Consultant Spotlight: Valerie Toscano, Program and Project Manager

An integration project can seem like a tightly tangled knot, where each strand requires patience and precision to unravel. While such initiatives can cause sleepless nights for our clients, Senior Strategic Consultant Valerie Toscano specializes in untangling the intricacies. 

“I love taking a big, messy, ugly problem and solving it, building relationships and trust as I collaborate with teams and with senior management,” she says. “I love looking back at a project and saying, ‘We did this!’”  

Valerie brings more than 20 years of financial service experience to her work for Blu Pagoda. Her expertise runs the gamut from large-scale product launches, technology implementations, and merger integration work to one-on-one collaboration with entrepreneurs.  

While clients know they can rely on her vast experience, they’re equally grateful for her deep understanding of the emotional components that come when working through an integration project such as a merger or acquisition. When it seems like everything’s unraveling (in all the wrong ways!), Valerie takes pride in being the calm in the chaos while bringing insight and expertise needed to move the project forward and ultimately across the finish line. 

Where does this calm come from? Experience, of course. But Valerie knows that to help her clients feel confident and at ease, she needs to feel confident and at ease herself. She’s currently reading Rest Is Resistance by Tricia Hersey, a book that explores the value of rest and how grind culture has become the undoing of self. “As consultants, we’re always hustling and doing for others,” she says, “but I recognize that if you want to be the calm, you have to be calm.” 

It’s all about balance. In addition to ensuring she has plenty of rest time, in her leisure time, Valerie values both kicking it up a notch and keeping it chill, in equal turns. “I love fitness and food,” she says. “I’m an avid tennis player and gym rat, but I’m an equally passionate baker and wine/cocktail drinker.”  

To find out more about how Valerie can bring her expertise and equilibrium to your next knotty project, talk to Blu.