About Us
Management as Tradecraft
TM
Tractus Strategic Partners was founded in 2021 to meet a growing need: helping organizations strengthen their management practices and plan for the future. We believe good management is not a given—it is a skill that can be developed, practiced, and refined over time.
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Our name, Tractus (Latin for "progress," "course," or "drawing out") describes the path an organization follows. We believe that path should be intentional, guided by strong management and thoughtful strategy.
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Our Vision: Organizations thrive when managers are confident, teams are aligned, and planning is purposeful.
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Our Mission: We help organizations across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors strengthen management practices, build internal capacity, and plan strategically for the future.
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Our Guiding Principles:
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Integrity: Honest guidance, grounded in trust
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Empathy: Practical solutions that honor people and culture
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Holistic Viewpoint: Understanding how people, structure, and strategy connect
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Individuality: Respecting the uniqueness of each organization and the people within it
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Excellence: High-quality, relevant, actionable work
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Balance: Where strategic thinking meets day-to-day reality
Kimberly A. Carlson, Ph.D.
Chief Executive Officer
Co-Founder
Charity L. Boyette, Ph.D.
Chief Operating Officer
Co-Founder
Kimberly Carlson has worked with nonprofit and governmental organizations both professionally and academically for over twenty years. Her work centers on strategic planning, organizational leadership and management, succession planning, board development, and community engagement.
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As CEO of Tractus Strategic Partners, Kimberly helps mission-driven organizations strengthen leadership, clarify direction, and build management capacity. She also serves as an Associate Professor of Practice in Management in the Pamplin College of Business at Virginia Tech, where she contributes to research, serves on Ph.D. committees, and occasionally teaches.
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Before co-founding Tractus, she held multiple faculty and leadership roles at Virginia Tech through the Center for Public Administration and Policy, the Department of Political Science, University Honors, and Advancement. She served as Assistant Director of the Presidential Global Scholars program and Fulbright Program Adviser. She also led university-wide volunteer engagement efforts as Director of Volunteer Advisory Board Strategy, working closely with leadership volunteers and advisory boards to promote alignment, integration, and collaboration. Earlier in her career, she worked with nonprofits in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and Pensacola, Florida.
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She holds a B.S. in psychology and a B.A. in theatre from Virginia Tech, an MSW in clinical social work from Florida State University, and a Ph.D. in public administration and public affairs, with a focus on nonprofit and non-governmental management and organizational leadership, from Virginia Tech.
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Charity Boyette has more than two decades of experience in managing teams and programs, with a particular focus in managerial excellence and team leadership, engagement, and development.
Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of Practice in Management within the Pamplin College of Business at Virginia Tech. From 2009-2018, she was a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Department of State, serving overseas tours in Nigeria, Poland, and Belgium, as well as assignments in Washington, DC, including two years on Secretary of State Kerry’s travel team. Prior to her federal service, Charity worked in leadership development, operations, and finance in the U.S. defense industry.
She holds a Ph.D. with a focus on public-sector workforce engagement and development from the Center for Public Administration and Policy at Virginia Tech. She earned her MBA, with a focus in strategic development, from the Mason School of Business at the College of William & Mary and a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Averett University in Virginia