About the firm

A consultancy built around one conviction: every ecosystem platform deserves an operating model.

Sympatheia Partners is a firm of partnership operators, agent engineers, and revenue strategists who’ve spent the last decade inside SaaS ecosystem platforms and GSI alliance organizations. We started this firm because we kept watching the same dynamic: bright partner leaders running brilliant programs on infrastructure that couldn’t keep up.

The Sympatheia manifesto

A partner ecosystem is a living system. It has stakeholders, signals, motions, and outcomes. When it’s healthy, every part feels every other, a deal stall reaches the right account team, a certification surge becomes pipeline, a customer reference becomes the next campaign.

When it’s unhealthy, the signals die in spreadsheets. The CRO and the CFO argue about a forecast. The CMO and the Partner Executive argue about MDF. The CPO ships features the partners don’t need and skips the ones they’ve been asking for. The work compounds in the wrong direction.

Our work is to make the connective tissue intelligent. Not to build a chatbot. Not to deliver a deck. To install the operating model, the agents, the data layer, the cadence, the stakeholder alignment, that lets every part of the ecosystem feel every other.

We named the firm after the Stoic principle that describes this kind of system. Sympatheia. Felt coherence. Every part connected, every signal transmitted, every motion compounding into the whole.

, Founding principles, 2026
What we believe

Six convictions that shape every engagement.

Not values. Convictions. The things we’ve seen enough times to argue for in a contested room.

Conviction i

Partner programs are operating models, not marketing functions.

The default org chart still treats partners as a marketing or sales ops subfunction. That’s a category error. A serious ecosystem platform is a cross functional operating model that touches every C suite outcome. It needs to be staffed and instrumented accordingly.

Conviction ii

The AI work is downstream of the stakeholder work.

You can’t ship agents into a program where the CRO and the Partner Executive don’t agree on the definition of partner influenced revenue. The stakeholder alignment comes first, the AI follows, deployed in service of the alignment we’ve already secured.

Conviction iii

The data layer is the single highest leverage investment.

Every project that fails fails at the data layer. Stale technographics, fragmented identity, broken Salesforce to warehouse sync. The teams who get this right ship faster on every subsequent agent. The teams who don’t spend a year explaining why the model is "almost ready."

Conviction iv

Two anchor partners beats twenty.

The temptation in Build is always to onboard ten partners. The discipline is to ship against two. Tight iteration loops with a real partner CSM, a real partner seller, a real co marketing campaign, that’s where the operating model actually gets tuned.

Conviction v

Cadence is the unit of trust.

An executive trusts a system they read every week. We install the cadence first, Friday CRO, monthly CMO, quarterly CPO, and design every dashboard, every agent, every report against the cadence we’ve agreed to.

Conviction vi

The firm earns its seat every quarter.

Run phase contracting is outcome anchored. If we miss the headline KPI two quarters in a row without a documented external driver, we discount or end the engagement with a clean handoff. We hold ourselves to the same evidence standard we hold the agents to.

Leadership

The people in the room.

Senior partners with operating experience inside the programs they now advise. Every engagement is led by a partner who has run the cadence we’re installing, not just consulted on it.

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Jay Rumwell

Founder & Managing Partner

Twenty years inside ecosystem platforms and alliance organizations. Built and operated co sell motions at three SaaS companies through scale stages. Specializes in the CRO/Partner Executive partnership and the cadence that holds the two together.

Prior: VP Alliances at growth stage SaaS; Channels Director at public SaaS; Big 4 strategy advisory.
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Aurora Tanaka

Partner · Build & Agent Engineering

Eleven years building production AI systems before AI became a marketing term. Led the engineering pod on every agent in the Sympatheia catalog. Holds the line on the eval framework and the data layer first sequencing.

Prior: Staff engineer at infrastructure AI startup; Snowflake Cortex early adopter program; ML platforms at fintech scale up.
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Marcus Pinto

Partner · Partner Economics & Diagnostics

Former CFO who pivoted into partner economics modeling. Holds the line on the diagnostic memo and the forecast reconciliation cadence. The one who walks the CFO through the numbers and the one who tells us when we’re reaching.

Prior: CFO at growth stage SaaS; FP&A lead at public SaaS; M&A advisory at boutique investment bank.
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Deepa Bharadwaj

Partner · Operating Model & Change

Spent a decade running operating model rebuilds at large GSIs. Owns the cadence design, the RACI work, and the change management work that protects the engagement from drift. The one who makes the operating model real in the room.

Prior: Operating Model Practice lead at Big 4 advisory; Chief of Staff at large GSI; ecosystem platform rebuild at Fortune 100 SaaS.
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Yusuf Kamau

Partner · Run & Outcomes

Runs the Run phase pods. Sat across the table from a CRO every Friday for six years before joining Sympatheia. Holds the outcome anchored contracting model and the quarterly KPI reviews that decide whether we earned the next quarter.

Prior: Revenue Operations leader at public SaaS; field CRO advisor; chief of staff to a public company CRO.
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Sloane Chen

Partner · UX & Dashboard Architecture

Designs the executive facing surface area of every engagement, the Partner Operations dashboard, the QBR templates, the executive brief format. Believes that a great dashboard reads like a memo, not a wall of charts.

Prior: Design lead at enterprise analytics SaaS; consulting design partner at McKinsey QuantumBlack; brand systems at design boutique.
The Sympatheia lexicon, words we use, and words we avoid
ecosystem · operating model · not synergy · connective tissue · stakeholder alignment · not disruption · co sell · partner influenced revenue · not paradigm shift · health score · forecast reconciliation · not best in class · adaptive enablement · agent · pillar · lifecycle · signal · outcome · cadence · readiness · attach
Firm at a glance

The shape of the firm.

Small enough to put senior people in every room. Large enough to ship a coordinated agent suite into a Fortune 500 environment without subcontracting.

6 Partners with operating experience inside the programs they advise
24 Production grade AI agents in the catalog and growing quarterly
4 Phases of engagement, each with named deliverables and quality gates
5 C level stakeholders convened on every engagement
The first conversation

Two hours in a room with a partner. No deck.

Our first conversation is a working session, not a sales pitch. Bring your hardest two stakeholder tensions, your current cadence, and your partner P&L. We’ll bring our diagnostic frame and a candid read. If we’re a fit, we’ll quote scope before you leave.

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