Community Highlights: Meet Patrice Brown of Patllom Impact

Today we’d like to introduce you to Patrice Brown.

Patrice, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I spent 20 years at a global media company building my career in media, entertainment and sports and growing through roles spanning legal, corporate finance, strategy and business operations. For much of that time, I was a climber. I was ambitious, driven, and always thinking about the next level.

But the media industry was being disrupted. There were mergers, acquisitions, restructurings, and layoffs, and I watched many talented colleagues lose their jobs. By 2023, I started paying closer attention to the signs and preparing myself financially and personally. I paid off debt, became more intentional about my health and lifestyle, and tried to put myself in the strongest position possible if my circumstances changed. In July 2024, they did.

I went into what I thought would be a routine meeting and learned that my role was being eliminated as part of an organizational restructuring. My last day would be four weeks later.

After my last day, I gave myself about two weeks to decompress – but my natural instinct was to keep moving. I had spent most of my career focused on progression and taking on more, so I leaned towards what seemed like the next logical step. I interviewed for several senior roles, making it to the final rounds multiple times, but ultimately none resulted in an offer.

Eventually, I realized I needed to stop moving long enough to ask myself a different question. Instead of, “What position do I want next?” I started asking, “How do I want to spend the second half of my life?”

That was when I became still. And in that stillness, I started getting much more honest with myself. Was I pursuing another traditional corporate path because it was truly what I wanted, or because it was what I thought someone with my background was supposed to do next?

Those questions led me on a journey of self-discovery. At one point, I even pulled out my middle school and high school yearbooks and read what people had written about me decades ago. It helped me reconnect with parts of myself that existed before the titles, expectations, and professional identity I had built. I realized I did not want the next chapter of my life to be defined only by advancement. I wanted it to be rooted in purpose and service to others.

That reflection helped me reconnect with who I was, and it also made me appreciate everything my professional journey had equipped me to do. Through my MBA, other extensive training, and years of experience, I had built a strong foundation in finance, strategy, leadership, and execution. I had developed revenue-generating strategies and led teams to bring them to life, built leadership development programs for early-career professionals, and created employee initiatives that strengthened engagement, retention, and internal mobility.

The next question became: how could I use what I had acquired to help others? That answer was Patllom Impact.

The consultancy was recognized by the State of Georgia on December 3, 2024, and we officially launched in June 2025. Today, Patllom Impact works with small and midsize businesses, corporations, and nonprofit organizations to help them solve complex problems, strengthen their operations, and build for sustainable growth.

When I look back, I do not see my time at the media company as something I left behind. I see it as preparation for what I am doing now. For a long time, I measured my professional success by how far I could advance in my career. Today, I think much more about how may I help others.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It has definitely not been a smooth road. One of the biggest lessons I have learned is that being good at what you do and knowing how to build a business are two very different things. I came into entrepreneurship with a strong professional foundation. I knew how to evaluate complex business challenges, build strategies for growth, manage multimillion-dollar budgets, lead cross-functional teams, and turn ideas into executable plans. But when you start a business, suddenly you are also responsible for everything else.

You are thinking about your business plan, your value proposition, your brand identity, your pricing, your market entry strategy, how you explain what you do in a way that resonates with potential clients, your business development pipeline and so much more. There is no department down the hall to call, and that was an adjustment.

I also had to learn the difference between doing great work inside a large corporation and generating opportunities for a business without a long track record in the market. After decades in that environment, I was used to having the infrastructure, brand recognition, and built-in credibility already in place. As a founder and entrepreneur, I had to build those things from the ground up.

There has also been a lot of learning in real time. Patllom Impact has continued to evolve as I have learned more about our clients, the marketplace, and where we can drive the greatest value. I have had to become comfortable refining the vision without feeling like changing something means the original idea was wrong. Sometimes growth is about getting clearer.

Building Patllom Impact has also required patience. The vision can move much faster than the business. You may know exactly where you want to go, but building something sustainable takes time, discipline, relationships, and consistency. That has probably been one of the biggest personal adjustments for me because I am naturally wired to move.

But I have also learned that building slowly does not mean you are standing still. Every client, every project, every relationship, every lesson, and every refinement has helped shape Patllom Impact into a stronger consultancy. I would not describe the journey as easy, but I would describe it as meaningful.

As you know, we’re big fans of Patllom Impact . For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Patllom Impact is a high-touch management consultancy focused on helping clients navigate challenges, strengthen their operations, and achieve their goals.

We work with small and midsize businesses, corporations, and nonprofit organizations. Our work can take different forms depending on the challenge, but it generally centers around business strategy, financial planning and analysis, operations, data analysis, and project or program execution. Sometimes that means stepping directly into a complex initiative and helping bring all the moving pieces together.

For example, with Atlanta Tech Week 2026, we provided operations support across venues, partners, programming, and volunteers for the six-day citywide activation with more than 350 events. It was a great example of the kind of work we enjoy: bringing structure to complexity, solving problems in real time, and helping a larger vision come to life.

At the simplest level, we help organizations get clear about where they are trying to go, understand what may be standing in the way, and build a practical path forward.

What I am most proud of is not only what we do, but how we do it. Patllom Impact is a principles-based consultancy. We do not want to solve a problem for a client and leave them dependent on us. We want to help solve the immediate challenge, but we also want to teach the principles, frameworks, and thinking behind the solution. If that client encounters the same challenge, or something similar, again in the future, our goal is for them to have stronger tools, stronger thinking, and greater confidence in how to address it. And of course, they can always call us back. To me, that is a much more sustainable form of consulting.

We also lead with empathy and relationships. When a client allows us into their business, we understand that we are being trusted with something they have worked incredibly hard to build. For many, their business is deeply personal. It represents their livelihood, their family, their aspirations, and often years of sacrifice. We do not take that lightly. We try to approach every organization we serve with the same level of care, thoughtfulness, and commitment we would want someone to bring to our business.

Our long-term goal is to help one million businesses thrive. That mission is intentionally bigger than Patllom Impact. We are especially passionate about helping small and mid-size businesses and organizations that may not always have access to the strategy, financial expertise, systems, or operational support that larger organizations can afford internally.

We also love helping organizations that are themselves helping others. One example is our work with Inspiredu. Inspiredu helps underserved learners of all ages develop the digital skills needed for education and career success. Supporting an organization doing that kind of work is exactly what we mean when we say we want to help those who are helping others. It allows our impact to extend beyond the immediate engagement and into the communities that organization serves.

There is something powerful about that multiplier effect. If we can help a nonprofit become stronger, a small business become more sustainable, or an organization serve its community more effectively, the impact extends well beyond the individual engagement. That is where the “Impact” in Patllom Impact comes from.

Just as important is how we work. We are not the consulting firm that comes into the room, tells everyone what is wrong, leaves behind a deck, and disappears. We work alongside our clients, helping them think more strategically, operate more effectively, make stronger decisions, and ultimately become more capable because we were there.

Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
I have an interesting relationship with risk because I would not describe myself as a risk taker, but I am also not someone who believes risk should always be avoided. I believe risk should be understood and mitigated.

If you understand the risk, think through the possible outcomes, and prepare where you can, you give yourself more options when circumstances change. That mindset existed long before I founded Patllom Impact. For instance, as I watched the media industry go through years of disruption, I did not know whether my own role would eventually be affected, but I recognized that there was an inherent risk around me. That is why I became more intentional about my finances, health, and other personal decisions. Those choices put me in a stronger position and gave me more options when it happened.

Building Patllom Impact was a different kind of risk. I was walking away from a path I understood very well. I knew the corporate world and how to operate in that environment. I had a strong résumé and years of experience that could have supported continuing down that path.

Patllom did not come with the same certainty. There was no guarantee that clients would come. No guarantee that the business would grow at the pace I wanted. No guarantee that the idea would become what I imagined. But I knew there was another kind of risk I needed to consider…The risk of not trying… What was the risk of reaching the next stage of my life and realizing that I had continued doing what was familiar because it felt safer?

That became more uncomfortable to me than the uncertainty of Patllom Impact. I have learned that what looks safe is not always without risk. I had spent years watching highly talented people lose their jobs as the media industry evolved. Teams were restructured, roles were eliminated, and eventually, it happened to me too. That experience changed the way I think about certainty.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.patllomimpact.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrice-mba
• Other: https://www.linkedin.com/company/patllom-impact-llc

Image Credits
Ted Pio Roda Photography
Brian Bates