New Powerhouse Team Member

Fred S. Bertsch brings more than 20 years of executive leadership experience overseeing operations, financial management, strategic planning, and organizational performance for large, complex organizations. As Powerhouse Planning Vice President of Operations and Finance, he leads the company’s operational and financial functions, driving strategic planning, budgeting, and business operations while ensuring sound fiscal stewardship and exceptional service to its clients.

Before joining Powerhouse Planning, Fritz retired as a captain in the United States Coast Guard after a distinguished 25-year career. In his final assignment as chief of program analysis and evaluation, he directed enterprise-wide strategic planning, budget analysis, performance management, and risk management for a $14 billion organization. As the Coast Guard’s chief statistical official, chief performance officer, and chief risk officer, he advised senior executives on financial priorities, resource allocation, investment decisions, and long-range organizational strategy.

Throughout his career, Fritz successfully led multidisciplinary teams, managed complex operational portfolios, and developed data-driven solutions to improve organizational effectiveness and financial performance. His experience spans executive leadership, strategic resource management, organizational transformation, and operational excellence, with a proven ability to align people, processes, and financial resources to achieve measurable results.

Fritz holds a Ph.D. in homeland security and leadership, master’s degrees from Purdue University and the U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College, and a bachelor’s degree in operations research from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. He brings a disciplined, analytical, and results-oriented leadership approach that helps Powerhouse Planning deliver innovative solutions, sound financial management, and sustainable growth for its clients.

Inside the Partnership: Zip With Us®

How a fast-growing pediatric cancer nonprofit found the team—and the thought partnership—to keep pace with their mission

When you’re evaluating a consulting or agency partner, you can read a lot of websites. You can watch a lot of demos. You can sit through a lot of capability decks. What’s harder to find is the unfiltered take from someone who’s actually been on the other side of the engagement. The leader, or client, who hired the team, watched the work get done, and can tell you what was different about it.

That’s the premise behind our new series, “What Makes a Powerhouse Team Different? Insights from Our Clients.” Over the coming months, we’ll be sitting down with the organizations we work alongside, from nonprofits to mission-driven businesses and the leaders behind them. We’ll ask what brought them to Powerhouse, what working together looks like day to day, and what makes the experience different from the consultants and agencies they’ve hired or worked with before. In their own words. At Powerhouse, we believe the best way to showcase what our total remote team solution brings to the table is to hear it from those who have experienced it.

We’re starting with Zip With Us®. Here’s what they had to say.

Meet Zip With Us®

The Zip With Us® origin story lies with founders Angela and Brian Degnan’s son, Thatcher. When Thatcher was just two years old, he was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) while on a family vacation. The Degnan family had just moved back to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from Miami, Florida and were taking advantage of living closer to Brian’s New England-based family. Thatcher hadn’t been feeling well, and when he didn’t seem to get better after a few days his parents took him to the hospital to be checked out. That started an almost 1,500-day journey with ALL.

During those first days post-diagnosis, Thatcher received a gift from one of his nurses: a yellow graphic T-shirt with a handsewn zipper on the upper chest, which made infusion days and countless emergency room trips a little more bearable. Angela says that at first she thought every child diagnosed with cancer received a similar gift, but she came to realize that Thatcher’s shirt was somewhat unique.

As her family’s journey with cancer continued, and Angela received more and more comments from medical staff and other parents about how amazing Thatcher’s shirt was, Angela and Brian began to realize that the T-shirt that made infusion days a lot easier was something that every child battling cancer could use. Thus, Zip With Us® was founded in 2018 as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization creating custom adaptive medical apparel to improve the treatment experience for patients, raise critical funds for research, and increase awareness of the daily challenges these children and their families face.

Today, Zip With Us® partners with over 200 U.S. hospitals and a few international hospitals to ensure that each infant, child, and young adult diagnosed with cancer and other serious medical complexities receives the gift of adaptive apparel customized to meet their treatment needs. Additionally, they offer their adaptive apparel through their online store. Zip With Us® is committed to providing barrier-free access to their products, ensuring all children have access to their apparel regardless of circumstances.

Angela, who serves as the Zip With Us® executive director, marvels at how their small, home-based nonprofit has expanded so rapidly, even through COVID. “We’ve had such success, onboarding nonstop basically since we opened,” she says. As we all know, rapid growth, even for such a worthy cause as that of Zip With Us®, can come with a lot of professional headaches as a small group of nonprofit staff work feverishly to keep up with the pace of growth. For Angela and Zip With Us®, help came in an unexpected way.

Enter Powerhouse

In one of those twists of fate, Angela signed up to run in a local Dick’s Sporting Goods’ “Run for a Reason” event where Zip With Us® was registered as an official charity. There, she met Krista, a local teacher who learned about Zip With Us® through the pediatric cancer community. “Krista’s nephew had been diagnosed with a childhood cancer,” Angela says of the fateful meeting. “We met during the program preparations, and it turned out that her sister worked for Powerhouse. Krista told her sister about us, her sister in turn told Powerhouse President Jessica Bertsch about us, and she reached out, offering an in-kind grant through her company’s Share the Goodness charitable giving arm.”

That first partnership resulted in a new horizontal logo design for Zip With Us®, a T-shirt and onesie drive kit, coloring sheets for pediatric patients, and email blast templates the nonprofit could use for a variety of needs. “She came in and asked what she could do,” Angela says, “and then she proceeded to offer suggestions and ideas I probably wouldn’t ever have had the time to think about. For instance, she provided a complimentary annual report that she created and designed when she realized we didn’t have one. It’s not something I had the bandwidth for at the time, but I bet I’ve handed that report out at least 50 times by now.”

The Partnership in Practice

As the partnership grew, Zip With Us® leaned more and more on their Powerhouse total remote team solution, not just for marketing collateral but also for organizational support and eventually a whole host of nonprofit services, including grant writing and grant nurturing. “I feel very supported by Powerhouse,” Angela says. “I feel heard, and I’m surrounded by glorious minds on the Powerhouse team. Everyone has different backgrounds and many are military spouses. I can’t stress how much the qualities of those military spouses shine through. The Powerhouse team is professionalism meets warmth meets a can-do attitude.”

For Angela and the Zip With Us® team, partnering with Powerhouse has been seamless and wonderful. “When I partner with someone, I am looking for someone who takes the work as seriously as I do. Powerhouse does that. From day one, they have embraced our mission as their own. They’ve really become a true team, and I see the relationship as long-term at this point,” she says. Besides the tangible solutions Powerhouse brings to the table, Angela says that she’s had lots of conversations centered around growth with the Powerhouse team. “The thought partnership has been amazing,” she says. “So very helpful. Not only when it comes to dreaming about next steps but in stepping up to help us make them happen.”

What Makes Powerhouse Different

“There are so many layers of logistics in running a successful nonprofit,” Angela explains. “You can feel like you’re on the train to crazy town a lot of the time. Jessica and the Powerhouse team understand this. They have this incredible ability to adapt to my personality and work within my parameters without question and in a very real way.” She adds that for her personally, the organization that Powerhouse has brought to her has been the most helpful. “Everything with Powerhouse feels very purposeful,” she says. “There’s no wasted time when you’re in meetings with them, but at the same time there’s this feeling of being with family. It’s professionalism and personal connections all rolled into one.”

Throughout the partnership, Angela says the organizational aspect has become increasingly important to her. Whether it’s engaging in honest and open communications around deadlines, having strategic conversations about sustainable growth, or seamlessly meeting the specific needs of Zip With Us®, the Powerhouse total remote team solution has exceeded her expectations.

“I’m incredibly proud not only of what we’ve been able to accomplish with Powerhouse but also that we can afford access to this amazing team of women who provide services we likely couldn’t sustain if we had to hire entirely in-house,” Angela says. “I know there are certain positions we will continue bringing in-house as we grow—for example, we recently hired a CFO—but the services Powerhouse provides work so well for us that I don’t feel any need to change that.”

Under the current contract with Powerhouse, Zip With Us® utilizes grant-writing and nonprofit support services. “So far, I’ve worked with three or four women with extensive grant experience,” Angela says. “That expertise alone would make the partnership worthwhile, but Powerhouse has also helped us build an entire grant library and infrastructure that will support us long-term. If we ever need to fully write grants independently in the future, we’ll already have the tools, resources, and foundation in place to be successful.”

Angela also emphasizes the value of the collaborative team approach. “The creative minds involved through our Powerhouse contract are truly mind-blowing and bring so much value to the organization,” she says. “One person alone could never achieve the same results as the collective Powerhouse team. The impact is simply greater all around.”

For Angela, Powerhouse’s transparency has been a breath of fresh air. “The beauty of Powerhouse is that whenever we discuss a project or idea, there’s immediate ownership, a clear plan of action, and a defined timeline. They are able to execute at a much faster pace and consistently deliver when we need something done. When the Powerhouse team shows up, everything is focused, organized, and completed the way we need it to be,” she says.

Angela says that one of the most valuable aspects of the partnership is the consistent communication and visibility throughout the process. “I never have to worry about where a project stands because I always know exactly where it is on the path to completion,” she says. “The communication is stellar.”

When asked if there’s a particular project Zip With Us® has completed with Powerhouse that she is most proud of, Angela initially said that it’s too difficult to choose just one. After reflecting, she points to how many of the original the Share the Goodness deliverables continue to provide value today.

“The T-shirt and onesie drive kits are still actively used on our website and have freed up an incredible amount of time for our employees and volunteers, who previously had to build each drive individually,” Angela says. “And the grant organization system has been an absolute dream. It eliminates the constant searching for documents and provides instant access for board members and our accounting and leadership teams.” She adds that having a dedicated team managing and maintaining organizational documentation has been transformative for Zip With Us® as the nonprofit continues to grow. “Just knowing someone is overseeing and organizing all of that is huge for us,” she says.

The Last Word: Advice from a Founder

“Powerhouse is the best value when it comes to mission-aligned support,” says Angela. “They genuinely care about nonprofit success and operate with a level of integrity and strong values that is reflected in everything they do.” Angela says she wishes more people understood the depth and impact of the partnership between Powerhouse and Zip With Us®. “The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive in every way,” she says.

With Powerhouse, you get an entire team and access to multiple skills sets and creative minds. “Getting so many different people with varied experience and fresh approaches means end results that are nuanced and professional and result in high-quality products achieved at accessible pricing for a nonprofit budget. They even identify bottlenecks and propose solutions before being asked. It’s a no brainer to partner with Powerhouse,” Angela says.

“If you’re even thinking about partnering with Powerhouse, my best advice is to take the initial consultation call,” Angela recommends. “It costs you nothing and demonstrates an honest approach. Powerhouse will honestly assess if they can help or recommend alternative paths if they can’t. Their genuine goal is to see you succeed, regardless of whether they’re the right fit for you.” If you’re still on the fence after that initial consultation, Angela recommends starting with one helpful project to see the immediate positive impact Powerhouse can have. “Let the relationship grow from organic results,” she says. “I promise it’ll be worth your time.”

Fairfax, VA (April 16, 2026) – Powerhouse Planning has been awarded a 2026 Global Recognition Award, a distinction reserved for organizations demonstrating exceptional performance across leadership, innovation, service, and workplace culture. Selected from more than 15,000 annual entrants, fewer than 6 percent of applicants receive this recognition, placing Powerhouse Planning among a highly competitive and accomplished group of honorees.

Powerhouse Planning was recognized under the Workplace Culture category for building a high-performing, people-first organization that delivers consistent, measurable results for its clients while maintaining a deeply connected remote workforce. The company has established a strong operational model that pairs clients with carefully selected freelance professionals based on both technical expertise and cultural alignment.

Over the past 12 months, Powerhouse Planning has achieved a 95 percent client satisfaction rate and a 95 percent client retention rate. In addition, 96 percent of clients rate the company highly in responsiveness, professionalism, and quality of work. These metrics reflect a sustained level of excellence that contributed to the organization’s selection for this award.

Founded by Jessica Bertsch, Powerhouse Planning was built on the principle that remote work can foster strong community, cohesion, and performance when intentionally designed. The company’s workforce includes military spouses and highly skilled professionals from across the United States, each selected for expertise, adaptability, and alignment with client needs.

Powerhouse Planning has implemented structured internal programs to support both professional and personal growth among its team members. Monthly Power Hours and Empower Hours provide opportunities for collaboration, knowledge sharing, and skill development. This approach has resulted in a team member satisfaction rate exceeding 84 percent, demonstrating that a remote freelance workforce can achieve high levels of engagement and connection.

Client success is a core operational priority at Powerhouse Planning. Through its client nurture program, the company actively monitors the client engagement progress and adapts to evolving client needs. This proactive approach has contributed to long-term partnerships, with many client relationships extending beyond three years.

The company also recognizes long-standing client relationships through its Powerful Partnership Award program, which celebrates milestones at three, five, and seven or more years of collaboration. These partnerships underscore the consistency and quality of service that define Powerhouse Planning’s approach.

The Global Recognition Awards evaluation process incorporates the Rasch measurement model, a rigorous methodology that enables objective comparisons across applicants. Powerhouse Planning’s performance was validated as consistent and repeatable across engagements, reinforcing the strength of its operating model.

Powerhouse Planning’s recognition reflects measurable success across multiple performance dimensions, including leadership, innovation, service delivery, and workplace culture. The organization has created an environment where freelance professionals operate with a level of commitment and integration typically associated with full-time teams.

The company maintains a 100 percent commitment to continuous improvement, supported by structured feedback systems and a freelancer mentor program designed to enhance performance and professional growth.

A spokesperson for Global Recognition Awards stated, “Powerhouse Planning has demonstrated what it means to lead with intention by aligning exceptional talent with client needs while maintaining a strong, connected remote workforce. This is the type of achievement the Global Recognition Award was designed to honor.”

About Powerhouse Planning
Powerhouse Planning (Powerhouse) is a remote team solutions company that provides fully managed, high-impact talent to organizations worldwide. Powerhouse connects businesses with a collective of highly skilled professionals, many of whom are military spouses and veterans, delivering expertise across business growth, content creation, and event facilitation. Operating as an integrated extension of its clients’ teams, Powerhouse offers flexible, cost-effective solutions designed to fill critical skill gaps and drive measurable results. Through its Empowering the Homefront^™ initiative and commitment to giving back, Powerhouse is dedicated to creating meaningful career opportunities for military spouses and strengthening the military community.

Website: powerhouseplanning.com

Facebook: facebook.com/powerhouseplanning

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/powerhouse-planning-llc

The Power of Narrative: How Storytelling Elevates Your Mission

By: Aeson Akins

Stories shape how we understand the world. We share them with friends, stream them on our phones, and scroll through them all day long. The human appetite for stories is endless. So how can the story of your business resonate and stand out amid all these stories?

The Importance of a Good Story
Every organization has a story, but not every organization knows how to tell it well. Done effectively, storytelling captures attention and inspires action, whether that’s making a purchase, signing up for a subscription, or supporting a mission. Telling a good story connects with a consumer on a biochemical level and can even leave a lasting memory.

Knowing your organization’s story is important, but learning how to tell that story in a way that resonates with clients can elevate your mission and your brand. The power of your narrative can draw in potential clients and expand your reach, ensuring that your story and your mission is clear, confident, and compelling.

What Makes a Good Story?
Think about the last story that stopped you mid-scroll or stuck with you long after a conversation ended. Chances are, it had a clear arc: a beginning that drew you in, a middle that held your attention, and an end that left you with something, whether that was a feeling, a decision, or even a reason to share it.

That same storytelling structure applies to your business. When you walk your audience through the journey of how your organization came to be (the problem you saw, the moment you decided to do something about it, and the difference you’re making today), you’re doing more than sharing information. You’re inviting people behind the scenes, letting them connect with the humans behind the mission. That’s what earns trust. And trust is what turns a first-time visitor into a long-time supporter.

The Importance of Words
Here’s something worth considering: The words you choose matter just as much as the story you’re telling. Two words can mean nearly the same thing on paper but feel completely different to the person reading them. Think about it—”ran,” “sprinted,” “darted,” and “lunged” all describe someone moving fast, but each one paints a different picture. The same goes for the language you use about your business. “Aiding” your clients sounds formal and a little distant. “Helping” feels like a partnership between equals. “Serving” tells your audience that their success is your whole point. Small shifts in word choice can be the difference between content that sounds corporate and content that sounds genuinely human. So as you shape your story, pay attention to those little words. They’re quietly doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Crafting the Narrative
At the end of the day, the goal of your story is to be remembered and felt. Emotion is what turns a good story into a lasting one, and the way to get there is by grounding your narrative in the details that bring it to life. For example, if you tell someone a door was ajar, they register the fact. But if you describe a rusty, creaking door that groaned when pushed open? Suddenly they’re there with you. Sensory details—what something looked like, sounded like, felt like—set the scene and anchor the memory. Then the meaning you layer on top of those details, such as the tension, the relief, the turning point, is what makes your audience feel something. So don’t just report what happened. Paint the picture, and then tell them why it mattered.

An Appeal to Logic
Now you have an idea of what your story is and how you want to tell it. So what? People want to know what your business can do for them, which is why it is crucial to provide metrics. These can be statistics ranging from how many clients your business served to a rating on a five-star scale. For added points, incorporate customer testimony. Not only are you proudly displaying a metric, but you can also select a review of your business that was created externally. In this way, you’re telling your story by using one written by someone else.

At Powerhouse Planning, we’re expert storytellers. We understand how to craft narratives that resonate with your audience and turn interest into meaningful growth. From developing social media strategies and campaigns to creating blogs and articles that bring your mission to life, Powerhouse provides the content that connects and drives results. Contact us today to learn how we can help amplify your voice.

How to Use AI Tools Without Losing Your Brand’s Voice

By: Heatherlynn Akins

At Powerhouse Planning, we’ve been closely following the rapid rise of generative AI since the arrival of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in November 2022. While the foundational concepts for generative AI have been around since the 1960s, with digital virtual assistants becoming more mainstream after the introduction of smartphones, it was the generative adversarial network (GAN) in 2014 that really created the space for AI tools like ChatGPT to become prominent.* Combining the impressive feats of generative AI with large language models brought artificial intelligence to an entirely new level, one that has seen some of the most rapid advancements in technological history. Now, with AI developers focused on agentic AI, systems capable of performing multistep tasks using reason, memory, multimodal perception, and task automation, it’s clear that AI tools are here to stay.

With the incredible advancements generative AI has made since late 2022, businesses are understandably finding it increasingly tempting to turn to AI for many tasks that traditionally have taken their employees hours to complete. While AI can save time, it doesn’t always meet the mark when it comes to ensuring your voice is on brand. With so many companies adopting AI practices and utilizing the technology, ensuring your message isn’t getting lost in all the AI “sameness” is critical. After all, you’re still trying to reach human audiences, clients, and potential clients. A 2024 Deloitte report said that 68% of consumers are worried generative AI could be used to deceive them, making it harder to trust information.

So, how can you embrace generative AI tools while maintaining your brand’s voice and customer confidence? Here are our top tips.

Don’t just have a voice guide; have an AI-ready voice brief. According to Averi, most marketers (83%) say AI helps them produce content more quickly, but only about a quarter (25.6%) believe it performs better than human-created work. Generative AI is only as good as the prompts it receives. Most business’ brand standards are written for humans. Consider creating a voice guide within your brand standards that your AI tool of choice can follow step by step. Include adjectives that define your tone. Use short sentences that avoid corporate jargon that can muddy your message. Include language lists that include approved phrases, banned phrases, and sentences that describe your products and services. Consider creating a couple of examples showing “on-brand” and “off-brand” messaging to show how your brand actually sounds.

Your brand’s voice is a dataset, not a vibe. AI is an elite mimic, but it needs a teacher. The more on-brand content you give it, the better it will be. Paste or link your best blogs, emails, landing pages, and social posts and ask your AI tool to summarize your voice patterns (e.g., sentence length, humor, formality). Upload content libraries so your AI can learn from real examples on a scale. Create separate voices for different needs. For example, craft a voice for your CEO, for LinkedIn, for product email updates. Always consider who’s speaking and who it’s for. Don’t make your AI tool guess.

Your content is only as good as your prompts. If you don’t want your AI tool to turn out generic content, you have to feed it brand-aware prompts. The University of Florida Brand Center suggests “remember[ing] the maxim ‘garbage in, garbage out.’” The more time you spend ensuring your prompts provide context, include voice rules, provide examples of on-brand copy, and include specific tasks (e.g., “draft,” “rewrite,” “improve”), the better the AI-generated content you will get. Optimizely strongly suggests ensuring consistent messaging and generating first drafts yourself to save time as well as localizing your brand voice for different markets. Paying attention to refining your prompts will go a long way to producing on-brand AI-generated materials.

AI is a refiner and a translator, not the soul of your message. AI should be considered more as a copywriter than a creator. No matter how rich your prompts are, or how AI-ready your brand standards are, AI won’t get it right the first time. To really ensure your voice is being heard and your brand story is being told, use AI to support your storytelling, not to replace it. Don’t risk losing an authentic emotional connection and narrative depth by trusting AI to get it right the first time, especially if what you are creating requires sensitive or high-stakes messaging. Always employ humans-in-the-loop practices when it comes to using generative AI. As good as it is already, AI just can’t understand nuance, navigate cultural context, or take editorial responsibility. Plus, it requires consistent calibration to ensure that your brand voice doesn’t sound stale and generic. Providing refreshed phrases and language on a regular basis will help your AI-generated materials sound fresh and current.

Brands that use AI responsibly build more trust, not less. The bottom line is that we all strive to be trusted brands our clients and customers want to do business with. Make sure that however you use AI tools, you remain transparent and ethical. Give credit where credit is due. Follow up on those links your AI tool provides showing where it may have obtained certain information so you can appropriately give credit to someone else’s ideas or content. Never auto-publish anything AI-generated. Human oversight is nonnegotiable. Consider setting internal policies on when and where AI is allowed and where it isn’t. And always be aware of sharing sensitive information with any AI tool.

Generative AI can be a valuable tool to sharing your brand voice, but it’s still only as good as the information a human feeds it. Think of it like any other technological innovation. Will it make your life easier? It can. Does it (really) replace the human touch in telling your brand story? No. You’re still the best voice for your brand; AI is just another tool you can reach for to help you tell your story.

Powerhouse Planning knows that creating content rooted in your true business identity is critical in building trust in your brand. For more information on how we can help you create on-brand content utilizing our proven total remote team solution and leveraging the best in AI tools, contact us today.

* For a brief timeline of generative AI, check out DATAVERSITY.