Building what doesn’t exist yet.
Transforming what does.
Strategy through execution.
No handoffs.
Shasta Advisory provides a fractional Chief Strategy Officer for building new capabilities, stakeholder ecosystems, and organizational operations for healthcare, government, and social impact organizations and startup companies.
Three ways to work with Shasta Advisory.
A fractional Chief Strategy Officer who leads business development, builds strategic partnerships, and drives organizational transformation without the cost or commitment of a full-time hire.
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Senior strategic leader embedded inside your organization — from co-creating the vision to driving execution — without the cost or commitment of a full-time hire.
Strategy Development · Executive Advising · Advisory Board Building
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Strategic partnerships aren’t built over one meeting. Opening doors to decision makers, building the relationships, and positioning your organization to win the partnerships and collaborations.
Partnership Development · Stakeholder Mapping · Executive Briefing
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Creating the teams, relationships, and operational foundations that let new initiatives take hold inside complex organizations.
New Initiative Design · Stakeholder Engagement · Capacity Building
Selected Work
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A startup founder navigating a co-founder separation and leadership restructuring engaged Shasta Advisory during a period of organizational instability. Carol diagnosed a critical leadership gap, activated her executive network to bring in the right people, and provided continuity through a complete business model pivot — from a healthcare provider with a MSO to a lifestyle and wellness concierge company. She remained the only consistent strategic partner throughout. The company came out the other side with a new direction, the right strategic partnerships in place, and a strategy it could actually execute.
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Shasta Advisory was retained by Swissnex, an initiative of Switzerland’s State Secretariat for Education, Research, and Innovation, to orient a cohort of Swiss healthcare startup founders and CEOs preparing to enter the U.S. market. Carol provided a structured briefing on U.S. healthcare system architecture, payer and provider dynamics, and the federal and state policy landscape shaping market access. The cohort left with a clear-eyed view of the regulatory, political, and commercial complexity of the U.S. market; thus, more grounded entry strategy because of it. Non-U.S. founders and international accelerators engage Shasta Advisory to understand the regulatory, political, and commercial complexity of U.S. healthcare before committing to an entry strategy.
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Shasta Advisory was engaged by CIBHS first as a speaker on value-based care transformation for behavioral health and substance use providers, then retained as a strategic advisor to help providers build operational plans for Medicaid transformation. Carol worked directly alongside providers as they built the plans, budgets, and operational structures they needed to move forward, coaching them through organizational roadblocks and helping secure internal leadership buy-in. Providers left with work they could act on immediately, not just a clearer picture of what was coming.
Shasta Advisory
Shasta Advisory exists for companies in the middle of something hard or not sure where to begin. The vision is clear but the path is not, where the capability does not yet exist, and where the stakes are too high for a strategy to stay on a slide deck. We partner with healthcare, government, and social impact leaders as their fractional Chief Strategy Officer: executive-level strategy, stakeholder relationships, and execution under one roof.
No handoffs.
Launching Shasta Advisory wasn’t my grand plan.
After more than a decade as a healthcare executive, I left without a roadmap. No five-year plan, no carefully timed exit strategy, no side hustle. Just time and space to figure out what I actually wanted to do next.
So I started paying attention. Not to what I’ve done or know how to do, but to when I've shown up best.
And a pattern emerged.
“A Whole Team In One.”
The moments I felt most alive in my work weren't the ones where I was executing a clear plan. They were the ones where an elected official, a CEO, or a senior leader came to me with something half-formed — an idea, a vision, a problem — and no real playbook for how to get there. Sometimes there wasn't even a clear “there,” there.
Those were the moments
I lived for.
I helped build one of the nation's first school-based health clinics by threading together a county government, a public school district, and a Federally Qualified Health Center into a new healthcare delivery model. I was handed a corporate foundation that had drifted from its purpose and repositioned it. And the chapter that crystallized for me: building a new team and two advisory boards from scratch and to manage a $170M impact investment portfolio inside a Fortune 100 company. No template, no precedent inside the organization. Within three years, we had deployed over $40M in capital improving healthcare across communities in California.
Every time, the assignment was different, but the same at its core: here is the vision, now make it real.
Mission-driven leaders come to me with a vision. They have a product, a solution, or a new initiative. What they don't have is the way to connect dots, the stakeholder map, or a clear path to the right people. That's where I come in. A partner who treats their vision like my own.
"As a business owner, it helped that she understands this is your dream. When she understands that, it becomes her dream too."
— Malik Jackson, Founder & CEO of The Care League
Our StoryCarol Kim is the Founder & Principal of Shasta Advisory.
As a senior health policy advisor for the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, she advised on a $4 billion health system serving 10 million residents — advancing the architecture of health, public health and mental health systems, the politics of institutional change, and what it actually takes to move decisions through government.
At a Fortune 100 managed care company, Carol led government relations, corporate philanthropy, and public affairs for California. She was tapped to build from scratch: a new team, two advisory boards, and the governance framework to manage a $170M impact investment portfolio. In the first three years, she deployed over $40M in capital into community health infrastructure, telehealth services, and health equity initiatives across California. By every meaningful measure, it was a startup inside a multinational Fortune 100 company.
At every Shasta Advisory engagement, Carol sits at the table as an executive strategist and peer. She translates vision into operating reality, brokers strategic partnerships that open doors, and builds the capabilities for an organization to be ready for what comes next.
Carol has held senior advisory roles in the U.S. Senate and the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and currently serves as Finance and Investment Committee Chair at the California Insurance Guarantee Association, overseeing a $4 billion portfolio, and as Commissioner on the Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services Commission. She is also Founding Co-Chair of 50/50 Women On Boards- Bay Area.
Carol has completed executive AI programs at Wharton, Stanford Graduate School of Business, and Pepperdine's School of Public Policy, including Pepperdine's Harnessing AI for Public Service, a course designed for government leaders. She now helps local governments and leaders govern AI adoption.
Your Questions, Answered
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A fractional Chief Strategy Officer is a senior executive who embeds inside your organization to lead strategy and execution — without the cost or commitment of a full-time hire. Unlike a consultant who advises from the outside, a fractional CSO works from inside the organization, owns outcomes, and stays through implementation. At Shasta Advisory, that means no handoffs, no slide decks without follow-through, and no strategy that lives on a shelf.
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Most consulting firms deliver a strategy and leave. Shasta Advisory is built differently — Carol co-creates the strategy, develops the partnerships, and executes the vision from inside your organization. She operates as an executive peer to CEOs and senior leaders, not as an outside advisor. The work doesn’t end at recommendations. It ends when the strategy is executed, operational, and ready for what’s next.
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It depends on what the work actually requires. If you need an outside analysis, a market study, or a one-time deliverable, a traditional consultant may be the right fit. If you need someone to build something, own a strategy from development through execution, and function as part of your leadership team — that's a fractional executive. It's whether someone hands you a plan or rolls up their sleeves and builds it with you.
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Shasta Advisory works with healthcare companies, government entities, social impact organizations, and startups — typically those navigating a significant transformation, building a new capability, or trying to execute a vision without a clear roadmap. Clients are often mission-driven leaders who know where they want to go but need an experienced executive partner to help them get there.
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Carol specializes in building what doesn’t yet exist — partnerships, programs, capabilities, and operational infrastructure in complex, multi-stakeholder environments. Her background spans government, a Fortune 100 managed care company including its corporate philanthropy and impact investment portfolio, and early-stage startups. She brings particular depth in strategic partnership development, stakeholder ecosystem building, and organizational transformation.
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Engagements are tailored to where the organization is and what it needs. Some clients bring Carol in as their ongoing fractional CSO. Others engage Shasta Advisory for a specific initiative or project such as a partnership strategy, a market entry, or an organizational build. In every case, the work is hands-on, executive-level, and built around execution — not just advice.
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Most engagements run on a monthly retainer with a three-month minimum — enough runway to move from strategy into execution and start seeing results. For organizations with a defined, time-bound initiative, a project-based engagement may be a better fit. Either way, scope and structure are always tailored to what the organization actually needs. The right starting point is a conversation.
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Yes. Some of Shasta Advisory’s most impactful work has been with early-stage founders who have a clear vision but need an experienced executive partner to help build the infrastructure, relationships, and strategy to make it real. Carol has worked with founders from the earliest stages of company building through growth and scaling.
Contact Us
The right strategy starts with the right conversation. Tell us about your work and we’ll take it from there.
-Shasta Advisory