Your best people are leaving. Everything they know is leaving with them.
And They Grew helps care organizations preserve the wisdom of their most experienced people — and use it to grow the leaders coming next. We build the systems, the mentorship, and the human connection that turn every transition into a step forward instead of a setback.
When one person leaves, everything changes.
Processes stall. Institutional knowledge disappears. New leaders rebuild what already existed. The team absorbs the strain — again.
Most care organizations don't fail because people don't care. They fail because critical knowledge lives in people's heads — and when those people retire, burn out, or move on, it leaves with them. When a longtime leader retires, decades of judgment can walk out the door in a single day.
The cost is bigger than most leaders realize. Replacing a single experienced employee can cost between half and twice their annual salary — and in skilled care roles, far more. But the deepest loss never shows up on an invoice: the judgment, relationships, and institutional knowledge that walk out the door and don't come back.
The cost isn't just financial. It's the exhaustion of starting over, season after season, year after year.
We preserve what your experienced people know - and grow the leaders who come next.
Every organization we serve is really doing two things at once: honoring the people who carry decades of hard-won wisdom, and preparing the people who will carry it next. We do both. First, we see clearly what you're facing — the turnover, the looming retirement, the new leader learning under pressure. Then we build the systems and connections that move that wisdom from the people who hold it to the people who need it. And we leave your organization able to keep growing its own — so each transition makes you stronger instead of sending you back to the beginning.
That movement is our PEN™ framework: we Affirm what your experienced people know, Affiliate that knowledge to the leaders coming next, and Accelerate it into systems that let your organization grow its own people for good. What you're left with is clarity about what you were at risk of losing, the capability to carry it forward, and a team that is stronger and more connected than before.
Our work spans three areas — consulting, development, and connection — small, focused work with a single leader; group learning across a team or cohort; and the wider connection that lets wisdom travel further. Here's where most organizations begin:
Workforce Continuity Diagnostic
A focused assessment that shows you exactly where your organization is losing institutional knowledge, why your people are leaving, and what it's costing you — with a 90-day action plan to fix it. Investment: starting at $8,500.
Director Continuity Cohort
A 10-week leadership experience for care directors who are carrying too much alone. You'll build the continuity systems your organization needs — alongside peers who understand exactly what you're going through. Investment: $6,500 per seat.
Custom Continuity Engagements
For multi-site operators and larger organizations: full retention system design, knowledge preservation architecture, and succession planning. Investment: $25,000–$75,000+.
Leadership & Professional Development
Meaningful, sustainable onboarding and development for the leaders coming next — mentorship, retention, and succession strategy that connects experienced wisdom to rising talent. Designed so new leaders step in supported, not stranded. OSSE-approved professional learning available for early childhood programs. Investment: $2,500–$5,000.
Curriculum Development
Custom curriculum design and review for care and education programs — built so your approach stays consistent even as your people change. Investment: $5,000–$15,000.
This work is for organizations that are tired of starting over.
You run an early childhood center, a healthcare system, or a senior living community. Maybe you've lost experienced people and felt the impact. Maybe a key leader is preparing to retire, or a new one is stepping into more than they were handed the tools for. You're ready to build something that lasts. Ready to preserve what your best people know and grow the ones coming next — not just hire and hope.
If losing one leader would disrupt your operations, this work is for you.
Systems that strengthen. Wisdom that Scales.
And They Grew was hidden in my father’s name before any of us heard it.
He died before we knew the full story of how he got that name. Years later, my husband heard what the rest of us never had — the sound of it carried "And They Grew" inside. A name about growth had been there all along, hidden in plain sound, waiting for someone to hear it.
That is what we do now: help organizations hear what their people know, preserve what matters, and prepare others to pass it forward.
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And They Grew was hidden in my father’s name before any of us heard it.
He died before we knew the full story of how he got that name. Years later, my husband heard what the rest of us never had — the sound of it carried "And They Grew" inside. A name about growth had been there all along, hidden in plain sound, waiting for someone to hear it.
That is what we do now: help organizations hear what their people know, preserve what matters, and prepare others to pass it forward.
Most of what matters is like that — held quietly in people, waiting to be heard before it is lost.
My mother taught me that first. Widowed at 28 with three children under nine, she held our family together by herself while caring for the young and the aging — with no system to share the load and no one who had carried the same weight to guide her. Responsibility that heavy, held alone, wears anyone down. What she needed wasn't a resource on a list, but people beside her who had carried it too.
I've spent twenty-four years inside care organizations, and I've watched the same story repeat everywhere — experienced leaders holding entire programs together the way my mother held our family: unsupported, unseen, and carrying knowledge no manual had captured. When they burn out, retire, or transition, they take more than their job title with them. They take history, judgment, relationships, and the quiet knowledge that makes the work possible.
I felt that weight myself. And somewhere in those years, I stopped wishing someone would build what was missing and decided to build it myself.
Isolation is not the end of the story.
My grandmother taught me, as a child, that real change comes from a series of slight corrections — small adjustments that compound over time. You don't have to move mountains to change things.
When I graduated college, my grandfather gave me a poem he wrote about what happens when people stop orbiting by themselves and finally connect — "merging, a newness of life, another purpose."
Between them, my family taught me the whole of it — my mother showed me what's at stake, my grandmother how change happens, my grandfather why connection matters. Together, the three are how we work: small, intentional corrections that draw isolated people back into connection — because connection is what turns separate strengths into something that stands.
The people who hold care organizations together deserve more than to do it by themselves. What they know should be honored, organized, shared, and passed on — so the next person doesn't start from scratch, and no one keeping it all together has to do it alone.
That is why And They Grew exists. We serve early childhood education, healthcare, and senior living — the places where knowledge is deeply human, operationally critical, and too easily lost. We build the systems and connections that preserve what matters and prepare the people who come next.
— Julie Williams, Founder & Principal Consultant
If your organization is facing turnover, a coming retirement, a new leader who needs support, or the quiet loss of institutional knowledge, let's talk.
Or email: wisdom@andtheygrew.com