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On building Fortium, the decision to join ZRG, and what it means for organizations that need technology leadership before a full-time hire makes sense, or after one just left.
I started Fortium Partners because I believed in something that was obvious to practitioners and invisible to most of the market.
Mid-market companies were making executive-level technology decisions without executive-level technology leaders in the seat. The gap was real. The cost was silent. The category that solved it did not yet have a name.
That gap became the firm.
Where this started
My career began in Big Four technology consulting. I learned how to walk into a company, diagnose what was not working, fix it, and move on. That pattern stays with you.
As I got older and my family grew, I moved into technology leadership as a CIO. But the consulting instinct never left. A good CIO, I realized, approaches an organization the way a good consultant does: sees what is broken, builds what is needed, and leaves the company better.
That insight is the foundation of the fractional and interim model. A technology executive who operates across multiple companies sequentially, or across a few simultaneously, brings a breadth of pattern recognition that a tenured full time executive rarely accumulates.
I helped build that firm once, at Tatum, where the technology leadership practice grew to about 150 practitioners. When that chapter ended, a group of us came together to build version two.
Fortium Partners launched in 2014. What made it version two was the same conviction, more sharply executed.
What we built
We were not building a staffing firm. We were not building a consulting practice. We were building a category: Technology Leadership-as-a-Service®, which we trademarked as TLaaS™.
TLaaS is the umbrella that covers both moments when an organization discovers it has a technology leadership problem.
The first moment comes gradually. Technology decisions outgrow the org chart. The CEO or CFO realizes someone needs to think and lead like a CIO, even before that title exists in the seat. We call this the Technology Leadership Credibility Gap. Fractional CIO, CTO, or CISO leadership closes it.
The second moment comes abruptly. A technology executive departs. Months of the search process begin. Institutional knowledge walks out the door. Strategic momentum stalls. We call this the Technology Leadership Continuity Gap. Interim leadership from a national bench closes it.
These are not the same problem, and the solution to each is not the same. That distinction is the core of how Fortium was built and why the model holds together the way it does.
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What twelve years built 180+ named CIO, CTO, and CISO partners 400+ client organizations served 32 U.S. states and internationally $400B+ combined client annual revenue $1T+ in assets managed by PE firms we serve 90+ industries served |
We built those numbers with a lean team, a strong model, and a brand that the market increasingly recognized as the standard-setter in the category.
Yet we realized we needed a different platform underneath us. We had what it took to grow. We did not have the infrastructure to compound.
Why ZRG
Over the years, many firms approached us about acquisition. Every one of them required economics well above what our model produces, or structural changes that would have altered what makes Fortium what it is.
ZRG was the first firm creative enough to make this work on terms that respected our model rather than fighting against it. They understood the volume thesis. They structured a deal that preserved Fortium rather than dismantled it.
Beyond the economics, what attracted ZRG to Fortium was the head start. The specialty practice we have built would take competitors years to rebuild. Inside the ZRG platform, that head start compounds rather than erodes.
And the fit is structural, not just financial. ZRG is a full-service global talent advisory firm: retained executive search, embedded recruiting, organizational consulting, and a data intelligence platform called Zi. Their engagements regularly surface technology leadership requirements. Our engagements regularly surface adjacent C-suite needs. Same buyer, complementary moments, one platform underneath both.
On June 11, 2026, Fortium Partners joined ZRG. Fortium now operates as ZRG's exclusive provider of fractional and interim technology leadership inside their $100M Interim and Project Services division, within a $300M global platform. I continue as President of Fortium.
What this means, depending on who you are
Technology leadership is not a one-size question. Here is what this combination means across the audiences I spend my time with.
If you are a CEO
Your company may not need a full time CIO, CTO, or CISO yet. Or you just lost one. Either way, you already need executive technology leadership with the credibility to function at the C-suite and the continuity to last through whatever comes next.
The mid-market has always deserved the quality of technology leadership the Fortune 500 takes for granted. Fortium was built to deliver it. ZRG makes it faster to activate, broader in scope, and backed by a global platform that did not exist behind any of our engagements before.
If your company is making executive-level technology decisions without an executive technology leader in the seat, that is the Credibility Gap. It is addressable now, on a timeline and at an economics point that a permanent search does not match.
If you are a CHRO
The most expensive mistake in technology leadership is launching a permanent search before you know what the role should actually do. Fractional engagement defines the function, creates the business case, and sets a visible standard for the permanent leader.
You also now have a bridge between the interim engagement and the permanent hire that sits inside one firm. When the search is the right next step, ZRG's executive search platform is part of the same relationship. The handoff is not a vendor transition. It is a continuation.
If you are a PE operating partner
Technology leadership quality at the portfolio company level is a value creation variable. Leadership gaps during critical periods, single-person dependency risk, and slow activation against a deal timeline all erode value at the moments they can least afford to.
Fortium deploys proven technology executives into portfolio companies at the speed a deal timeline demands. The national bench, now backed by ZRG's global talent intelligence, makes matching faster and activation more reliable. The model scales across a portfolio in a way an individual hire does not.
If you serve on a board
A CIO or CISO vacancy that persists for six months while a search runs is an accepted risk that organizations no longer need to accept. Continuity of executive technology judgment is a governance question, and the answer does not require waiting for a permanent hire to close.
The interim model maintains function, strategy, and institutional knowledge through every transition. The search runs in parallel, on its own timeline, without stopping the work.
Why now
The AI transformation of how companies engage executive leaders is shaping up to be the most consequential shift in this category in twenty years. The companies and firms that move first into the right platform position will define what executive leadership looks like on the other side.
Being inside a multi-practice global platform with data intelligence, an established interim and project services division, and full-service search capability is the best possible vantage point for that transition. The timing is part of the thesis.
Fortium was the head start. ZRG is the platform. The work we do together from here is what we have been building toward.
Twelve years of clients, partners, Managing Partners, and referral relationships all compound from here. I could not be more proud of the firm we built together. I am more energized about where it goes than I have been in years.
If you want to talk about what this means for your organization, reach out directly.
Burke Autrey President, Fortium Partners, a ZRG company
burke.autrey@fortiumpartners.com
For more on the TLaaS model, the Two-Gap Architecture, and the full Fortium proof point set, visit fortiumpartners.com.
