We strive to delight consumers
About Us
Seurat Group is an insights-driven consumer packaged goods consulting and private equity firm whose mission is to delight consumers. We create for our clients the clarity to act & invest in a better future.
Inspired by Georges Seurat, the founder of Pointillism who used dots of color to create complete works of art, we artfully integrate multiple lenses of insight to unlock new perspective & uncover new opportunities.
Seurat Consulting
We are relentlessly focused on unlocking growth for our clients, applying forward-looking insights and whole brain thinking to design custom, commercial solutions that create competitive advantage. Our challenger mentality sets us apart.
Forward-Looking Insights
We uncover the attitudes, motivations and behaviors of leading-edge consumers and shoppers, using a fact-based approach to shape future strategies that create growth for brands, categories and retailers
Forward–Looking Insights
———
Our competitors rely heavily on sources like syndicated, behavioral and attitudinal data and competitive benchmarking. This type of analysis takes a rear-view mirror approach – often leading to incremental change and putting brands and retailers in the position of playing catch-up.
Predictive insights are borne from understanding leading-edge shoppers and what motivates them to behave differently. With each insights engagement, we elevate predictive insights to actionable strategies, enabling our partners to leapfrog the competition and lead their respective categories.
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We helped a pet food manufacturer reignite growth in a stagnant category and reimagine the way they engage with customers by reframing the category from what pet food is to what it does
-
We helped a multi-category manufacturer become a strategic partner with their ecommerce customers by creating a consumer segmentation of online shoppers, providing insight on how consumers shop differently across sites and platforms
-
We helped an OTC manufacturer reorient its marketing strategy and create clarity at shelf by pivoting to a solutions-based architecture, enabling a more successful shopper experience
Growth Strategy
We help clients reimagine long-range planning by shepherding them through a consumer-centric process of identifying attractive spaces, unlocking growth pathways & building omnichannel tactics
Growth Strategy
———
To create differential growth, we believe long-range planning must be grounded in a common growth strategy that places the consumer at the center. An effective growth strategy wires a company’s or brand’s purpose to actions, creating the rationale and conviction to orient toward the most attractive opportunities.
Our process identifies a company’s edge, attractive strategies and lays out a tactical plan to commercialize the most compelling opportunities. Our goal is to enable clients to make confident choices and investments in enterprise strategies that in turn guide the functional strategies.
-
We helped a regional dairy brand transform into a leading national brand, reframing the portfolio to increase velocity in the existing footprint while developing new strategies to fuel successful geographic expansion
-
We reimagined a direct-to-consumer company’s growth strategy by pivoting from a channel-led to a consumer-led approach to planning and prioritizing demand generation for a Millennial consumer target
-
We helped a natural pet food company redefine its strategic vision and operating priorities by unlocking its inner challenger brand – evolving its products, communication plan and core mission to focus on what matters most to its consumers
Marketing Strategy
We are committed to building leading brands, partnering with marketing teams in four critical areas: brand architecture, innovation development, growth strategy & portfolio optimization
Marketing Strategy
———
Brand Architecture
Many brands, despite having a superior product offering, languish because of a poorly defined or understood brand architecture. All too often brands lack the distinctiveness and salience needed to build consumer mindshare and drive purchase. The result is brands invest wasted marketing resources that fail to move the needle on growth. To break through and win in an increasingly competitive landscape, brands need a differentiated, motivating “true north” that articulates for whom they exist, when, where & why.
Seurat Group’s proprietary brand architecture approach increases the inherent value of brand assets, improves the payback on marketing investment and drives measurable sales increases. The process leverages Systems I & II thinking to help business owners create or refine a winning brand architecture that includes
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Differentiated positioning & distinctive brand assets
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Brand right to win specific consumer ‘jobs’
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Clear target consumer(s)
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Competitive frame of reference
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Core reasons to believe
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We helped a fast-casual salad chain articulate its core consumer and right to win against other on-demand lunch options. The work informed everything from brand messaging to menu options and drove tremendous efficiency in marketing spend.
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We helped a plant-based food challenger understand its unique reason for being in a sea of better-for-you options. The work informed channel prioritization, marketing investment and significant category expansion.
Innovation Development
Big CPG companies position innovation as a critical growth driver, but many miss the mark, wasting millions in product development and commercialization expenses. In fact, more than 3/4 of all new products fail, costing manufacturers tens of billions of dollars every year. Primary pitfalls include
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Missing a human insight
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Overlooking right to win
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Over-relying on market intelligence
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Failing to plan for commercial viability early in the process
Seurat Group’s proprietary approach improves the ROI on innovation and increases the rate of launch success. The approach addresses the whole innovation process, from strategy development and goalsetting to needs exploration, insight territory development and prioritization of commercially viable, consumer-vetted product concepts.
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We helped a billion-dollar ready-to-drink nutrition manufacturer build an innovation pipeline. The work identified large, need-based profit pools where the base had a right to win and that would help stretch to new users and consumption occasions.
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We helped a refrigerated side dish brand identify compelling ways in to entrées and breakfast, recruiting new consumers and unlocking incremental shelf space.
Brand Growth Strategy
Business owners are perennially challenged to drive greater category engagement, whether through penetration, buy rate or trade up. Each year brand teams declare goals of reaching X more households or getting consumers to buy Y more times, but these targets are often set without a nuanced understanding of barriers – the all-important “why not” – along with clarity on how to overcome consumer obstacles.
Seurat Group’s approach unlocks new, measurable pathways to brand growth based on influencing specific consumer attitudes and behaviors. The process derives a broad & deep understanding of consumer-defined barriers and identifies the actions needed to drive change. This proprietary quantitative methodology helps manufacturers build smarter growth strategies by
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Parsing undesirable behavior into discrete barriers that can be sized & addressed
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Understanding which substitutes “win” instead – and why
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Identifying whether barriers are universal vs. occasion-dependent
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Prioritizing investment behind consumers and barriers to maximize ROI
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Identifying where brands have the greatest right to win (including where “build or buy” may be required) and prioritizing demand generation activity (e.g., communication, distribution)
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We helped a large beverage manufacturer understand why consumers choose various ready-to-drink options instead of iced tea. The work helped them articulate a category growth strategy and brand-specific tactics to overcome the most salient barriers with the largest dollar opportunities.
Portfolio Optimization
Most CPG companies struggle to successfully manage multi-brand portfolios. Rather than working together to harness a larger collective “pie,” individual brands wind up jumping on the same trends and competing for the same consumers, occasions & dollars.
Seurat Group’s proprietary approach helps multi-brand companies achieve outsized returns through successful portfolio management that covers more of the addressable market and drives greater return from marketing investment. Deep consumer research & market intelligence helps line managers articulate a
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Unifying vision for the portfolio
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Unique, compelling role for each brand
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Differentiated consumer targets & jobs to be done
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We helped a large pet food manufacturer create better differentiation across its portfolio of dog and cat food brands. Our work created a unified view of why and how pet parents make decisions about feeding & treating, enabling the manufacturer to identify clearer consumer targets, product guardrails & channel priorities.
Omnichannel Strategy
We design the forward-looking strategies and customer capabilities that enable our clients to nurture the consumer/shopper relationship in an O2O (online to offline) environment
Omnichannel Strategy
———
Shifting consumer trends and channel blurring continue to demand a seamless omnichannel experience. Retailers are engaging with manufacturer partners capable of providing forward-looking leadership to help them commercialize in a highly competitive landscape. Manufacturers that ground their go-to market plans in the consumer are best positioned to provide future direction that their omnichannel partners seek.
We help our clients evolve their trade, price/pack, shelving and assortment, merchandising and shopper marketing strategies and tactics to drive shopper conversion. Importantly, we enable our clients to communicate their strategies in a compelling way to drive future growth for brand and category while strengthening their position of influence as a thought-leader and go-to partner.
-
We developed vision and clear action plan for leading probiotics manufacturer to transform their category role from reactive, digestive care products to proactive, daily gut health solutions providing elevated consumer benefits and driving outsized brand and category growth.
-
We helped a baby food manufacturer capitalize on a shift in parents’ food values by establishing an organic destination at retail – winning our client disproportional share of shelf and growth.
-
We identified and implemented forward looking capabilities to help a global CPG manufacturer create competitive advantage through its trade program and have the greatest impact on the future of shopping.
Seurat Capital
Our team is a uniquely powerful combination of consumer packaged goods operators, consultants, and investors, dedicated to helping challenger brands accelerate their growth.
Challenger Brands
Understanding the playbook of challenger brands in the CPG industry enables us to identify attractive investment opportunities early and accelerate growth
Growth Approach
We help emerging brands realize exponential growth, relying on operating principles developed over years of experience with challenger brands
Portfolio Companies
We provide the capital and integrated consulting resources to advise our portfolio companies, functioning as a true extension of their teams
Advisory Board
Our Advisory Board brings deep CPG industry knowledge and experience to help our portfolio companies grow and exit
Growth Papers
We stay ahead of consumer, shopper and retail trends, identifying best practices and implications for successful strategies.
Browse our latest thinking.
Team
Our team of innovative thinkers harnesses a combination of broad consulting expertise, deep investing DNA and extensive line management experience at top-tier consumer packaged goods manufacturers.
Todd Bortel
Founder & Managing Partner
Todd Bortel
———
+1 (203) 652-8441
Todd is a Founder and Managing Partner at the Seurat Group. Todd enjoys tackling tough business challenges and is passionate about working with clients, portfolio partners and the Seurat Team to grow brands and businesses.
He has 20+ years of industry experience including time working client-side in Brand Marketing with Kraft Foods. Todd received his BA from Northwestern University, and he received his MBA from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, where he was a member of Beta Gamma Sigma.
Todd lives in Connecticut with his wife and their three children. He enjoys regular team training sessions at the gym to try and reverse the signs of aging.
Jill Brant
Founder & Managing Partner
Jill Brant
———
Jill is a Founder & Managing Partner at the Seurat Group. Jill’s passion for helping brands grow began at General Mills and has been part of her DNA for 20+ years.
She works with a range of partners, from entrepreneurs to the largest CPG companies in the world, to help them better orient towards future trends and accelerate growth. Jill received her BS from the University of Pennsylvania and her MBA from Harvard Business School.
She lives in Fairfield, CT with her husband and their twins. You can find Jill spending weekends with her family, playing with her dogs, immersed in a book or trying to improve her tennis game.
Adam Greenberger
Managing Partner
Adam Greenberger
———
Adam is a Managing Partner at the Seurat Group. As a founder of Seurat Capital, Adam leads the firm’s principal investing activities and works throughout the investment process to create a win-win environment for entrepreneurs and our investors.
Prior to founding Seurat Capital, Adam was the founder of Albright Capital Partners, making lower middle market investments in a variety of industries, including CPG. Adam also worked in corporate finance at Deutsche Bank and for legendary investor Jack Dreyfus at his global foundation, primarily in Africa and Asia.
Adam received his BA from Middlebury College and his MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to helping manage portfolio companies, Adam sits on a number of corporate boards in and out of the CPG industry.
Adam is a Trustee of the Nichols School in his beloved hometown of Buffalo, NY as well as a member of Middlebury College’s Art Council.
Mike Urness
Founder & Managing Partner
Mike Urness
———
Mike is a Founder and Managing Partner at the Seurat Group. He has more than 25 years of experience in consumer products and retail brands, with strong expertise in creating and capturing demand in collaboration with retail partners.
Mike advises manufacturers of all sizes, from emerging brands to Fortune 500 companies. He is a passionate believer in working side-by-side with entrepreneurs, applying the firm’s network, experience and capabilities to accelerate growth while remaining true to the brand’s identity.
Mike received his BA from the University of Washington, where he was a member of the men’s crew and served as captain his senior year, and he received his MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.
Mike lives in New York City with his wife, Cathy, and their two girls.
Adam Gold
Partner
Adam Gold
———
Adam’s experience includes leading new product launches from insights through commercialization, designing and deploying sales training programs and directing global advertising campaigns.
He received his MBA from New York University and graduated with a MA and BA in English from Boston University.
When he isn’t exploring Connecticut with his wife and twin boys, you can find him on the tennis court or, on the rarest of occasions, the golf course.
Our Values
Can-Do Attitude
We believe in the power of positive attitude to create success. That means having the courage to take journeys with uncertain or unclear outcomes.
Drive for Results
We hold ourselves accountable to our mission and foster a performance-based culture that respects our employees’ need for personal and professional balance.
Inclusive Mindset
We are purposeful about creating a welcoming space where diverse people, ideas, perspectives and approaches can thrive.
Collaboration
We celebrate team players that give their all towards the best ideas, solutions and partner relationships.
Entrepreneurial Passion
We are passionate about challenging conventional thinking to empower our stakeholders to make bold decisions.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
Our mission is to delight consumers.
Diversity drives delight, which can only come to life through embracing, celebrating, and understanding our many differences. Georges Seurat, the founder of pointillism and inspiration for Seurat Group, combined distinct dots of color to create masterpieces far greater than the sum of their parts. We take the same approach in our work – supporting a diverse group of thinkers and integrating varied perspectives, data sources and insights to create clarity and conviction to act differently.
We recognize that diversity cannot flourish without a sense of belonging. Seurat Group is committed to attracting, nurturing, and growing with a diverse community of employees, partners, and clients.
Careers
We’re always interested in speaking with top talent.
Click to learn about opportunitites.
Contact Us
Tide Mill Landing Building
2425 Post Road STE 301
Southport, CT 06890
104 West 27th Street Floor 7
New York, NY 10001
Get in Touch
We would love to hear from you!
Send us a note or submit a more detailed request to talk to an expert.
We strive to delight consumers
About Us
Seurat Group is an insights-driven consumer packaged goods consulting and private equity firm whose mission is to delight consumers. We create for our clients the clarity to act & invest in a better future.
Inspired by Georges Seurat, the founder of Pointillism who used dots of color to create complete works of art, we artfully integrate multiple lenses of insight to unlock new perspective & uncover new opportunities.
Seurat Consulting
We are relentlessly focused on unlocking growth for our clients, applying forward-looking insights and whole brain thinking to design custom, commercial solutions that create competitive advantage. Our challenger mentality sets us apart.
Forward-Looking Insights
We uncover the attitudes, motivations and behaviors of leading-edge consumers and shoppers, using a fact-based approach to shape future strategies that create growth for brands, categories and retailers
Forward-Looking Insights
Our competitors rely heavily on sources like syndicated, behavioral and attitudinal data and competitive benchmarking. This type of analysis takes a rear-view mirror approach – often leading to incremental change and putting brands and retailers in the position of playing catch-up.
Predictive insights are borne from understanding leading-edge shoppers and what motivates them to behave differently. With each insights engagement, we elevate predictive insights to actionable strategies, enabling our partners to leapfrog the competition and lead their respective categories.
- We helped a pet food manufacturer reignite growth in a stagnant category and reimagine the way they engage with customers by reframing the category from what pet food is to what it does
- We helped a multi-category manufacturer become a strategic partner with their ecommerce customers by creating a consumer segmentation of online shoppers, providing insight on how consumers shop differently across sites and platforms
- We helped an OTC manufacturer reorient its marketing strategy and create clarity at shelf by pivoting to a solutions-based architecture, enabling a more successful shopper experience
Growth Strategy
We help clients reimagine long-range planning by shepherding them through a consumer-centric process of identifying attractive spaces, unlocking growth pathways & building omnichannel tactics
Growth Strategy
To create differential growth, we believe long-range planning must be grounded in a common growth strategy that places the consumer at the center. An effective growth strategy wires a company’s or brand’s purpose to actions, creating the rationale and conviction to orient toward the most attractive opportunities.
Our process identifies a company’s edge, attractive strategies and lays out a tactical plan to commercialize the most compelling opportunities. Our goal is to enable clients to make confident choices and investments in enterprise strategies that in turn guide the functional strategies.
- We helped a regional dairy brand transform into a leading national brand, reframing the portfolio to increase velocity in the existing footprint while developing new strategies to fuel successful geographic expansion
- We reimagined a direct-to-consumer company’s growth strategy by pivoting from a channel-led to a consumer-led approach to planning and prioritizing demand generation for a Millennial consumer target
- We helped a natural pet food company redefine its strategic vision and operating priorities by unlocking its inner challenger brand – evolving its products, communication plan and core mission to focus on what matters most to its consumers
Marketing Strategy
We enable clients to better delight consumers through elevated and differentiated brand propositions, clear portfolio strategy, inspiring consumer engagement and leading edge innovation.
Marketing Strategy
Competition for the consumer’s share of mind – and share of wallet – has increased dramatically, reinforcing the need for sound marketing strategy.
Our approach starts with the consumer, ensuring decisions are grounded in insights that foster deeper consumer connections. Our work often begins upstream, helping partners codify their strategy and right to win. This work cascades to building sharper brand propositions, wiring portfolio strategies and developing innovation to capture the next wave of growth.
- We helped a leading pasta manufacturer articulate its repeatable growth model, driving clarity around category expansion and innovation planning
- We helped a leading nutrition company establish goals and guardrails for innovation and build a robust pipeline of products to delight existing consumers and recruit new ones
- We helped a leading pet health company articulate a portfolio strategy by defining clear consumer targets, messaging hierarchy, channel strategies & activation tactics
Omnichannel Strategy
We design the forward-looking strategies and customer capabilities that enable our clients to nurture the consumer/shopper relationship in an O2O (online to offline) environment
Commercialization
Shifting consumer trends and channel blurring continue to demand a seamless omnichannel experience. Retailers are engaging with manufacturer partners capable of providing forward-looking leadership to help them commercialize in a highly competitive landscape. Manufacturers that ground their go-to market plans in the consumer are best positioned to provide future direction that their omnichannel partners seek.
We help our clients evolve their trade, price/pack, shelving and assortment, merchandising and shopper marketing strategies and tactics to drive shopper conversion. Importantly, we enable our clients to communicate their strategies in a compelling way to drive future growth for brand and category while strengthening their position of influence as a thought-leader and go-to partner.
- We developed vision and clear action plan for leading probiotics manufacturer to transform their category role from reactive, digestive care products to proactive, daily gut health solutions providing elevated consumer benefits and driving outsized brand and category growth
- We helped a baby food manufacturer capitalize on a shift in parents’ food values by establishing an organic destination at retail – winning our client disproportional share of shelf and growth
- We identified and implemented forward looking capabilities to help a global CPG manufacturer create competitive advantage through its trade program and have the greatest impact on the future of shopping
Seurat Capital
Our team is a uniquely powerful combination of consumer packaged goods operators, consultants, and investors, dedicated to helping challenger brands accelerate their growth.
Challenger Brands
Understanding the playbook of challenger brands in the CPG industry enables us to identify attractive investment opportunities early and accelerate growth
Growth Approach
We help emerging brands realize exponential growth, relying on operating principles developed over years of experience with challenger brands
Portfolio Companies
We provide the capital and integrated consulting resources to advise our portfolio companies, functioning as a true extension of their teams
Advisory Board
Our Advisory Board brings deep CPG industry knowledge and experience to help our portfolio companies grow and exit
Growth Papers
We stay ahead of consumer, shopper and retail trends, identifying best practices and implications for successful strategies.
Browse our latest thinking.
Team
Our team of innovative thinkers harnesses a combination of broad consulting expertise, deep investing DNA and extensive line management experience at top-tier consumer packaged goods manufacturers.
Todd Bortel
Founder & Managing Partner
Todd Bortel
Todd is a Founder and Managing Partner at the Seurat Group. Todd enjoys tackling tough business challenges and is passionate about working with clients, portfolio partners and the Seurat Team to grow brands and businesses.
He has 20+ years of industry experience including time working client-side in Brand Marketing with Kraft Foods. Todd received his BA from Northwestern University, and he received his MBA from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, where he was a member of Beta Gamma Sigma.
Todd lives in Connecticut with his wife and their three children. He enjoys regular team training sessions at the gym to try and reverse the signs of aging.
Jill Brant
Founder & Managing Partner
Jill Brant
Jill is a Founder & Managing Partner at the Seurat Group. Jill’s passion for helping brands grow began at General Mills and has been part of her DNA for 20+ years.
She works with a range of partners, from entrepreneurs to the largest CPG companies in the world, to help them better orient towards future trends and accelerate growth. Jill received her BS from the University of Pennsylvania and her MBA from Harvard Business School.
She lives in Fairfield, CT with her husband and their twins. You can find Jill spending weekends with her family, playing with her dogs, immersed in a book, or trying to improve her tennis game.
Adam Greenberger
Managing Partner
Adam Greenberger
Prior to founding Seurat Capital, Adam was the founder of Albright Capital Partners, making lower middle market investments in a variety of industries, including CPG. Adam also worked in corporate finance at Deutsche Bank and for legendary investor Jack Dreyfus at his global foundation, primarily in Africa and Asia.
Adam received his BA from Middlebury College and his MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to helping manage portfolio companies, Adam sits on a number of corporate boards in and out of the CPG industry.
Adam is a Trustee of the Nichols School in his beloved hometown of Buffalo, NY as well as a member of Middlebury College’s Art Council.
Mike Urness
Founder & Managing Partner
Mike Urness
Mike is a Founder and Managing Partner at the Seurat Group. He has more than 25 years of experience in consumer products and retail brands, with strong expertise in creating and capturing demand in collaboration with retail partners.
Mike advises manufacturers of all sizes, from emerging brands to Fortune 500 companies. He is a passionate believer in working side-by-side with entrepreneurs, applying the firm’s network, experience and capabilities to accelerate growth while remaining true to the brand’s identity.
Mike received his BA from the University of Washington, where he was a member of the men’s crew and served as captain his senior year, and he received his MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.
Mike lives in New York City with his wife, Cathy, and their two girls.
Adam Gold
Partner
Adam Gold
———
Adam’s experience includes leading new product launches from insights through commercialization, designing and deploying sales training programs and directing global advertising campaigns.
He received his MBA from New York University and graduated with a MA and BA in English from Boston University.
When he isn’t exploring Connecticut with his wife and twin boys, you can find him on the tennis court or, on the rarest of occasions, the golf course.
Our Values
Can-Do Attitude
We believe in the power of positive attitude to create success. That means having the courage to take journeys with uncertain or unclear outcomes.
Drive for Results
We hold ourselves accountable to our mission and foster a performance-based culture that respects our employees’ need for personal and professional balance.
Inclusive Mindset
We are purposeful about creating a welcoming space where diverse people, ideas, perspectives and approaches can thrive.
Collaboration
We celebrate team players that give their all towards the best ideas, solutions and partner relationships.
Entrepreneurial Passion
We are passionate about challenging conventional thinking to empower our stakeholders to make bold decisions.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
Our mission is to delight consumers.
Diversity drives delight, which can only come to life through embracing, celebrating, and understanding our many differences. Georges Seurat, the founder of pointillism and inspiration for Seurat Group, combined distinct dots of color to create masterpieces far greater than the sum of their parts. We take the same approach in our work – supporting a diverse group of thinkers and integrating varied perspectives, data sources and insights to create clarity and conviction to act differently.
We recognize that diversity cannot flourish without a sense of belonging. Seurat Group is committed to attracting, nurturing, and growing with a diverse community of employees, partners, and clients.
Careers
We’re always interested in speaking with top talent. Click to learn about opportunities.
Contact Us
Tide Mill Landing Building
2425 Post Road STE 301
Southport, CT 06890
104 West 27th Street Floor 7
New York, NY 10001
Get in Touch
We would love to hear from you!
Send us a note or submit a more detailed request to talk to an expert.