About
A firm built by an entrepreneur, for owners.
Structural GrowthWorks began as a lab. Doug Evans founded it to build solutions to the kinds of problems he saw at the Institute of Reading Development, the company he owns and runs, problems that many owner-led companies share. The lab became the firm.
The firm began as a lab.
Doug founded Structural GrowthWorks in December 2025 with one question: how far can a company go when it designs its people and its agents to work together? Thirty-one years at the Institute of Reading Development had shown him the kinds of problems that many owner-led companies share. He built the lab to solve them, and the Institute became the firm's first in-depth case study.
The two companies are separate. Doug owns and runs the Institute. The method belongs to Structural GrowthWorks, and the firm carries it to other owner-led companies.
What we hold to
- Architecture first. Technology second. We redesign the work before we build anything.
- People where quality is decided. Agents carry the volume; people carry the judgment.
- Inside the tools you already use. No migrations for your staff. No long learning curves.
- Measured, before and after. Hours, turnaround time, and errors, recorded at the start and at handover.
- Honest about fit. When the real problem is a decision no one has made, we say so.
- Built to be owned. Your team runs the work after we leave.
Doug Evans, founder and CEO
Doug Evans is an entrepreneur, the founder and CEO of Structural GrowthWorks, and the owner and CEO of the Institute of Reading Development. He joined the Institute as a reading teacher in 1995 and worked through every level of the company to owner.
Over thirty-one years he led the Institute through rebuild after rebuild: one national operating system out of scattered regional ones, remote work and live online teaching years before COVID, a full move online when the pandemic closed every campus partner, a redesign of programs and marketing, and now agent-assisted production.
Most executives move on before their big changes play out. Doug stayed and lived with the results. In every phase of your work with us, Doug will be at the point where judgment, insight, and lived experience matter most. We practice what we preach: SGW runs on the same people-and-agents design we build for clients, so our own work shows what yours can become.
Education
- Agentic AI: Contextualized and Applied, 2026 Harvard Data Science Initiative
- AI Strategies for Business Transformation: Generative and Agentic Intelligence, 2026 Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management
- Claude Code for Everyone, 2026 DAIR.AI
- BA, English Language and Literature, 1992 University of Chicago
Santa Fe, New Mexico.