(978) 245-6353
Chelmsford, MA
LinkedIn — Al Frugoli
LinkedIn — Updraft Advisory
Career built from the ground up
I started in direct support in 1995. That's not incidental. It's foundational. Thirty years of progressive leadership across IDD, PACE, behavioral health, and community services means I've held nearly every role in the organizations I now advise.
That arc matters for consulting. When I walk into an organization facing a merger, a regulatory challenge, or a policy fight, I'm not pattern-matching from a distance. I've built the staffing models, run the audits, written the RFRs, and sat in the DDS meetings.
Updraft Advisory exists because organizations keep facing the same hard moment: a leadership change, a volatile funding environment, a question about whether the current path even holds. One recent engagement started as exactly that, a $12M organization questioning its path through an impending leadership transition in a shifting market, and a merger was the answer that came out of the work, not the problem that started it. Organizations doing that kind of work deserve someone who's actually run it, not just advised on it.