About
One operator, three sides of the table.
Forward Co. is an independent practice led by Cory Haldeman, built for the leaders of FDE and Applied AI programs. He has worked all three sides of how technology companies serve their clients: the client side inside a Fortune 100, the platform side at Adobe, and the consulting side at Code & Theory.
You’re running one of the programs the whole industry is betting on. The work here is to take what each of your deployments proves and turn it into capability the whole program keeps — so the value compounds instead of leaving with the people who made it.
§ 01 · Why Forward Co. exists
What the program proves, the program keeps.
Exceptional people produce extraordinary outcomes for the customer in front of them. What they work out along the way tends to stay there: inside one account, one deliverable, one person’s head. The next deployment starts over, and the program pays twice for the same lesson.
Talent that good deserves a harness: something that supports it, holds what it learns, and lets it scale as part of a team instead of a name. That harness has a name and a shape. The Forward Deployed System is the roles that turn a deployment into a team, the process that makes each engagement the next one’s starting position, and the shared layer both run on. It is how the value a few people prove becomes the program’s to keep.
§ 02 · The operator
Stood up in a real program before it was ever sold.
Cory designed and stood up a Forward Deployed Engineering model in 2025, in a program with its own customers and its own constraints. The method behind Forward Co. started there, not in a deck. What shaped it was the three seats behind it, which most people only ever occupy one of.
Carried the mandate.
Holding-company content strategy at a Fortune 100 — stood up the Adobe Content Supply Chain at scale, and bought transformation from McKinsey, Accenture, Publicis, WPP, and Deloitte. The work drove hard outcomes: billions in marketing-qualified pipeline and over a billion in digital sales.
Why it matters to you: this is the seat that taught what a leader actually needs from an outside advisor. Not another set of recommendations, but a path through the organization.
Reengineered the value model.
Cloud-level Experience Cloud and Creative Cloud client strategy, and the shift underneath it: from selling features and function to a consultative program that tied board-level objectives to the platforms meant to serve them. Built the coalition of technologists, clients, and partners the work had to run through. Founded Adobe’s management-consulting alliance with McKinsey, BCG, and Bain.
Why it matters to you: this is the seat that taught how a platform’s value becomes legible to a board, and why the coalition around a deployment decides whether it lands.
Advised the room.
Founded the Enterprise Experience Transformation practice (management consulting, systems integration, and brand in one AI-Native model), working alongside MBB and the global systems integrators to shape how enterprises draw value from the platforms they run.
Why it matters to you: this is the seat that taught how outside help can change an operating model and then leave it standing, instead of installing a dependency that has to be renewed.
Cory Haldeman is the operator behind Forward Co., and he has worked all three of those seats: the client at Verizon, the technologist at Adobe, the consultant at Code & Theory. Together they set how Forward Co. reads a program — from the executive outcome backward, from the platform capability outward, and from the operating model underneath both. He advises the leaders of FDE and Applied AI programs on that operating model.
§ 03 · How Forward Co. works
Built into your program. Yours to keep.
Three commitments hold the work, and they are the ones that decide whether a program is stronger or more dependent when the engagement ends.
The recommendations are independent. Forward Co. sells no platform and belongs to no delivery consortium, so there is nothing to steer the work toward. It operates alongside whatever partners, vendors, and internal teams the system needs.
The public claims are sourced. Every market claim the firm makes is sourced, dated, and refreshed quarterly, and the whole evidence base is open to read.
The capability is yours. The system is built inside your program, with your team, and owned by them from the first gate. When Forward Co. steps back it stays and runs, operated by the people who built it.
That last one is the point of the other two. This is for the leader who wants what the program proves to outlast any single engagement.
HALDEMAN became Forward Co. in August 2026. The work, the operator, and the system are unchanged; the name now says what the firm builds.
Start with one conversation.
Tell Cory where the program is starting over, slowing down, or leaning too hard on a few people. One conversation establishes whether that calls for a Maturity Map, a standing advisory relationship, or neither. You reach him directly, and you’ll hear back within a day.