter and its residents. Throughout the second and third quarters, our recruiting team provided their time and dedication in addition to helpful resources in the form of a Career Day, with the offering to continue the support 1:1 as needed. In May, we surprised the residents with a special Mother’s Day delivery, and this past summer, we hosted a professional photoshoot for families at Broadview and local photographer Toni from Pinto Portrait. But the year is not over yet, so we’re excited to continue the support as 2021 wraps up. We can’t wait to hear about what all of the Broadview kids are learning at school this year!

We’re sharing exciting news on the RedCloud blog today! With our announcement in June that the Puget Sound Business Journal once again listed us on their annual Washington's Best Workplaces, we’re thrilled to have recently learned that we were ranked the #12 best workplace for large companies in the state and the highest among large consulting firms. The publication rounds up the top 100 businesses all based on employee satisfaction, conducting surveys facilitated by the independent research firm Quantum Workplace. Beyond the helpful data points that come from employee surveys, we also love to hear positive feedback from our team, such as: RedCloud walks the talk, is much "higher touch" than other consulting companies, has a healthy set of clients (not just a single large organization), is completely open door, encourages ideas, makes investments in people/ideas, and is taking measures to continue to mature service areas. We know that 2020 and 2021 have continued to throw new challenges our way as a team and as individuals as we serve our clients, so this award means even more to us given the timing. We hold true to our dedication to transparency - even during our busiest and most chaotic seasons of work. Given that the survey results showed overwhelmingly positive results, we’re so grateful to our team. It is because of each of our employees and their dedication to the success of our clients and each other that we’ve landed here today. One of the biggest challenges we have as a constantly growing firm is staying authentic to our roots of Transparency and Integrity—but it’s one aspect we remain most dedicated to. At each step that we take to grow our team, our talented recruiting team scouts out the best of the best to maintain RedCloud’s high level of client service. A big kudos to them on a job well done as recruiting moved virtual!