We’re Different

We optimize the way people work together to generate industry-defining results and value appreciation by strengthening the core capabilities required to build and sustain full potential performance. Mining and leveraging the creativity, expertise and wisdom of your talent, we catalyze excellence in execution and customer experience. Soft work, hard results.

We are a team of highly experienced business accelerators with backgrounds that span across diverse yet complementary disciplines. We add measurable value across industries and sectors for competitive enterprises that range from dynamic emerging businesses to blue chip global corporations, from highly entrepreneurial ventures to mission-driven nonprofits.

Aperio grew out of the convergence of interests that emerged from the two distinctively different career paths and evolutions of our co-founders, Sandy and Jo Anne Nelson.

Sandy Nelson—Co-Founder

An internationally recognized architect and principal of a rapidly growing firm, Sandy Nelson had an unparalleled track record of forming and leading cross-disciplinary teams to world-class performance.

Over time, Mr. Nelson was invited with increasing frequency to contribute to his client’s strategic conversations. Routinely interacting with executives in a wide range of industries, he came to see that the performance of even the most successful ventures often fell short of their potential. Mostly this was a result of impediments within the soft side or intangible aspects of execution.

The gap he perceived in business performance progressively grew into an obsession with designing solutions for structuring and orienting organizations in ways that optimized how people work together, making it possible for them to achieve and sustain Full Potential Performance. As a result, his primary interests shifted from designing built environments to supporting the success of the people and organizations that occupy them.

Mr. Nelson chose to leave architecture and pursue his vision of forming a new, more innovative and impactful type of business consultancy—one that would embrace and contribute the unique combination of creativity, pragmatism and accountability that are central to the practice of architecture, yet often missing in traditional business consultancies.

Jo Anne Nelson—Co-Founder

A junior Olympic diver, college scholarship athlete and Doctor of Chiropractic, Jo Anne Nelson founded and led a private practice for many years. She increasingly found herself advising highly accomplished executives on how to maintain personal well-being in the midst of demanding business and personal commitments.

Over time, Dr. Nelson began to feel like she was repairing flat tires—patients came to her office deflated in one manner or another; she would generate improvement, offer counsel, and step aside while each went back into their day-to-day routines; within a few weeks, the patient would return with complaints similar to those of their last visit. Wanting to offer more than a temporary fix, she began to analyze why her patients were unable to optimize their performance and sustain it.

Recognizing that the health of individuals is so often a direct reflection of how and where they spend their time and energy, she began to look at her client’s workplaces. She found that many organizations structure themselves in a way that does not allow their talent to optimize their performance. As a result, she shifted her focus to building healthy organizations. Jo Anne chose to sell her successful practice to pursue her vision for creating a consulting practice devoted to helping optimize the performance of accomplished executives and the competitive enterprises they lead, manage and operate.