Most advisory websites make you request a call to learn how the firm actually operates. This page exists so your legal, procurement, IT, and finance colleagues can answer their questions without one, and so you know what you are agreeing to before anyone asks you to agree to it.
For Organizations
Working with ClearMinds.
How we contract, how your information is handled, how AI is and is not used, and who owns what at the end.
The Business
Contracting facts.
Legal entity
ClearMinds LLC, a Georgia limited liability company, operating under an executed and current operating agreement.
Principal
Dr. Thomas A. Vance, PhD, LPC, LMHC, principal advisor on every engagement. You are not sold by a partner and delivered by a junior.
Engagement structure
Independent contractor. No employment, partnership, or joint-venture relationship is created.
Documents on request
W-9, EIN verification, certificate of insurance, and standard services agreement. Provided within one business day of request.
References
Available on request once an engagement is under serious consideration, with the prior client’s permission.
Change control
Any work outside agreed scope requires a written addendum before it begins. No surprise invoices.
How Engagements Run
Eight stages, and the gates between them.
Every engagement moves through the same commercial lifecycle, and each stage has an exit condition that has to be met before the next one starts. It is deliberately harder to begin work here than it is at most firms.
Qualification confirms the problem fits, a decision-maker is identified, and there is no ethical or professional conflict. Funding is established honestly, contingent or grant-dependent funding is never treated as committed. Proposal is only written after we agree on the problem, the outcomes, and the scope direction, so you are never handed a document full of assumptions. Mobilization requires a named sponsor, agreed success measures, and data access. Close-out requires accepted deliverables, documented open decisions, and access removed or transitioned.
Every engagement also names a visible first-value milestone within the first ten business days. You should not have to wait a month to know whether this is working.
Your Information
Where your data lives, and what never touches it.
Advisory workspaces
A separate, access-controlled workspace per client in Microsoft SharePoint and OneDrive, on a least-privilege basis with defined retention.
Surveys and forms
Microsoft Forms for inquiry, discovery, facilitation intake, and evaluation. These never collect protected health information.
Clinical separation
ClearMinds also operates a psychotherapy practice. Clinical records live exclusively in a separate HIPAA-compliant clinical system. No clinical information ever enters an advisory workspace, and no advisory sponsor ever receives clinical or individually identifiable coaching information.
Aggregate reporting
Where an engagement includes individual coaching, sponsors receive themes and aggregate patterns only, never who said what.
At close-out
Access is removed or formally transitioned, and retention is applied as agreed in writing.
Human-Led, AI-Informed
How AI is used here.
ClearMinds advises organizations on adopting AI without losing trust, judgment, or human dignity. It would be incoherent to do that while being vague about our own practice, so:
AI may support research, synthesis, drafting, and internal workflow. AI never replaces professional judgment, clinical reasoning, or accountability for a recommendation. A human reviews everything that reaches you, and a human is answerable for it.
Your sensitive or identifiable information is not entered into AI tools unless it is necessary, protected, and approved by you in writing first. If an engagement would benefit from an AI-assisted approach involving your data, it is proposed openly and you can decline without affecting the work.
If your organization has its own AI policy, it governs. We will work inside it.
Ownership
Who owns what, when it ends.
ClearMinds retains ownership of its frameworks, methods, and underlying materials. Your organization receives a non-exclusive, perpetual license to use everything built during the engagement internally: supervision models, onboarding structures, toolkits, playbooks, and program materials, for as long as you find them useful.
That matters more than it sounds. Engagements end, sometimes for reasons neither party controls: budgets change, grants lapse, priorities move. When that happens, the capability stays with you. Work that only holds while the consultant is being paid was never the point.
Confidentiality runs both directions and survives the engagement. Nothing about your organization is disclosed to a third party without written consent, including its use as a reference or case study.
Honest Limits
What ClearMinds does not do.
Advisory and coaching are not psychotherapy. They do not constitute diagnosis, treatment, or a clinical relationship, and they are not billed to insurance.
ClearMinds does not provide emergency, crisis-response, after-hours, or on-call services in any capacity. It does not conduct workplace investigations, fitness-for-duty evaluations, or serve as an expert witness. It does not provide legal, accounting, or tax advice.
If what you need sits outside this scope, you will be told directly and, wherever possible, pointed toward someone who does it well.
Begin
Still have a question this page did not answer?
Ask it directly. Procurement, legal, and IT questions are welcome before any commercial conversation, and answering them costs you nothing.