Nicholas Grounds (EGP) – Orlando (United States of America)

THE ACADEMY OF BUSINESS STRATEGY - UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

NICHOLAS GROUNDS (EGP) MBA
EXECUTIVE GLOBAL PARTNER (EGP)

GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION: Orlando (United States of America)
HISTORY
Orlando is a city located in Central Florida, USA, and is a city of a hundred lakes. The city entered the Golden Age of trade and industry with the citrus fruit production in the mid-late 19th century. In the 1870s large numbers of Americans were lured to Central Florida with the promise of fertile land and a warm climate. In this era public roads, schools and churches sprung up in Orlando, and citrus groves were established. Orlando was incorporated in 1875 and in that year a city government was established. New settlers poured into Orlando from all over the United States and business flourished. In 1880 the first locomotive of the South Florida Railroad steamed into town, and a building and land purchase boom followed. As Orlando entered the 20th century, citrus and agriculture surpassed cattle ranching as the mainstay of the local economy. In 1910 the population of Orlando was 4,000, and after World War I further industrial growth and a real estate boom occurred. A housing bubble was happening with massive speculation on land prices; but inevitably, in 1926 the bubble burst. The ruination of the Orlando and Florida economies were further crippled by a Mediterranean fruit-fly infestation crippled the citrus industry in 1928, closely followed by the 1929 stock market crash. By 1936 the tourist trade began to revive, construction was up again, and following World War II Orlando was home to major aircraft and aviation parts manufacturers. By 1950 with a population of 51,826, Orlando was the financial and transportation hub of Central Florida; and the tourists came in droves, over 4 million in 1950. In 1964, Walt Disney began secretly buying up thousands of acres of Central Florida farmland, and on November 15. 1965 Walt Disney announced his plans to build the World’s most spectacular theme park. The theme park opened in 1971 at a cost of over $400 million, and in its first two years it attracted 20 million visitors, and the park employed 13,000 local people. Orlando was the fastest growing city in the State of Florida. Further theme parks were built and numerous firms located and relocated their businesses to the area. The economic downturn of 2008-2009 took a large toll on the tourism trade in Orlando, but has since started to bounce back with new theme parks, park renovations and extensions, coupled with new hotels in the city.

CURRENT POSITION
Metro Orlando is the 26th metropolitan area in the United States, and has a gross domestic product of more than $100 billion. The economy benefits from a globally recognized tourism industry with over 50 million visitors in 2010; contributing nearly $28 billion to the local economy. The Orlando area has major employers, apart from Walt Disney, in Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, Siemens Energy and Mitsubishi Power Systems, among other global powerhouses. The theme park and connected hotel and restaurant industries are continuing to grow, with further development of Walt Disney Parks in the works, and more new theme parks opening. The unemployment rate in Orlando is 9.1%, in February 2012, which is down from 10.8% a year earlier. Tourism has risen by 5.4% year on year, with the construction industry being the major sector loser with a drop of 4.7% year on year, 2011-2012. Consumer spending has raised from $7.16 billion in 2011 to $8.06 billion in 2012 a rise of 12.6%. With the growing resources at the University of Central Florida, entrepreneur and tech start-ups are mounting. Funding for research at UCF has surpassed $100 million, with more than 200 patents have been issued in the past seven years. Since 1999, the UCF Business Incubation Program has helped more than 160 emerging companies create over $800 million in annual revenue and created more than 1,600 new jobs. Orlando is widely recognized as having the largest cluster of modelling, simulation and training companies in the world; along with America’s military simulation training centers being based in the city. The future for Orlando looks bright.

FUTURE OUTLOOK
Orlando is leading Florida out of recession, and is expanding rapidly. Besides the theme parks and related tourism industries, Orlando has above average job growth, a booming health sciences complex and cheap housing. Orlando’s diverse populations present unique challenges, as well as opportunities, in a post-“Great Recession” era. Investments in key growth sectors and supporting infrastructure are essential to the region’s economic future, and the economic expansion resulting from such investments will strengthen the foundation of both the region and the state as they emerge from the recession (Holt & Colburn, 2011). “People think I’m gushing about Orlando,” said Mark Vitner, senior economist specializing in regional economies for Wells Fargo Securities LLC. “But I’ve got to believe the city will be one of the fastest growing cities in the country over the next 25 years.” Dr. Sean Snaith, director of the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Economic Competitiveness, sees Orlando and central Florida as “the new breadbasket for the state. “It’s the location in the state that’s going to have the most growth in the next decade or two,” Snaith said (Liston, 2011). In a mash up of 23 economic measurements, Orlando ranks 27th out of 366 metropolitan areas across the United States, and No. 1 in the fourth most populous U.S. state, according to William Fruth, president of the economic research firm POLICOM. “Orlando’s the strongest economy, which is the long-term tendency for an area to consistently grow in size and quality,” Fruth said. Metro Orlando added 23,000 jobs — a 2.3 percent increase – in the year ended February 2011, which accounted for almost half of the total 50,000 jobs that Florida’s slowly healing economy added, according to U.S. Labor Department data. Wells Fargo Securities recently identified several growth sectors that would have a high share of employment in the future: finance and insurance, professional and technical services, accommodation and food service, and health care and social assistance. Florida was reported to have a greater regional advantage than most other states and over 42% of Orlando’s total employment is in a combination of these sectors. The category used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “professional and business services,” represented over 16% of Orlando’s total employment in 2010, and is expected to have annual growth of almost 6% from 2011-2015. Professional and business service jobs will be critical for the research, services, and technologies that are expected to stem from Orlando’s biotechnology and life science companies. According to the Metro Orlando Economic Development Commission, there are more than 150 such companies in the Orlando metro area with 9,248 employees and an estimated 2.6 billion in earnings (Holt & Colburn, 2011). Orlando is home to the Medical City at Lake Nona, which along with Port St Lucie on the State’s Atlantic Coast is one of two burgeoning biomedical complexes in Florida. Snaith described Lake Nona’s expansion as “explosive.” The synergies at the Medical City have potential to change the structure of Orlando’s economy, according to Henry Fishkind, founder of the economic and financial consulting firm Fishkind & Associates. Studies demonstrate that companies with a significant international portfolio grow faster, are more profitable and are less susceptible to domestic downturns. Many Florida businesses have taken that lesson to heart. Recent statistics indicate that the State is home to more than 42,000 exporters, the second highest number in the United States. In 2008, Florida companies exported more than $54 billion worth of goods – making it the fifth largest exporting state in the country – and over $30 billion worth of services were sold to companies in over 200 countries around the world. The city of Orlando is set to develop strongly over the next decade, relying on a strong tourism trade, and with year round warm climate, the city has enormous appeal to many different industries.

PERSONAL DETAILS:
Nicholas Grounds
Global Partner status (Associate – Executive – Senior): Executive
Country of registration: United States of America
City of registration: Orlando

SERVICE SKILLS:
Strategic Management
Business Development
Operational Streamlining
Marketing
Cost Control

INDUSTRY SECTOR EXPERIENCE:
Financial Services
Marketing
Sales

QUALIFICATIONS AND EDUCATIONAL ESTABLISHMENT:
MBA University of Cumbria
Sports Management University of Phoenix
Premier coaching diploma NSCAA
Director of Coaching Diploma NSCAA

CLIENTS OR EMPLOYERS:
Tradition NY
Lasser Marshall NY
Chase Bank
Allied Irish Bank
Ulster Bank
Irish Life
KBC Bank
Nordea Bank
Banco Santander
RP Martins

LANGUAGES
English

PERSONAL PROFILE:
Biography Nicholas Grounds grew up as part of family where morals and ethics were integral cornerstones of the family culture. Nick put high value on integrity and discipline at an early age, later on using those virtues as his guiding principles in his quest for career excellence. He has mastered the ability of translating plans and visions into success, thanks to a career spanning more than three decades of executive management experience in various aspects of sales and marketing operations. Throughout the course of his career, Nick has received several commendations from his colleagues and clients for demonstrating diligence and hard work. He could effectively undertake a broad range of responsibilities while assuming different roles, either independently or as part of a team. Through effective mentoring and leadership by example, he is able to get diverse individuals share his vision and direct them toward a common goal. In addition, Nick possesses analytical skills which have proven useful in assessing situations and creating solutions to complex problems. He also maintains a positive attitude as well as a great sense of humor, which make him a likeable person to work with. With his engaging personality, Nick seamlessly establishes mutually beneficial relationships with his clients, who in turn put their utmost confidence and trust in doing business with him. Nick studied while working full time gaining a sports management degree and a MBA in Leadership and Sustainability in order to better service and advise clients. Nick started his career at Chase Manhattan Bank in London, working in the operations department before managing a computer system which generated marketing information for senior management. Nick supervised the computer conversion for the main money market systems before becoming the youngest senior supervisor Chase London ever had, directing and coordinating the money market operations department with 26 direct reports. In 1980 Nick was sent to New York to be the operations coordinator, and also assisted the Treasurer of the bank in determining and resolving problem areas in Nostro account administration. Nick was the coordinator for Chase’s cash management products conducting new marketing and onsite visitations in Europe and Israel. He then was sent to New York to manage, streamline and revitalize Chase’s Certificate of Deposit clearing product, successfully implemented cost saving initiatives and established a financially productive account base. In 1989, Nick joined Lasser Marshall and assumed the position of Vice President. For the next two years, he managed the design and creation of a currency off-balance sheet desk for vanilla and cross-currency arbitrage products; delivering outstanding service and ensuring client satisfaction to major banks and investment banks in the United States. Moreover, he successfully established client bases in Frankfurt, London, and Tokyo—major cities not serviced by the branch network of the company. By 1990, Nick was already the company’s top percentage revenue earner in the money market side of the business, while further bringing substantial contributions to sales and profit growth. For the past two decades, Nick has been affiliated with Tradition North America Inc., a leading inter-dealer broker of money market instruments. As the Senior Vice President, his responsibilities include managing the strategic product planning, marketing, and departmental budgets within $1billion annual company revenue. He also supervises the inter-dealer broker market company consisting of more than 2,400 employees and operating in 27 countries. Nick also renders effectual supervision to a team of brokers responsible for marketing sophisticated financial products to a varied domestic and global client base. He utilized innovative skills in creating, completing, and publishing a page on Reuters with indicative medium term foreign exchange rates that many clients used to revalue their portfolios. Likewise, he takes pride in holding a distinction as a major contributor in turning the company’s currency desk into a market leader. Nick’s significant efforts in increasing the market shares and revenues resulted in placing the division from number 6 to number 2 for the currency-related products in the North America market. He identified and resolved a major gap in the cash flows of banks in Ireland and established an account base being serviced out of New York; Nick also travelled across the globe during his tenure, successfully generating diverse client bases in different locations in Asia, Europe and North America. Nick currently works as an independent financial advisor, a soccer coach at the junior academy of Orlando City Soccer Club and as the Director of Market Development for a charity.

GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION
New York, United States of America
London, United Kingdom
Orlando, United States of America
Dublin, Ireland
Tokyo, Japan

Global Partner preferred location
City: Orlando
Country: United States of America

CONTACT
To contact Nicholas Grounds (EGP), please forward an email to the Academy of Business Strategy.

Less Sita Mana (EGP) – Kinshasa (Congo)

THE ACADEMY OF BUSINESS STRATEGY - DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

LESS SITA MANA (EGP) BA
EXECUTIVE GLOBAL PARTNER (EGP)

RELATED LINKS
Less Sita Mana – Certified Business Specialist (CBS)

GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION: Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of Congo)
HISTORY
At the origin in 1881 the city was mainly populated by the Teke and Humbu tribes living from agriculture and fishing. It is been founded as trading post by Henry Morton Stanley in 1881 and named Leopoldville in honor of King Leopold of Belgium. In 1920, the city became the capital of Belgium Congo. The construction of a railroad joining Leopoldville to the harbor Matadi hastens the development of the city which became soon the principal pole of expansion in the region. In 1965, the city is renamed Kinshasa by the former president Mobutu Sese Seko. In 1974 is hosted the boxing fight of the Century between Mohammed Ali and George Foreman where the former became World Heavy Weight champion. Kinshasa is now a vibrating megalopolis, the capital and largest city of the Democratic Republic of Congo. With a population of more and less 10 million (representing 1/6 of the population of the country), Kinshasa is the second largest city in sub-Saharan Africa and third largest in the whole continent, after Lagos and Cairo. It is an administrative and commercial center living from food and beverage processing, textiles and cement. It is a major cultural and intellectual center in Central Africa. The majority of the population works in the informal sector and lives from small commercial activities.

CURRENT POSITION
Kinshasa is a city that has expanded drastically, attracting people from the inside of the country looking for fortune and better living conditions. From the 90s and for two decades, the rural migration includes mostly people flying the civil war consuming the east of the country. The infrastructure has not followed the growth of the population, most of the roads have no asphalt and there is a recurrent lack of power and water. Years of civil war in the late 90s, as mentioned early have affected the growth of the GDP. The revenue of the central administration is boosted mostly by the revenues coming from the mining industry situated in the distant Katanga region. Much economic activities still occurs in the informal sector and the rate of unemployment is very high. Nevertheless, Kinshasa is a dynamic city with great opportunities to do business. The flowering of banks is a proof of the new vitality of the town. Like many African cities, Kinshasa is a green field where innovation and courage lead often to success and help to climb the social ladder quickly. In sub Saharan Africa, moving along the social classes is easier than in developed market like Western Europe or Northern America. The emergent middle class working in the corporate environment and owning prosperous commercial activities is boosting the local economy. Unfortunately, the public administration is the poor parent of this economic expansion and the civil servants under paid and under qualified cannot provide the structural stability prerequisite to an effective fiscal and economic control. As mentioned above, the economy of the city is driven mainly by wholesale, retail trade, manufacturing and construction but the informal sector represents a significant portion the economic activity. Yet, the potential is there and according to the IMF and the world bank the GDP has good chance to constantly reach the 2 digits in the upcoming years if the government maintain a rigorous financial policy.

FUTURE OUTLOOK
Kinshasa is an important pole of development in Central Africa. The human potential is extraordinarily dynamic. People are trying to get the most of everyday life notwithstanding the challenges. Compared to some other African cities, the town is like a beehive just waiting for a more organized queen to take over the direction of the city and the country. With the basic foundation in place, the stability of the local currency and a slight increase of the purchase power, the boost of commercial activities will be incremental. To take an example, a sign of this rising vitality can be found in the telecommunications industry where the two main operators Vodacom and Airtel are claiming an increase of their customer base. According to the World Trade Organization, a 1% increase in mobile phone penetration results in approximately a 0.5% increase in real GDP in Africa. Airtel having increased his database by 40% in 18 months shows clearly that there is something happening there and still there is only 10% penetration cell phone rate in the region. The incertitude for the future mainly resides in the maturity of the political leader to orientate the institutions in the right direction and legislate on laws acting as incentive structure for the real development of the country. With the economic crisis hurting West European countries, a lot of highly qualified emigrants are aiming to be back in their country, some taking charge of jobs in administration and other re-investing in commercial activities. Other are still working overseas are increasingly sending funds to help their families. This translates in an increase of local consumption and boost of local economy. Still, restriction of resources, poor taxation structure and low added value of the economy do not allow the city to take off yet. Improvement of the tax perception is still a challenge and will not be accomplished without a parallel strengthening of central government structure. The informal economy with it s vigorous expansion is still the predominant factor to take into consideration when analyzing the near future at it is represents the dominant economic force. Kinshasa has a bright future. It surely called to become the trigger which will boost the Central Africa economy in the coming years.

PERSONAL DETAILS:
Less Sita Mana
Global Partner status (Associate – Executive – Senior): Executive
Country of registration: Democratic Republic of Congo
City of registration: Kinshasa

SERVICE SKILLS:
Integrated marketing
Marketing strategy and planning
Budget management
Strategic planning
Creative, media, activation agencies management
Advertising management
Retail marketing management
Product launch management

INDUSTRY SECTOR EXPERIENCE:
FMCG – Beverage industry
Telecommunications

QUALIFICATIONS AND EDUCATIONAL ESTABLISHMENT:
BA Economics University of Kinshasa

CLIENTS OR EMPLOYERS:
Heineken
Nokia
Samsung

LANGUAGES
French
English
Lingala

PERSONAL PROFILE:
Less is a marketing executive that has provided leadership and expertise to the marketing teams in the companies he has worked for, at local and international levels. Starting in the FMCG field particularly in the beverage industry with Heineken Congo (D.R.C), he has contributed to the reorganisation of the sales route in one of the toughest district of Kinshasa. Managing distributors, wholesalers, retailers and truck sales, he has increased the Heineken co-op Bralima market share in his sales area from 2002 to 2003. In 2004, he joined then the marketing team as brand manager to take ownership of premium beer portfolio: Heineken, Mutzig and Guinness. He supported the sales team with the re-introduction of Heineken beer in the country. He took part in the regional rejuvenation of Mutzig with a new label, and organized activities aiming to push the sales with up market activities, the main co-sponsoring of Miss Congo 2004 and promotion in selected premium clubs in DRC. He moved then to the position of brand manager for non alcoholic beverages in the same organization bringing his dynamism and out of the box thinking in the successful re-launching of the natural Malta beverage called Maltina. This has been done in conducting market researches; participating to the creation of the new label with Heineken Africa regional team, and the supervision of related activities: Advertising TV and radio production and media; sponsoring of sporting activities: i.e. intra university football championship. Heineken being the Coca cola bottler in the country, he used to work closely with the Coca Cola Central Africa team to push the product at a retail level in relevant channels and to implement consumer activities in order to develop Coke brand equity. The subsequently actions has contributed to maintain and reinforce Coca Cola market leading in DRC. He organized the first Coca Cola Talent Search in the country which consisted in selecting the best musical talent in the 24 districts of Kinshasa the winner has been nominated to the African Kora awards in South Africa in 2006). He organized additional flawless Coke activation like the Fanta Fun Park which animated the streets of Kinshasa during long memorable week wends. In 2006, a new opportunity to use Less skills is found. A Retail Trade Census was conducted to identify and categorize the key retail stores selling beverages in Kinshasa and Bas Congo – two main provinces of DRC. He undertook the training of the survey team, coaching it on the ground even in the most recoiled areas of Kinshasa, Matadi and Boma. In doing that, he has been able to develop the communications skills that end to be useful in the later development of his career. He is then appointed Advertising manager with the mission of reshuffling the way the company was using the media before. An efficient way to optimize budget allocation was found and Less succeeded in this strategy by working out the right balance between the key ATL touch points(TV, Outdoor, Print and Radio). This has been achieved by initiating and managing discussion with media partners and agencies. In this role, he spent long hours negotiating agreements with media channels and making sure that Heineken portfolio brands get better exposure than the competition. He participated actively to the re-branding of Bralima, Heineken operational company with creation of the new logo, company jingle and launch of social activities towards disadvantaged schools in providing free school furniture. In 2007, a shift in his career conducted him to join the world leader mobile manufacturer Nokia in the position of Category marketing manager for Central Africa. Nokia was implementing new operations in the region with DRC and Cameroun as the key markets. Less contributed to raise Nokia brand preference in the region by 8% in one year with a new look in reshaping the way of advertising mobile phone and localizing global creative. He won the best Nokia marketing practice award for the sub Saharan African region in 2008 for innovative Nokia marketing operational implementation. After the fusion of the West and Central Africa offices, Less took the lead of the marketing team in providing his experience and ensuring that the global Nokia strategy was integrated at the local level in the region key countries: Ghana, DRC, Cameroun, Senegal and Ivory Coast. Working in a seamless execution of the marketing strategy in the region and travelling between countries, he had several meetings with local creative and media agencies making sure that the marketing activities were executed at best level of efficiency with strong impact taking into account the budget constraints. Less achievement in the regional marketing conducted him to relocate in the most advanced African market: South Africa. There, he joined the South Africa marketing team dealing with Smartphone brand management and campaign activation of Nokia in the country. Helping the sales team to achieve sales 23% above targets of the flagship product Nokia N97 and laying down the foundation of the launch of the Nokia 6710 Navigator. In April 2010 he joined Samsung mobile phone division in the newly created Africa telecommunications organization in the position of Marketing manager. He helped creating the marketing tools to be used in Southern, East and West Africa. In collaboration with key partners in the Southern Africa region he organized key trade marketing activities involving the key retail chains: Edcon, Pep, Ellerines, Beares. His skills have been constructively employed to launch new kind of activities in the market to push the Dual Sim technology in tough countries like Angola, allowing consumers to experience Samsung devices technology even in remote areas. Working on improving the Samsung experience for Africa consumers he is busy formulating, evaluating, and monitoring all the marketing plans and activation in the main countries of the region like: Mauritius, Namibia, Angola, Zambia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Madagascar and Botswana. Budget owner of Samsung Southern Africa Mobile phones, he is making sure the funds are allocated efficiently to keep the right balance between the key touch points and the different countries. As results of actively supporting the sales team in the sell in sell through and sell out, the sales turnover have been increased by 100% in 20 months .Less has experience developing and executing marketing processes, particularly in the following regions (Central Africa, West Africa, and Southern Africa and South Africa). He anticipates internal and external business issues and development and use this knowledge for target settings, prioritization and driving improvements. He has proactively developed marketing processes and strategic forward-planning, operating within the tight financial disciplines imposed by budgets constraints; methodical administration to deadlines (not to speak of crisis management where necessary); and the application of modern leadership methods (through staff motivation and involvement in both decision-making and target-setting, clarity in communication, and easy personal inter-relations).

GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION
Kinshasa – Democratic Republic of Congo
Dakar – Senegal
Johannesburg – South Africa

Global Partner preferred location
City: Kinshasa
Country: Democratic Republic of Congo

CONTACT
To contact Less Sita Mana (EGP), please forward an email to the Academy of Business Strategy.

RELATED LINKS
Less Sita Mana – Certified Business Specialist (CBS)

Marcos Haddad (SGP) – Sao Paulo (Brazil)

THE ACADEMY OF BUSINESS STRATEGY - BRAZIL

MARCOS HADDAD (SGP) MBA BS
SENIOR GLOBAL PARTNER (SGP)

GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION: Sao Paulo (Brazil)
HISTORY
São Vicente, in the coast of São Paulo, was the first city founded in Brazil, on January 20th, 1532; the main reason for Martin Afonso de Sousa to found the village was to guarantee the possession of the area, constantly visited by foreigners. Cane was the first economic activity, but the farmers from São Paulo could not compete with the North-Eastern people, because of the climate and, more important, because the coast of São Paulo is much narrower (the coast is separated from the interior by the Serra do Mar. On January 25th 1554, Jesuits on a mission to convert the Indians walked up the Serra do Mar and founded a college, which would become the city of São Paulo. The Jesuits were followed by another group which also had interest on Indians: the Bandeirantes, who chased Indians to be enslaved in the cane plantations (later on, the Bandeirantes, in search of gold, would explore the unknown lands of what today is western Brazil. The toponymy of the state shows how important was the influence of Jesuits and Bandeirantes in the History of São Paulo; no other state has so many cities and rivers named after saints (thanks to Jesuits) or after Indian names (thanks to Bandeirantes). The Jesuits were the only means of access to education for ordinary people (Indians and Non-Indians) during colonial times (the Portuguese had no interest at all in providing education). The bandeirantes were men who, despite all problems, and independent of official support, would put ahead their own enterprises (here, the isolation of the city of São Paulo helped the bandeirantes, who had more freedom from the Portuguese administrators). These two groups, Jesuits and bandeirantes, were fundamentals for the paulistas to shape a character of perseverance and self-determination which distinguishes the state from all others, and were the basis (along with the influence of immigrants, which would arrive a few centuries later) of the prosperity of the São Paulo. Until the end of the 17th century, the bandeiras (the exploratory expeditions organized and led by the bandeirantes) were the main economic activity of São Paulo; initially, the bandeiras chased Indians, but after the traffic from African slaves was established, the goal of the bandeirantes was shifted to prospecting gold and combating fugitive blacks.
They indeed found gold, but in the lands of Minas Gerais; many paulistas moved to the gold regions, in search of quick richness, and the incipient farms felt the lack of workers. In 1711, the area of Minas Gerais, which was part of the capital of São Paulo, was dismembered; the province of São Paulo remained under explored. The necessity to control the production and commerce of gold was the main reason to turn Rio de Janeiro into administrative center of Brazil; a consequence of this was that São Paulo lost much of the former independence. With the decline of the gold activity (which was never found in São Paulo), the Portuguese decided to encourage the culture of cane in the state. The situation then was much different from the 1500s: there was a path between São Paulo and the littoral; the interior lands had been already explored by the bandeirantes, and several villages had been founded; the state was much more populated, and, in a situation similar to Minas Gerais´, there were many people who had abandoned the gold quest and were looking for an alternative occupation. In the beginning of the 19th century, the sugar cane farms gradually occupied the banks of rivers Tietê and Paraíba do Sul, near the city of São Paulo (not by coincidence, these areas were the first ones to see coffee farms, later on). São Paulo was going through a major change: the adventurous bandeirantes were giving way to the cane farmers and sugar producers; however, while in the northeast the farms had an almost feudal structure (the patriarchs had nearly absolute power), in São Paulo there was a co-existence between the farms and nearby urban cities; the prosperity of the farmers was accompanied by the progress of cities. The coffee. Soon, the cane farmers realized the much better potential of coffee; as the cane plantations are completely removed during the cropping, in little time much of them had been replaced by coffee. Also, the region between Campinas and Ribeirão Preto proved to have a soil (called terra roxa, or purple soil) particularly well adapted to the coffee; the railways, necessary for the quick exportation of the product, followed the coffee; the port of Santos also saw a fast growth. By the middle of the 19th century, São Paulo was the largest producer of coffee in Brazil; so profitable was the activity, that an official report of 1887 indicated that São Paulo was already the province with the highest income levels. In 1888, slavery was altogether abolished in Brazil; the abolishing law (Golden Law) followed the Law Eusebio de Queiros (1850), which had forbidden traffic, the Law of the Free Newborns (1871), which had freed the offspring of slaves, and the Law of Sexagenaries (1885), which had freed the elderly. Aware from the inevitability of the abolition, the São Paulo farmers, since the 1870s, had been contracting Italian immigrants to work with the coffee. São Paulo was much less affected by the Golden Law than the northeast and even Rio de Janeiro, which had been relying on slave workforce for centuries. Even today, it is noticeable that São Paulo had a much weaker influence from black culture than the northeastern states or Rio de Janeiro (cariocas often say that São Paulo is the graveyard of samba.) On the other hand, São Paulo is the most multicultural state of Brazil; not only was there a large influx of many different immigrants, but most of them were promptly incorporated to the society (in opposition, many immigrants who headed to other states formed colonies, which made the miscegenation more uncommon). The number of immigrants had an exponential growth: in the 1860s, there were 1,681 people; in the 1870s, 11,730; over the following decade, about 184,000 immigrants entered São Paulo. During the coffee cycle, the absolute majority of immigrants was Italian. Despite not being among the richest provinces, São Paulo was one of the most politically influential during the Brazilian Empire; families like Andradas, Paula Sousa and Vergueiro were important before the Independence and all through the Empire period. Moreover, while it was common to see Representatives of a same province fighting each other, the paulistas disregarded punctual differences they might have and acted united to the defend the interests of the Province. So, in the beginning of the 20th century, São Paulo was the richest Brazilian province, had the most educated and skilled population, and with politicians eager to assume power. The State was ready to become economic and political leader of the Brazilian Republic. Brazil became a Republic in 1889; the first two Presidents were militaries who commanded the republican revolution. Afterwards, Presidents were elected; São Paulo elected the first three civilian Presidents, who ruled from 1894 to 1902: Prudente de Morais, Campos Sales and Rodrigues Alves. From 1902 to 1930, a period known as Republica Velha (Old Republic), São Paulo divided powers with Minas Gerais, another State which had benefited from the coffee culture and from the production of milk and dairy (the period was also known as Republic Coffee-and-Milk); there was a clear predominance of these two States, with an alternance in the Presidency. During the Old Republic, São Paulo consolidated the economic supremacy. The coffee farms reached a much larger area; benefited by the railways, many cities thrived; by 1930, about 2,5 million immigrants had entered São Paulo (57% of the total number of immigrants to Brazil), most of them with crafts learned at their home countries. Another major change was happening in São Paulo: industrialization. A mass of free, well paid salary men was being formed in the State, for the first time in the History of the country. Using the financial savings of the coffee barons, entrepreneurs (often, immigrants with specialized skills) started small factories to supply goods for this growing internal market; an extra boost came with the World War I, when importation of several products became harder or impossible. Despite of this industrial growth, the economy was still heavily dependent on coffee in 1929, and the State was deeply hurt by the collapse of prices. The economic crisis triggered political changes: unhappy with the supremacy of São Paulo, other States insurged against the results of the Presidential elections (which had been won by the paulista Júlio Prestes), and Brazilians saw the Revolution of 1930. Getulio Vargas took the Presidency and ruled the country until 1945; during this period, Getulio managed to weaken the political influence of São Paulo, but, after the opposition was tamed, he had no interest in harm the economy of the State, and the growth continued. After the collapse of the coffee, farmers and Government looked for alternative cultures. Official institutions researched a selected variety of seed, which proved to adapt well to the soils of the State and became the main agricultural product; the cotton occupied not only much space previously taken by coffee, but also advanced westwards, reaching lands still clear. At the same epoch, many other cultures were introduced in the state; the old trend of large mono-cultural farms gave place to smaller, poli-cultural farms. Meanwhile, immigration continued, this time with a predominance of the Japanese; most Japanese went to work in agricultural activities, and applied their experience with the preparation of soil and with the experimentation of new products. The industry kept growing; the coffee capitals were replaced by government and foreigner capitals. Getulio Vargas adopted (particularly during the World War II period, when US and UK governments wanted to have Brazil as an ally) a nationalist policy, focused on the creation of a heavy industry and substitution of importations; by 1950, the industrial production represented 80% of the economy of São Paulo. The basic industries (steel, oil refineries), the large consumer market, the educated labor force, among other factors, kept attracting industries. During the 1950s, when President Juscelino Kubstcheck gave incentives to foreigner car makers come to Brazil, General Motors, Volkswagen and Ford established plants in São Bernardo do Campo (and were followed by many auto parts makers). The region of São Bernardo became the center of the Union movements in Brazil; Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, who would become President of Republic, was an union leader here. In the 1980s, a movement of economic decentralization began to be observed, and only became stronger afterwards. Factors like a nearly chaotic traffic, the growth of markets in other cities, the cost of terrains, the constantly growing demands of unions, among others, pushed many new businesses to the interior. Cities like Campinas, Ribeirão Preto and São José dos Campos became important industrial, commercial and university centers; many other places had fast development, but not enough to outplace the capital. After the first decades of the 20th century, foreigner immigration slowed down, but another phenomenon became more and more clear: the internal immigration; attracted by the prosperity, millions of Brazilians (mostly from the Northeastern States) migrated to São Paulo, especially the capital city; lacking education and other skills, the absolute majority ended up working in lower jobs, such as civil construction; São Paulo (known, during the 1980s, as the fastest growing city in the world) had many of their sky-scrapers built by the Nordestinos. The internal migration had cultural impacts. Recent census show that São Paulo has more North Eastern people than most capital cities in the Northeast. Vocabulary, culinary and general habits of other Brazilians were incorporated to the culture of São Paulo, mixing up with the cultures of the Indians, Portuguese, blacks and other immigrants who had come before. Besides being the richest, São Paulo is the most multicultural State of Brazil. São Paulo is one of the largest cities in the world not to have a direct coastline, and it is also at an elevation where the threat of coastal flooding is not thought to be significant in the long-term future. This puts São Paulo is a strong position to develop without commitments or necessities to significantly adapt its behavior, save for attention to drainage challenges. Nevertheless in terms of environmental credentials, São Paulo has shown clear signs of innovation in energy efficiency. However, the city is famous for congestion, ranking 15th of 20 cities for congestion by IBM in 2010, below both Buenos Aires (13th) and Madrid (12th). And its basic infrastructural shortcomings mean it ranks very poorly in Mercer’s 2010 Eco-City ranking, at 148th alongside African cities such as Dakar and Banjul. Partly related to these problems are issues of recycled waste and green space, two areas where São Paulo is rated weak in the Cities of Opportunity report. But the city’s involvement in ground-breaking policies, such as a scheme to convert waste into electricity and biogas, has begun to lead to regionally competitive environmental ratings. The Siemens Latin American Green City Index in 2010 found São Paulo is a well above average performer in the continent, and the regional leader in carbon emission reduction. This top score is corroborated by Cities of Opportunity, where it also ranks first for low carbon footprint. The Siemens study also sees strong scores awarded to the Brazilian city in land-use, waste and transport. Indeed global environment rankings which focus on pollution and biodiversity find São Paulo performing very encouragingly, such as the Global Power City Index’s 8th place for environment. Tackling quality of life challenges and improving the business climate with systematic infrastructure investment and improved urban redevelopment is a major focus on the city’s leadership. For the first time, long term thinking is being developed about the city’s future with the inspired Mayor Gilberto Kassab initiating processes of urban redevelopment, skills development, business development policies and long term strategy.

CURRENT POSITION
São Paulo is leading Brazil’s accelerated entry into the international economy thanks to a remarkable transition into tertiary services, especially professional services, finance, media, education, creative industries, research, and medicine. Consolidated as Latin America’s finance powerhouse and with a rising reputation as an entertainment and fashion centre, the city has huge potential to become the continent’s, and even the Southern Hemisphere’s, reference point. This capability is slowly being reflected in international ranking and benchmark performances, but with a number of challenges remaining. Prior to the global recession, São Paulo’s was already easily ranked within the top 30 cities by GDP, one of only seven emerging economy cities to do so. The Brazilian city is now the 10th wealthiest globally by total GDP, having rated 19th in 2005. Its hosting of concentrated wealth is indicated by it entering the top 10 for number of billionaires resident in the city, according to Forbes. São Paulo has recorded strong post-recession performance thanks to its emerging status as a commercial capital. It is ranked 25th of 150 world metropolitan areas for the speed and strength of its economic recovery in 2009-10 by Brookings’ Metro Monitor, behind Buenos Aires but nevertheless clearly in the lead group of high-growth emerging cities. This has catalyzed a general upswing in business trips to Latin America. This can be seen in São Paulo’s inclusion at 12th position in the ICCA rankings, the top Latin American city, closely followed by Buenos Aires (=15th). International business is increasingly investing in the city due to its retail strength, with rental prices in the top luxury shopping street, Iguatemi Shopping, rising to the 5th highest in the Americas, notably above the top streets in Chicago and San Francisco. São Paulo is also the subject of a dramatic rise in foreign investment projects, rising to 6th in the world according to IBM from 19th in 2008. It is the fastest growth city in this ranking, which bodes well for the city’s future internationalization. São Paulo hosts the majority of Brazil’s private capital, and is the established preferred location for Brazilian headquarters of all major industrial, commercial and financial sectors. The 2008 Cities of Opportunity study found that São Paulo had a higher proportion of its population in finance and business services than Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai, Mumbai and Dubai. But the city is not yet close to making the breakthrough as a top-level financial services provider, even if it has made small strides in the past three years versus important rivals in its sphere of influence. The city has risen one level in Z/Yen’s Global Financial Centres Index in 2010 from a diversified local operator to an ‘established’ local player (along with Johannesburg), and is closing in on its chief challenger for hosting Latin American firms, Madrid. But overall it remains only 44th in the world rankings, at around the level of mid-sized European providers such as Copenhagen and Milan. Within the Southern Hemisphere, Sydney (10th), Melbourne (23rd) and Wellington (38th) are all rated as superior all-round centres. São Paulo’s business performance compared to other emerging cities in the past decade suggests it also has some challenges to address to become the pre-eminent urban destination south of the Equator. GaWC’s measure of cities’ immersion in networks of global firms finds São Paulo has slipped from 16th in 2000 to 21st in 2008, overtaken not only by East Asian dynamos of Mumbai (17th), Seoul (13th), Beijing (9th), and Shanghai (8th). The city’s business environment is also responsible for a moderate showing in the Global Power City Index, where it ranks 32nd of 35 cities for economic vitality, and 33rd overall. São Paulo has a huge and diverse population base, which can in the long term be enormous source of strength, but international measures tend to view its human capital resources as an area where improvements are needed in skills levels. The city ranks outside the top 30 of 65 world cities on this measure in both the 2008 and 2010 AT Kearney Global Cities Index, with comparable scores to much smaller cities such as Berlin. Cities of Opportunity rates São Paulo 18 out of 21 cities for the percentage of the population with higher education, while the Universidade de São Paulo slipped outside the top 250 in QS’ 2010 world rankings. Despite the fact that Sao Paulo remains a very attractive location for international talent, this lack of a highly skilled domestic labour force is a key area for attention, as with many emerging and established world cities. On the other hand, indications of growing corporate confidence in the city’s talent, productivity and multi-lingual can be seen in AON’s 2010 People Risk Index. Here, São Paulo rises to 54th globally, just behind Beijing and Shanghai and ahead of struggling European hubs Rome and Athens. And Tholons’ comprehensive study of the global outsourcing industry finds that São Paulo is the 8th most emerging outsourcing city in the world, specializing in animation, product development, infrastructure management services and multilingual call centres. There are few indexes tracking São Paulo’s image and brand strength, but some positive indications are signaled in the Greater Paris Investment Agency’s Global Attractiveness survey. In it, São Paulo was named by almost twice as many executive respondents as an attractive city for a corporate location decision than Sydney, and almost three times as often as Seoul or Mexico City. Among non-business travelers, São Paulo is not yet an unmissable tourist destination in Latin America, although its destination power is certainly growing. Visitor arrivals grew in 2009, pushing the city up to 69th globally for total arrivals, overtaking Florence, Venice, Johannesburg and Lisbon. Perhaps surprisingly, it is still out-visited by Lima (67th), while it is some way behind neighbors Rio (40th), Mexico City (42nd), Buenos Aires (51st).

FUTURE OUTLOOK
São Paulo’s future global image depends considerably on leveraging its vibrant and sophisticated cultural network, which can count São Paulo Fashion Week, the International Biennial festival of Art, a huge annual LGBT parade, and the ‘hedonistic’ Virada Cultural among its gems. Already the city’s cultural reputation is fairly strong, with the city ranked on the periphery of the top 25 globally for cultural experience in the 2010 AT Kearney Global Cities Index. The city’s exceptional nightlife is becoming internationally known, and although not responsible for improvements in more established indexes, has led to the city attaining strong positions in more informal publications such as the AskMen ‘Top 29 cities’ ranking. São Paulo is one of the largest cities in the world not to have a direct coastline, and it is also at an elevation where the threat of coastal flooding is not thought to be significant in the long-term future. This puts São Paulo is a strong position to develop without commitments or necessities to significantly adapt its behavior, save for attention to drainage challenges. Nevertheless in terms of environmental credentials, São Paulo has shown clear signs of innovation in energy efficiency. However, the city is famous for congestion, ranking 15th of 20 cities for congestion by IBM in 2010, below both Buenos Aires (13th) and Madrid (12th). And its basic infrastructural shortcomings mean it ranks very poorly in Mercer’s 2010 Eco-City ranking, at 148th alongside African cities such as Dakar and Banjul. Partly related to these problems are issues of recycled waste and green space, two areas where São Paulo is rated weak in the Cities of Opportunity report. But the city’s involvement in ground-breaking policies, such as a scheme to convert favela waste into electricity and biogas, has begun to lead to regionally competitive environmental ratings. The Siemens Latin American Green City Index in 2010 found São Paulo is a well above average performer in the continent, and the regional leader in carbon emission reduction. This top score is corroborated by Cities of Opportunity, where it also ranks first for low carbon footprint. The Siemens study also sees strong scores awarded to the Brazilian city in land-use, waste and transport. Indeed global environment rankings which focus on pollution and biodiversity find São Paulo performing very encouragingly, such as the Global Power City Index’s 8th place for environment. Tackling quality of life challenges and improving the business climate with systematic infrastructure investment and improved urban redevelopment is a major focus on the city’s leadership. For the first time, long term thinking is being developed about the city’s future with the inspired Mayor Gilberto Kassab initiating processes of urban redevelopment, skills development, business development policies and long term strategy. Sao Paulo has many intangible advantages over its competitors to be the Capital of the Southern Hemisphere, that the indexes do not illuminate. The size of population is a weakness when paired with infrastructure deficits, but will be a strength as the skills and infrastructure are built. It’s cosmopolitan nature means that the city is already highly multi-lingual and able to serve global firms for a single location, much more open than its most of Asian world city counterparts, and the city also have brand advantages, both with Brazil and with the Sao Paulo identity that still offer an allure to international investors and visitors. These advantages are about to be supercharged with the imminent World Cup, Olympics Games, and probable Sao Paulo 2020 World EXPO bid. No one should be surprised if Brazil win the world cup and Sao Paulo takes a decisive step towards becoming the business and knowledge capital of the south.

PERSONAL DETAILS:
Marcos Haddad
Global Partner status (Associate – Executive – Senior): Senior
Country of registration: Brazil
City of registration: Sao Paulo

SERVICE SKILLS:
Technology industrial processing
Food Specialist
Beverage Specialist
Carbohydrate Technology Conversion
Packaging
Project Design for process and energy
Waste and water treatment
Process Operations
Organic Chemistry processing
Inorganic Chemistry processing

INDUSTRY SECTOR EXPERIENCE:
Food
Process food
Industrial paper and corrugated
Sugar
Ethanol
Brewing
Confectionary
Logistics and distribution
Carbohydrate processing
Starch processing and chemistry

QUALIFICATIONS AND EDUCATIONAL ESTABLISHMENT:
MBA – Getulio Vargas Foundation/FGV
MBA Post-Graduate in Corporate Finance – Federal University Parana/UFPR
Bachelor in Chemical Engineering – Federal University of Rio de Janeiro/UFRJ
Advanced Management program –IPADE and Harvard, México

CLIENTS OR EMPLOYERS:
Bunge
Corn Products
ADM
Tate Lyle
Nestle
Cadbury Adams
Coca Cola
Pepsi
Modelo
Ambev

LANGUAGES
Portuguese
English
Spanish

PERSONAL PROFILE:
Marcos Haddad was President, General Director and CEO of Corn Products International, Inc. for Mexico and Central America Region and Chairman of the North America Business Council for CPO prior to return to Brazil. In this last mentioned role he managed all strategic operational (9 food ingredients plants and 8 distribution centers) and strategic commercial account across Americas, building strong operational, engineering and logistics teams and commercial networking in almost all market segments. His expertise includes building industrial food and beverage ingredient plants from ground zero, setting foundations for running business with strong marketing, manufacturing, engineered high capital investment and product development programs. Mr. Haddad’s developed high technology for carbohydrate converted ingredients such as HFCS, high maltose, modified starch, sorbitol, maltitol, maltodextrins, caramel color, adhesives, dextrose, corn gluten feed and corn oil, using corn, yucca, potato as raw material, and other food ingredients such as Inulin obtained from Agave. Mr. Haddad’s developments included a wide range of applications based on ingredient functionality, being a solution provider to the market segments as process food, dairy, yogurts, beverage, brewing, confectionery, paper, textiles, and animal nutrition. His innovations on product functionality and specialization on Logistics and Distribution of these ingredients across the America countries, increased $ 500million in annual revenue for CPO. Mr. Haddad, Chemical Engineer, started his career as Industrial Process Design Engineer, in Brazil, designing, building and operating complex CWM plants and refineries having received the Board Honors related with Safety and Quality in Brazil, US, Mexico; he got Business and Team Management MBA from FGV, Corporate Finance from UFPr and Advanced Management Program from IPADE/Harvard in Mexico. He established a talent Management Team for the North and Latin America operations and business and created the CPI Business School for the Company in Mexico, exported into US and Canada. In returning to Brazil, Mr. Haddad joined Binotto, 2nd largest Logistics and Distribution family owned company in Brazil. Mr. Haddad is a strategic, experienced and structured professional with superb planning and problem solving skills. Personality characterized by passion, strong people and communications skills, setting path to exceed expectation on team development, operational, financial results and business sustainability.

GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION
Sao Paulo, Brazil
New York, USA
Mexico City, Mexico
London, England
Paris, France

Global Partner preferred location
City: Sao Paulo
Country: Brazil

CONTACT
To contact Marcos Haddad (SGP), please forward an email to the Academy of Business Strategy.

George Danko (EGP) – Miami (United States of America)

THE ACADEMY OF BUSINESS STRATEGY - UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

GEORGE DANKO (EGP) BSEE
EXECUTIVE GLOBAL PARTNER (EGP)

GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION: Miami (United States of America)
HISTORY
The South Florida metropolitan area, also known as the Miami metropolitan area is designated the Miami–Fort Lauderdale–Pompano Beach, FL Metropolitan Statistical Area is the most populous metropolis in the South Eastern United States and the eighth-most populous metropolitan area in the United States, encompassing the counties of Miami- Dade, Broward and Palm Beach on Florida’s South Eastern coast. The principal cities include Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Pompano Beach, West Palm Beach, and Boca Raton. The population of South Florida is a very diverse community with members coming from Central and South America, Cuba, the Caribbean countries as well as Canada, Asia, and Europe. South Florida also has a large number of retirees who moved from the colder, northern United States and snowbirds residents who only live a portion of the year in Florida. South Florida residents are well educated; 83% of the residents 25 years and over have at least a High School diploma and 30% have a bachelor’s degree or higher. College or graduate school enrolment is 354,000. Historically, the most common occupations in South Florida are: 32% management and professional, 30% sales and office occupations, 18% service occupations, 11% construction, maintenance and repair occupations, and 9% production, transportation, and material moving occupations. 81% of the work force is employed in private enterprises, 12% are employed by Federal, state, or local governments; and 7% are self-employed. South Florida has a very high concentration of wealth and one of the highest areas of disposable income which can provide capital for new business and expansion.

CURRENT POSITION
Florida continues to be a state that is attractive to business due to its favorable tax policy for corporations; no individuals state income tax, reasonable cost of living, excellent roads and ports, three major international airports, major freight and passenger rail service and an enjoyable / comfortable climate. South Florida has an abundant, well educated and trained work force that continues to be augmented by US citizens migrating from other States as well as immigration. South Florida is home to numerous private and public universities, with University of Miami and Florida Atlantic University as a few notable examples. South Florida is well known for its robust tourism industry and the related construction and service businesses that support it. However, South Florida actually has a very diverse business base which includes agriculture, health technology (medical, biotech, and laboratories), services (high tech, financial and back office operations), university research, software development and a vibrant entrepreneurial business environment. Florida handles 40% of the international export trade with Latin and South America and South Florida is the predominate gateway for this trade. The anchor to South Florida’s leisure and hospitality industry is its extensive, beautiful beaches that are well maintained. The beach fronts are developed in a wide range of quality / priced resorts, hotels and condominiums along with all popular water related recreation and sport fishing. The numerous beach front communities offer plenty of restaurant choices, shopping, entertainment along with events and activities that appeal to virtually any interest. The tourism industry’s success is perpetuated by an extensive network of support services, a well trained workforce and financial institutions that are knowledgeable and willing to provide the capital to allow the industry to thrive in boom markets and ride out the market downturns. Closely allied to the tourism industry, is the very large cruise ship industry. Between the Port of Miami and Port Everglades, virtually every major cruise line has a strong presence and offers a wide variety of destinations and calibre of cruise experience. South Florida has benefited immensely from its close trading ties to a booming South America. Trade activity has largely been driven by a weakening U.S. dollar. The Brazilian real has appreciated versus the dollar to its strongest value in many years. International trade drives a great deal of support for South Florida’s professional and business services sector.

FUTURE OUTLOOK
Commercial construction activity is slowly making a comeback. Several recent projects that are well located are moving forward. Growth will remain choppy until consumer confidence is restored and operating fundamentals improve further. South Florida’s residential real estate market continues to struggle. The large number of foreclosed and short sales homes available mixed with the immense number of homes valued less than their mortgage amount, very tight credit (despite low interest rates) and persistently high unemployment sets up barriers that will take a long time to overcome in order to return to a “normal housing market”. Foreign cash buyers have entered the market in search of bargain-priced properties, resulting in increased transactions but pushing prices even lower. South Florida’s technology industry began to blossom when IBM opened operations in Boca Raton in 1967 with 400 employees Its workforce grew to around 10,000 at the company’s peak in the 1980s. In 1981, a team of Boca Raton engineers created the IBM 5150, the first pre-assembled personal computer, which ultimately launched computing into everyday life. By 1996, much of the PC work force to North Carolina and Texas. However, when IBM left, many of its workers stayed behind to found South Florida’s current wave of tech companies and created a strong entrepreneurial climate, most notable is Citrix Systems, South Florida’s largest and most well-known tech firm. IBM maintains a strong presence in South Florida with over 600 employees that produced more than 200 patents in 2010. In addition to university level research, Scripps Florida is an academic research facility with investigators in Cancer Biology, Chemistry, Infectology, Metabolism and Aging, Molecular Therapeutics, and Neuroscience, as well as the unique Translational Research Institute, which seeks to identify new biochemical targets for drug development, and to optimize and further develop these drug candidate lead compounds. Scripps Florida’s research targets include, among others, neurobiology (Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, autism, schizophrenia, anxiety/depression and addiction), cancer biology, immune system studies (asthma, rheumatoid arthritis), cardiovascular and metabolic research (heart disease, diabetes, obesity and metabolic syndrome), and infectious diseases (Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, malaria, tuberculosis, hepatitis C, HIV/AIDS. The South Florida business continues to struggle and its future outlook is inextricable tied to the overall success of the US economy. However, once the US economy does begin to prosper, the Florida economy will quickly accelerate driven first by leisure and hospitality followed quickly by an upturn in the support and professional services.

PERSONAL DETAILS:
George Danko
Global Partner status (Associate – Executive – Senior): Executive
Country of registration: United States of America
City of registration: Miami

SERVICE SKILLS:
Strategy Development
Mergers, Acquisitions and Integration
Business Development
Globalization and expansion
Operations
Performance Management
Channel Management
Brand Management
Stakeholder Management

INDUSTRY SECTOR EXPERIENCE:
Consumer Electronics
Healthcare IT
Large Retail
Venture Capital Investing
Manufacturing
High Technology

QUALIFICATIONS AND EDUCATIONAL ESTABLISHMENT:
BSEE Drexel University

CLIENTS OR EMPLOYERS:
Bestbuy
Pentair
Tektronix
General Electric
Johnson Controls
Schneider-Electric

LANGUAGES
English

PERSONAL PROFILE:
George M. Danko is a graduate electrical engineer from Drexel University and he completed advance management and business studies at Northeastern University and Northwestern University as well as the American Management Association. Mr. Danko began his career as a project engineer working on the design, construction and start up of process control systems for large, complex, industrial projects ranging from raw mineral and water treatment processing, automotive manufacturing, to nuclear power plants. Mr. Danko turned around several underperforming operations centers and went on to successfully lead the explosive growth of this Johnson Controls business unit until this business completed a joint venture with Yokogawa Corporation’s U.S based subsidiary. Mr. Danko then progressed to executive leadership assignments with Square D Company (now part of Schneider Electric), Tektronix, Inc. and General Electric where he transformed their sales and marketing organizations by developing multiple channels to market aligned with customer buying preferences and dedicated sales professionals, revamping the product offerings and introducing the use of software tools to improve sales force effectiveness. At Square D he turned around the Technical Services business, which was a key market differentiator and at Tektronix, he reduced the cost of selling products from 34% to 6% of net sales in one year. Mr. Danko was then recruited to Pentair, Inc. initially to lead business development. After developing the corporate strategy to coalesce numerous small acquisitions into three large, distinct operating groups, he went on to lead the effort to sell off non strategic business and acquired over $1.0 billion in new businesses to expand internationally and complete the strategic needs of the three operating groups. At the same time he introduced several initiatives that significantly lowered cost by leveraging the purchasing power of the various business units. With the strategic work complete, Mr. Danko became the President and COO of two of Pentair’s multi-billion dollar operating groups which he successfully managed. Mr. Danko was next recruited by Best Buy as Senior Vice President with full P&L accountability for the consumer electronics and appliance businesses. He delivered consecutive record sales results totally over $8 billion and impressive share gains in all portfolio growth categories. He led the implementation of the Integrated Operating Model, which enabled cross functional teams to deliver outstanding results through streamlined processes and common measurements and goals. When given the challenge to turnaround the underperforming Appliance business, he developed the strategy and implementation to revitalize the business which remains a successful product category. He drove the strategy development and implementation of digital solutions; showcasing wireless connectivity of multiple digital devices, entertainment content and subscription services. Mr. Danko championed the use of global sourcing and the development of house brands. He was a member of the first customer centricity leadership team; focusing on specific customers segments that were based on profitability and tailored value propositions. Mr. Danko was elected Chairman and CEO of SpringWorks, responsible for leading this early stage investment business. He developed the processes and managed the successful outcome for a portfolio of technology related businesses, with an emphasis on advanced electronic products and services. Developed the investment strategy, due diligence and management practices with approximately $85 million in invested capital and attracted over $36 million in co-invested funds. As President of Kardia Health Systems, LLC as well as the Executive Vice President of Healthcare IP Partners, LLC, Mr. Danko developed the strategies, built the organizations and processes that enabled the formation of several new businesses to commercialize a robust stream of Mayo Clinic developed software technology. Mr. Danko has successfully applied the principle of six sigma and lean to a wide variety of businesses and functions which resulted in significantly improved financial performance, product / service quality, customer satisfaction and impressive market share gains. Throughout his career, Mr. Danko has accumulated a great deal of knowledge and skill and demonstrated success in leading numerous businesses throughout Europe, Japan, South America, Mexico and China. He also led business expansion in these areas of the world through several acquisitions and the follow on successful integration. In addition, he had responsibility for overseeing the construction of major manufacturing facilities in Mexico and China. Mr. Danko is currently an independent business advisor that provides strategy development, marketing, sales, channel development, business development and operational consulting services to companies with diverse business needs; driving the quick return to profitable growth, global expansion or exit. Mr. Danko is Senior operating leader with a track record of increasing revenues and operating income in diverse global markets and industries. Skilled at quickly assessing business weaknesses and market opportunities which he uses for creating a shared vision, developing strategies that focus on customer success, simplifying organization structure and processes, setting clear expectations, and forging a team-based culture that thrives on results and accountability. A champion of productivity improvement with a passion for building high performance sales and marketing organizations that lead the industry, generate breakthrough products and services, and become known as great places to work.

GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION
Boca Raton, United States of America
Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Minneapolis, United States of America
Philadelphia, United States of America
Dundee, United Kingdom

Global Partner preferred location
City: Miami
Country: United States of America

CONTACT
To contact George Danko (EGP), please forward an email to the Academy of Business Strategy.

Leslie Hurst (EGP) – Philadelphia (United States of America)

THE ACADEMY OF BUSINESS STRATEGY - UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

LESLIE HURST (EGP) MBA BS
EXECUTIVE GLOBAL PARTNER (EGP)

GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION: Philadelphia (United States of America)

HISTORY
The city of Philadelphia, meaning “brotherly love” in Greek, was founded, planned and laid out, in 1682 by William Penn who was the son of Admiral Sir William Penn. King Charles II of England owed the younger Penn 16,000 pounds (approximately $6.0 million today) which the senior Penn had loaned to the King. After the younger Penn converted to the beliefs of the Quakers, or Society of Friends, a persecuted religious sect, he asked King Charles to grant him land between Lord Baltimore’s tract (Maryland) and the Duke of York’s tract (New York) in the colonies of the new world, as a home for the Quakers. Because the younger Penn was a trusted friend and confidante of the Duke of York (later King James II), King Charles II signed the Charter of Pennsylvania (Penn’s Woods) in 1681. Any good understanding of the Philadelphia and Pennsylvania culture has to start here. The Quakers or Society of Friends were largely Welsh farmers and millers who rejected the rituals and oaths of other religious sects, they were opposed to war, and believed in simplicity of speech and dress, and honesty, making them unusual and attracting hostile attention. Penn himself exemplified these qualities. Even though King Charles II granted him all of Pennsylvania, he chose not to sub-grant or even settle any part of it without first buying the claims of the indigenous Indians. When the Revolutionary War started, almost 100 years later, Quakers who aided the American War effort or took up arms were excommunicated from their church. During the early to middle 1600s, a time before the land became “Penn’s Woods”, other Europeans from Sweden, Holland, and Norway had already settled here in the Delaware Valley. They were seafaring traders, fishermen and small farmers. The English and the Dutch had the two largest navies and trading empires in the world at the time, so it was natural for the groups to begin to cooperate and specialize in the work they did best: supporting that world-wide trading empire. While moving inland and expanding their trading, these people began intermarrying with the Indians. For approximately the next hundred years Philadelphia was largely a trading city. In the late 1600s and early 1700s the Scots-Irish began to immigrate and settle on the fringes of the city and gradually move inland because their families were large and looking for cheap land. They became the frontier force and protective boundary with the no longer friendly natives. In the middle 1700s the Germans from the Palatinates (mostly Anabaptists, who like the Quakers before them were a persecuted religious group) began to immigrate to the Philadelphia area bringing with them their farming and mechanical manufacturing skills and shop keeper entrepreneurial skills. Many of the Germans began making rifles, accurate to 200 yards instead of the muskets, accurate to 50 yards, which had been made previously. They set up shops along the Conestoga Road heading southwest down toward the Shenandoah Valley to the Appalachian Mountains and eventually west across the Cumberland Gap to Kentucky and Tennessee. As the Scots-Irish and German settlers moved westward, they bought Conestoga Wagons and Kentucky Long Rifles from these specialist manufacturers to help them move their families and provide food and safety from attack. As it turned out, those rifles and the people who made them one at time by hand and could shoot them very accurately were a very important part of winning a war, as they allowed the “frontier forces” to use a style of warfare totally foreign and overwhelming to the standing armies of the day. Thus, when the first and second Continental Congress meetings were held in Philadelphia (1774-76) and resulted in the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War, the “riff-raff colonials” won and became the USA. After the Revolutionary War in America, another revolution began in France, that was to have consequences for Philadelphia and the surrounding area which are still echoing down through the generations. A family of French Huguenots supported King Louis XVI and near the end of the French Revolution as it consumed itself the father of the family was scheduled to be guillotined, but escaped from the Bastille, and he and his entire family made a run for it, landing in Rhode Island. All of the children started or worked in various businesses, but were notably unsuccessful except for one who had worked at the Paris Arsenal and in a powder mill and a saltpeter refinery. Éleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours, known as Irénée du Pont, or E.I. du Pont, immigrated to the United States in 1799 and founded the gunpowder manufacturer, E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company. By 1802, he had established both his business and his home, Eleutherian Mills, on the Brandywine Creek in Delaware. Previously in the United States locally made gunpowder had been notably bad, but DuPont had empirical knowledge, the recipe from the French arsenal for the gunpowder with which Napoleon, the gifted math student turned artillery officer, conquered Europe. When the British tried to retake what had been their colonies from the United States in the War of 1812 DuPont made the powder which won the war for the Americans and in doing so launched a commercial empire, which, to this day, is run from the Brandywine Creek area of the Greater Philadelphia Area. DuPont has grown into a multinational integrated technology company headquartered a few minutes south in Delaware, with many programs targeted toward sustainability, education, science, math, research, and safety worldwide. A few years later, in 1825 the Erie Canal opened connecting Albany, New York, on the Hudson River to Buffalo, New York, at Lake Erie, completing a 363 mile water route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, and diverting shipping from Philadelphia Ports to Boston and New York. And then in 1836 President Andrew Jackson shut down the Second Bank of the United States, which had been located in Philadelphia. These two actions coming so close together, though totally unrelated, had an adverse effect on the Philadelphia area for the next half a century. But the people of the area adapted by building many railroads and locomotives starting in 1832 and continuing until they were all consolidated as the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1846. For the first half of the twentieth century it was the largest railroad in the United States whether measured by traffic (ton-miles) or revenue, and at one point was the largest publicly traded corporation in the world, as well as having an annual budget greater than the U.S. government. As times have changed, the fiscal and physical structures have changed but all of the profitable routes are still running under the names of Conrail and Norfolk Southern Railway and CSX Transportation. Driven by the Potato Famine in Ireland, the second Irish immigration to America began in the 1840s. Whereas the first group, pre-revolution, had been Scots-Irish from Northern Ireland, spoke English, had some skills and a little money to start a new life, this new group in and after the 1840s were Irish Catholics and largely spoke only Gaelic, had few if any skills, and were dirt poor, causing them to start at the very bottom of the ladder, mostly in the first ghettos in the eastern cities of Philadelphia, Boston, New York, or Charleston. The women started as domestic servants while the men were day laborers. The men were a large part of the labor force that built the railroads even as they became transcontinental. The men also joined the army and fought in the Mexican-American War of 1846 -1848 and twelve years later in the Civil War. This turmoil all served to spread these new immigrants across the country much faster than would otherwise have happened, but in Philadelphia as in the other major Eastern cities there remained a large number; and as everywhere else, the Irish understood politics and dived into the political arena as fast as possible to re-balance the unfairness with which they had been “welcomed” to the country. Their descendants are very active in politics to this day. From 1859 to 1870 Northern and Southern Italy became unified and a constitution was written which greatly favored Northern Italy. As a result, many in Southern Italy and Sicily were unable to make a living and chose to begin the process of immigration to the United States. It was a process in which the men came first, with trips back and forth back to Italy to see the family. Letters were also sent back to Italy telling about life in America, and gradually the immigration grew until about five million Italians had moved to America by 1920. Some had skills learned in Italy as stonemasons, goldsmiths, tailors, shoe makers, and barbers, and were able to open their shops or go into business, many of which still exist in one form or another. Thousands of unskilled laborers took jobs on municipal public works projects in Philadelphia and the surrounding areas. But over time and through the generations the family and Catholic Church and the Italian connection were important and helped later immigrants adjust relatively quickly and accumulate savings to buy homes. The Italian Americans volunteered for the first and second World Wars in numbers exceeding their proportion in the population. After the Italian wave, immigration to the Greater Philadelphia Area stalled after the Second World War for most of the middle of the twentieth Century, but it picked up around 1990 and continues apace. Today, Metropolitan Philadelphia has the largest and fastest growing immigrant population among its peers, currently around half a million or 9 percent of the population. They hail from Asia (39%), Latin America and the Caribbean (28%), Europe (23%) and Africa (8%), with the largest sources being India, Mexico, China, Vietnam, Korea, Italy, Ukraine, Philippines, Jamaica, and Germany. All of Philadelphia’s rich 400 year history has resulted today in the Greater Philadelphia Area (within about 1 hour drive time) having a population of about 6.2 million people of whom about 2.9 million are employed, with a per household personal income of $130,590. The gross metro product is about $370 billion and the area is home to the headquarters of twelve companies on the Fortune 500 and thirty four companies on the Fortune 1000. The total gross regional product within a 3 hour drive radius equals $2.8 trillion, which would rank 5th in the world if considered as a single national economy.

CURRENT POSITION
The greater Philadelphia area grants more first professional degrees per capita resident than any other large metro area in the USA and has the 2nd highest award rate for bachelor’s degrees. As of 2009, of the region’s population aged twenty-five and above, about 35% had bachelor’s degrees or higher compared to the USA level of about 28%. The area is home to over 100 colleges and Universities including several of the best in the world. The area’s top fifty public high schools have student faculty ratios ranging from 9 to 1 up to 19 to 1, and send above 90% of their graduates to four year colleges. Even with all of those benefits, the area is able to provide a lower cost of living than Boston, New York, Baltimore, and Washington DC and the lowest rents for Class A office space among major North Eastern US metro areas. With regard to transportation the Philadelphia area has the second lowest annual average driving delay of 39 hours per year among the twelve largest metro areas in the USA. It has one of the largest and most extensive public transit and commuter rail systems in the USA, and three major shipping ports, including one of the very few served by three Class I railroads: Canadian Pacific, CSX, and Norfolk Southern. Philadelphia International Airport ranked 2nd in the country in customer satisfaction in a 2006 J.D. Power and Associates Survey, with 30 airline carriers offering 600 daily departures to 120 domestic and 36 international destinations. To look carefully at the various actions that could be done or need to be done to assure a healthy profitable future for the Greater Philadelphia Area, many organizations and people have come together. The Economy League of Philadelphia facilitates what essentially is a strategic planning symposium for the entire area, and is planned to be a living group for the next fifteen years, at which time it will most likely be extended. It is sponsored and funded by companies and individuals from the area: Brandywine Realty Trust and H.F. (Gerry) & Marguerite Lenfest, Cephalon, PECO Energy Company, Pepper Hamilton LLP, PNC Financial Services Group, Radian Group , Shire Pharmaceuticals, Sunoco, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Dow Chemical Company, Holy Redeemer Health System, ParenteBeard LLC, David Seltzer, StradleyRonon Stevens & Young, LLP, Suzanne and Steve Wray, Dunleavy & Associates, James M. Buck III, James P. Dunigan, Spouting Rock Consulting, and University City Science Center, Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation, William Penn Foundation, US Economic Development Administration. Four scenarios are analyzed by this regional group: a global village scenario in which in all countries are more or less equal with the BRICs fully developed and the developing countries are coming on fast; a partners in hard times scenario in which resources around the world are scarce and the area has partnered with corporations, government, wealthy foundations and venture capitalists to keep the area and the US afloat while the rest of the world regresses or sinks; a tight belts scenario in which energy prices are rising, power is consolidated in a few multinational corporations headquartered mostly outside the USA, and the USA is no longer a global leader; and an America in the driver’s seat in which the rest of the world is depressed by high oil prices which the USA has avoided by exploiting its own new energy resources, and the USA is the global leader.

FUTURE OUTLOOK
As we move forward into the future many challenges and opportunities face all of us. The key success factors for the Greater Philadelphia Area regardless of how the current economic situation plays out around the world are as follows: Business Creation and Entrepreneurship, Education and Talent Development, Higher Education, International Connections, Infrastructure, Efficient Government and Public-Private Partnerships, and Public Safety. These are all areas in which the Greater Philadelphia area has a strong and growing advantage with its foundation in 400 years of history (as outlined above) of immigration, integration, education, transportation, communication, cooperation, as well as farming, manufacturing, processing, research and development, and entrepreneurship. To quote this group, “Our region—the fifth largest metropolitan area in the United States—boasts an incredible diversity of urban energy, small town charm, and rural tranquillity. At our fingertips lies a collection of cultural and recreational assets that is the envy of other regions. At the center of the Northeast Corridor, we are in the middle of the largest mega-region in the nation. And we, the people of this great place, are unique too. Our hearts beat with a passion and intensity that is recognized around the US—just ask any fan that roots against our sports teams.” Because of our history as succinctly detailed above, we are uniquely qualified to partner with people around the world building a prosperous peaceful future for all. Join us as partners, colleagues, or neighbors, you will be welcome.

PERSONAL DETAILS:
Leslie Hurst
Global Partner status (Associate – Executive – Senior): Executive
Country of registration: United States of America
City of registration: Philadelphia

SERVICE SKILLS:
Process & Organizational Change Agent: Facilitating, Defining, Designing, Implementing, Managing
Project Management: Definition, Design, Construction, Commissioning, & Operation
New Program Definition, Planning, Development, Management, & Review
Counsellor for Individuals, Groups, Organizations
Information Systems Conception, Design, Implementation, Management
Strategic Plans, Five year Business Plans, Annual Budgets
Financial Cost Auditing and Control

INDUSTRY SECTOR EXPERIENCE:
Hydrocarbons and Petrochemicals
Integrated Utility Systems
Energy
Oil and Gas Production and Pipelines
Education
Mental Health Services
Management Information Systems

QUALIFICATIONS AND EDUCATIONAL ESTABLISHMENT:
Masters of Business Administration (MBA) Marshall University
Bachelor of Science Chemical Engineering Oklahoma State University

CLIENTS OR EMPLOYERS:
Union Carbide Corp.
ARAMCO
Yellowstone Boys and Girls Ranch
Haverford School District

LANGUAGES
English

PERSONAL PROFILE:
Les has two very different kinds of talents, seldom found together in one person: Math and science on one hand; and people, psychology, sociology, history, and organizations on the other hand. He has pursued both sets of interests during his career. He first obtained a Bachelor of Science Degree and post graduate courses and work in Chemical Engineering at Oklahoma State University, in Stillwater, Oklahoma while simultaneously earning a Commission as an Officer in the United States Army Reserve Field Artillery. Les worked for the University during the school year and for Conoco Oil Co. at the Conoco Refinery in his hometown of Ponca City, Oklahoma during the summers. Les went to work for Union Carbide Corporation after finishing college, working as a production supervisor and production engineer in an ethylene facility at their world scale integrated petro-chemical plant in Seadrift, Texas, where he distinguished himself with his thorough approach to problem solving and his easy working relationships with degreed and non-degreed personnel alike. As a result he was offered a temporary assignment at the Engineering and Research & Development Center working with the Business Team Support Group in Charleston, W.Va. While working at the Engineering and R&D Center, Les was promoted for his contributions to several Engineering and Business studies. The important fact about these studies is the combination and synergy of engineering, business, and people skills required which Les demonstrated. In addition, while working full time at the Engineering and R&D center Les continued the MBA studies which he had begun at the University of Houston, Victoria Center in the previous year. He received his MBA in May, 1978 with concentration in Organization Management and Finance & Accounting, from the West Virginia College of Graduate Studies at Marshall University, in Huntington, W. Va. After finishing his work and MBA Les returned to the Union Carbide Seadrift Plant in Victoria, Texas where he was promoted to senior engineer and then to senior Staff engineer and rewarded with a new assignment as the Energy Conservation Coordinator for the entire plant. In this assignment Les was able to reduce energy usage for the entire plant 15%. At this point in his career, Les started to see troubling signs that the Management at the highest levels of Union Carbide was either unwilling or unable to maintain the top of the industry safety standards they had had for many years. A few months later Les changed companies and began work for ARAMCO, the quasi-national oil company of Saudi Arabia, and a joint venture of Exxon, Texaco, Chevron and the Saudi Arabian Government. A few years later, Les’s prescience in having left Union Carbide became clear as the company fell on hard times with fires and explosions in its plants on the Texas Gulf Coast and a large gas leak in Bhopal, India resulting in massive loss of life and the eventual sale of the company. Going to work for ARAMCO and moving to the Middle East fulfilled a desire Les had had since junior high when a classmate’s family had transferred from Libya back to Conoco Oil Co., in Ponca City, Oklahoma where Les’s Dad also worked. Les moved to the deserts of Saudi Arabia and began work as the Operations Engineer for the South Ghawar Field and its nine Gas Oil Separation Plants, GOSPs. Les was extremely busy for the next couple of years because ARAMCO was adding Desalting/Dewatering and Gas Gathering facilities to all of the GOSPs which were spread out over the Ghawar Oil, the largest onshore field in the world. Les and others accomplished the integration of the existing process and the new dewatering and gas gathering process equipment safely and on time without capacity interruptions. One day, the Vice President of Southern Area Producing stopped by and asked Les to take a look at a new project the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and ARAMCO were considering, Khuff Gas. Les became the Senior Operations Representative for the Khuff Gas Project, a billion dollar total and $200 million above ground project to produce and gather deep (14,000 to 17,000 feet), sour (3% sulfur), wet natural gas. As such, “the buck stops here, on Les’s desk” became his life for the next two years from conception to completion in resolving scope, design, construction, commissioning, operating, and maintenance issues among five competing operating departments, 5 maintenance departments, 7 primary design contractors, and 10 construction contractors from Korea, Japan, USA, Saudi Arabia, Italy, France, and Netherlands. The Khuff Gas project was completed in twenty months, four months ahead of schedule, and 20% under budget. Les’s demonstration of leadership combined with detailed knowledge and the ability to delegate and control work and outcomes made happen what many knowledgeable people had said was impossible. As a human interest side note to the Khuff Gas story, the company grapevine reported that Les’s Senior Vice President after getting to know Les early on placed a large friendly wager with some other Senior Vice Presidents that the project would be successful and he won the bet. When the Khuff gas project had been commissioned and was being operated and maintained by the Line Departments, Les was asked to join the vice president’s staff as assistant to the VP. In this job Les handled and was involved in just about everything which came across the VP’s desk for the next ten years. There were promotions and good raises involved over that period of time and lots of interesting work. The skills of diplomacy and persuasion in a multi-cultural environment as a non-dominant culture person working for and with organizations which were dominated by Saudi nationals in management positions were honed in this assignment, as the work was with all levels and organizations within ARAMCO. After the Gulf War, it became clear to Les and his wife that it was time to wind down the Middle Eastern phase of their lives and return to the United States to finish raising their young children. A few months before the war had started, they had searched for and bought a house and begun the transition back to the states which they were able to complete fifteen years after first moving to the Middle East. Once back in the USA Les’s wife began graduate school and Les became the full time stay at home dad, back before it was common or “cool”. Four major interests occupied Les during this phase of his life: family, investing, politics, and volunteer community work. Les had always had an interest in good education and community schools, and now with his children leaving elementary school Les became involved as an Intra-District Council Member in the Haverford, PA Independent School District. The Council had as its mission the development of a five year strategic plan for the school district. Several committees were available to work on and Les chose the Strategic Technology Planning Committee. After a few months of working on this committee, the Superintendent of the District offered Les a job as the technology coordinator for the District. Les turned down the job offer but volunteered to do it for free while training existing district personnel to carry on later. So, Les became the Committee Chair of the Strategic Technology Planning Committee. The advantage for Les was that he could accomplish good work for the school system his children attended and at the same time have plenty of time to be Dad fixing breakfast before school, picking up kids after school, chaperoning sports activities, helping with homework, providing a place where other kids from the neighborhood could stay until their parents returned from work, and at the same time allow his wife to pursue her graduate studies and then do the extended commutes that were required to restart her career. In this volunteer role with the Technology Committee Les was instrumental in leading cost-effective initiatives that significantly improved student and teacher access to technologies. Under his leadership the entire district was wired, internet connected, classroom connected, administration offices connected and existing staff taught and encouraged to handle the system. Over the 10 years Les was involved, the district implemented a better system for about ¼ of the cost of competing districts. Because this was a position totally without position power Les had only good ideas and persuasion to accomplish everything and used them well to produce a good system and organization to support it. By the end of ten years both of Les’s kids were heading to or in college and he took advantage of the situation to visit a sister in Montana that he had not seen much of in the previous thirty years. It became clear after a short while that the visit was going to be longer than originally planned. His sister’s husband worked at a non-profit agency providing psychiatric residential and community based services for seriously emotionally disturbed youths and their families, and they needed help. Les had worked with kids since high school, when he took over teaching a Sunday school class for teens, had been on church service missions to Mississippi and to Arizona while he was still in high school, and after graduating from college and moving to Victoria, Texas had established a teen youth group at his new church so the junior high and high school kids would have a well chaperoned place to go and lots of healthy safe activities to participate in on a regular basis. So it was natural for Les to apply to work at the Yellowstone Boys & Girls Ranch in Billings, Montana. It took several applications before he was finally hired, because the administrators had a very difficult time believing that a Chemical Engineer with an MBA had anything to offer their mental health organization. Eventually one of them took a chance and hired Les as a lodge counsellor. For the first five years Les provided a full range of individual and group counselling services in a lodge for boys ages 13–19, while being promoted to Lead Counsellor. During that time he instituted an exercise and nutrition program that significantly reduced behavior incidents and showed youth the rewards of healthy living and personal achievement. At the Ranch, when a youth has successfully completed his program he is honored with a “rock ceremony”, a “big deal” in front of the entire Ranch community at Sunday Chapel. The young person chooses which staff they have formed the best relationship with that has helped them complete their treatment, and that youth and counsellor stand up in front of the group of about 120 as the staff tells the story of what is special about that youth and presents him with a polished Montana rock to signify that successful phase of the young person’s life and the caring relationship they have had. Les averaged being chosen twice a year for all five years, a good number for any counsellor. Near the end of the 5th year Les volunteered to share leadership of a troubled lodge for adolescent girls, ages 12-18, that was experiencing multiple violent-behavior incidents daily and full staff turnovers every few months over the past several years. Les joined the team at a time when lodge residents were not allowed to join school meals in the cafeteria or to participate in many other campus-wide activities because of risks to other residents. The new lodge had been out of control for more than three years, even though a succession of experienced talented people with Masters Degrees in social work or psychology had tried to lead it. In this new leadership assignment, Les recruited and trained new team members in standards of care, effective counselling methods, and relationship-building techniques. He reduced team turnover from more than 100% to less than 10% per year. He reduced the number of fights and riots from more than one daily to fewer than 2 per month. Within seven months of Les assuming leadership of the lodge it was recognized as the best girls’ lodge on campus by the administration, the girls participated in all activities campus wide, and were looked up to as positive leaders around campus, and Les was requested by graduating residents to lead five “Rock Ceremonies” in less than one year, a very high number for any counsellor. During his time at Yellowstone, Les completed 115 credits of continuing education in psychology, sociology, and brain chemistry and the application of that knowledge to organizational, group, and individual situations of problems and opportunity. This education creates synergies with the MBA in Organization Management. All problems or opportunities in the real world are, at core people problems. When you get the people part right, the technology and finance and personnel problems get solved and the opportunities get captured. Solving problems and capturing opportunities in organizations of all sizes is what Les loves to do and what he does very well. With a deep background in technology, finance, and personnel, Les is a facilitator of change in organizational structure and process and in physical plant and information projects. He is skilled at anticipating and understanding problems and opportunities and pragmatically helping to find solutions, and then managing and driving the positive changes to capture the opportunity or solve the problem. He recognizes that problems are undefined opportunities in disguise. He has demonstrated these skills in four different industries and organizations: healthcare, public education, oil and gas production, and petro-chemical manufacturing and engineering; in four distinct areas of the United States, on three continents, and working closely and harmoniously with more than sixty nationalities and ethnicities of all ages and backgrounds. He will use his skills to fulfil commitments to you and your customers to deliver satisfaction exceeding expectations as we pursue perfection and success with integrity and accountability.

GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION
Philadelphia, United States of America
Billings, United States of America
Houston, United States of America
Amsterdam, Netherlands,
Dhahran, Saudi Arabia

Global Partner preferred location
City: Philadelphia
Country: United States of America

CONTACT
To contact Leslie Hurst (EGP), please forward an email to the Academy of Business Strategy.

Rada Drobnjak (EGP) – Delhi (India)

THE ACADEMY OF BUSINESS STRATEGY - INDIA

RADA DROBNJAK (EGP) MS BS
EXECUTIVE GLOBAL PARTNER (EGP)

GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION: Delhi (India)
HISTORY
India in commercial terms and its trading potential are dated since 600BC. Since then it is dependent on trade and advanced transportation facilities. Most of Indian subcontinent is united in 300B.C. and its trade enhanced by extensive agricultural production. For the next 2000 years India is estimated to have the largest economy of ancient world and followed the central planning economy during most of its independent history. It is also characterized by extensive public ownership and regulation along with strong trade barriers. Due to 1991 economic crisis Indian central government launched economic liberalization and India turned towards more capitalist system emerged as one of fastest growing world economy. Although India had significant urban population most of population resided in villages with largely isolated and self-sustaining economy. Agriculture was predominant along with providing row material for textiles and crafts. The major classes were farmers, carpenters, Ayurvedic medicioners and goldsmiths. It is marked with joint family businesses where it was ensured that young family members were trained and employed in family businesses. The British Colonial rule in 18th and 19th century created more institutional environment and stabilization. Despite trade stifled with rest of the world, railways, telegraphs and legal system are marked as well developed and as a benefit in global scale going forward. Also, significant part of English speaking population remained as huge credit for development of India in global scale. History of Delhi in 20th century is named by the 1911 decision of British to shift capital from Kolkata to Delhi. The name Delhi also refers to New Delhi, the Capital of India built up south west from Delhi (Old Delhi) towards Mehrauli on the south. Independence since 1947 and continuous migration towards the capital, influenced rapid population growth which is by latest census at 16,7 mill and second largest in India (after Mumbai) or 8th largest metropolis in the world. It is 22,2 mill inhabitants in larger urban area, National Capital Region of Delhi (NCR Delhi) which includes also, Gurgaon, Noida and Faridabad. Since 1950 Government appointed the Committee, lately called Delhi Development Authority (DDA) to take care about Delhi rapid and hazard growth. One of biggest project in last few years was involvement in construction work and preparations of 2010 Commonwealth Games. DDA has built Game Village on bank of river Yamuna.

CURRENT POSITION
In a middle heart of Capital city of Delhi is situated its oldest business hub – Chandni Chowk. It’s the major street in the old Delhi for all commercial and non-commercial purposes, created in 16th century by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan. Now days, it is one of the biggest open market in the Asia, cross point and channel source for most of traditional trade transactions in India. In 2011 first time in India organized F1 Grand Prix in circuit built up in Greater Noida. On the social front Indians in Delhi are not too formal people. Business dress is the same as most other places in the world, consisting of suits and ties. Indian custom encourage modesty in clothing, especially for women, cover legs and arms where ever possible. As capital, Delhi is epicenter of frequent public gatherings and protests against corruption in modern India. Anticorruption is high on the agenda in public life of India, and by default the most about is happening in its capital where Government and Parliament are. In parallel modern Delhi is becoming true cosmopolitan city with increasing number of foreigners – both diplomats and business people from all around the globe. In global economy downturn time, it is one of the markets where GDP growth is at level of above 6% in 2010. Talented and smart people, eager to gain modern knowledge and capitalize on it, form workforce in modern India and present potential for its future development. Numerous reputable universities in Delhi create a knowledge and workforce hub consist from young and talented people across all India. More and more students across all the globe are choosing Delhi Universities too. Such knowledgeable and smart workforces presents the biggest potential for further development of modern India and its Capital. Strategic approach followed by structured execution work processes presents add-ons to secure business success formula in India going forward.

FUTURE OUTLOOK
As of 2012, according to International monetary fund, India presents tenth largest economy by market exchange rates and third largest economy by purchasing power parity. With its average GDP growth of 6% in last 20 years, touching 10% growth in 2010, India is one of the world’s fastest growing economies. Due to still enormous number of people who live below the poverty level, India is 138th in the world scale when it is about GDP per capita. Anyway, it is about second world’s largest workforce characterized with low average labor cost. In those terms it is the biggest worlds potential for growth. Due to that, global systems are strongly oriented for outsourcing activities and functions handled from India in order to improve efficiency, but also increase the effectiveness. Wide workforces, strong educational system and cultural focus on their own development, present the potential for ensuring capable and best in class servicing for global systems. Its marked with shift of modern India GDP share of 50% for servicing while 30% remains with agriculture nowadays. It is still about enormous potential for industry development due to significant mine reserves, as well as agricultural potentials for textiles and carpenters. Not less important, power energy production potentials based on natural, environmental friendly sources presents the area where India can easily take up high position in global scale. It is also well up in today’s Indian Government agenda. Water potentials are huge and developments of sustainable systems for energy generation are one of the focus points. India is constituted of 28 states and 7 union territories with its elected legislatures and governments patterned on the Westminster model. India is becoming the tourist hot-spot. Its 5,000 years of history, its length, breadth and the variety of geographic features make its tourism basket large and varied. It presents heritage and cultural tourism along with medical, business and sports tourism. India has a growing medical tourism sector. Currently from tourism is contributed over 6% of service sector GDP, with projected year to year growth of 9% in average in next 8 years. Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan are the top 5 states to receive inbound tourists. Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra received the big share of domestic visitors. Delhi, the capital of largest democracy and focus of the socio-economic and political life of India, a symbol of ancient values and aspirations is assuming increasing eminence among the great cities of the world. Growing at an unprecedented pace, the city is focused on enabling integration of its elegant past as well as the modern developments into an organic whole, which demands a purposeful transformation of the socio economic, natural and built environment. The seat of national governance and a center of business, culture, education and sports, Delhi, however, stand at the crossroads today. It is about to take the choice between uncontrolled development and slide towards chaos or a movement towards making Delhi a world- class city, handled with vision and care. To be the global metropolis and a world-class city, where all the people are engaged in productive work with a decent standard of living and quality of life in a sustainable environment. In coming years this require planning and action to meet the challenge of population growth and in migration into Delhi, addressing the problems of unorganized informal sector; dealing with the issue of slums, provision of adequate infrastructure services; preservation of Delhi’s heritage and blending it with the new and complex modern patterns of development. Shopping and commercial areas reflect the economy and the image of the Capital. It is expected that the number of enterprises in retail trade are likely to increase to about 0.5 mill 2021 and the corresponding employment is likely to increase to about 1mill. In addition to these, large number of enterprises in sectors such as restaurants and hotels, finance & insurance, real estate & business operate from commercial centers. This indicates the predominance of retail service activities in the economic structure of the city. The major changes in the economic structure are due to liberalization of the economy, entry of multinational companies in the consumer sector, improved telecommunication system, increased per capita income and the purchasing power of the people. The retail shopping is now clubbed with other activities such as entertainment, work, education etc. At local level improved telecommunication facilities, home delivery of goods, direct marketing concept and ecommerce has reduced the number of trips to shopping centers to some extent. Delhi is emerging as an international center of education, health care, tourism, sports and business, which require complimentary facilities such as hotels, budget hotels, service apartments, etc. catering to various economic groups.

PERSONAL DETAILS:
Rada Drobnjak
Global Partner status (Associate – Executive – Senior): Executive
Country of registration: India
City of registration: Delhi

SERVICE SKILLS:
Financial Management
People Management
Strategy Management
Performance Management
Project and Program Management
Optimization of business models
Business planning, analysis and reporting
Succession planning and coaching
Financial planning
Financial reporting

INDUSTRY SECTOR EXPERIENCE:
Telecommunication
Financial services

QUALIFICATIONS AND EDUCATIONAL ESTABLISHMENT:
Master, Financial Management, University of Montenegro
Faculty of Economy, University of Montenegro

CLIENTS OR EMPLOYERS:
Telenor Montenegro
Uninor
Telenor ASA
M&V Investments

LANGUAGES
English
Croatian
Serbian
Bosnian
Montenegrin

PERSONAL PROFILE:
I have graduated on Faculty of Economy, University of Montenegro in 1996 and signed for post-graduate studies “Financial Management” in period 1996-1998.First working assignment 1995-1996 was about entrepreneur project of launching first Pizza, Home delivery service in Montenegro. After graduation, in period 1997-1998 I have taken trainee assignment with brokers’ house M&V Investment. It was in period of initial phase of capital market development in Montenegro. Since 1998 I am with Telenor, Norwegian Telecom Company and most of the time I have spent with their operation in my home country. With Telenor, I have grown from Financial Consultant, responsible for investment planning and control over Financial Manger focused on financial planning, analysis and controlling in multinational joint venture environment, towards CFO, focused on growth under the continues changes and people management. During 8years of CFO assignment I was responsible for Business and financial planning and analysis, IFRS and statutory financial reporting, revenue assurance, internal control, procurement and project and process management. Major achievements during that period were about implementation of IFRS, swap of ERP, building and developing internal control, revenue assurance, procurement, project and process management functions in parallel with continuous improvement and modernization of core finance area functions. New management model adopted for dynamism and continues changes in telecom industry has been implemented successfully. In period 2009 – 2011 expatriate assignment as Head of Performance Management with Telenor Company in India, which operates under the brand name “Uninor”. It was a start up phase on most competitive telecom market in the world. Focus was on building up the business and financial reporting, controlling and planning functions and organization based on shared service model with 13 geographically dislocated operational/profit units headed by Corporate office located in Gurgaon. Working experience in multinational environment and with highly outsourced business model. Continuous focus on optimization and best in class targets for efficiency in order to sustain and break even on Indian telecom market. Since September 2011 assigned Program Director in Telenor Montenegro focused on creation of standardized and industrialized future states in CEE region. Strong financial background is well combined with developed leadership capabilities. Strength in analytic matched with strong interpersonal skills and successful distance management. It is a proven flexibility for coping in multinational environment. Last, but not least, it is continues interest to explore further and work in new cultural environments.

GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION
Bangalore, India
Delhi, India
Podgorica, Montenegro
Munich, Germany
Oslo, Norway

Global Partner preferred location
City: Delhi
Country: India

CONTACT
To contact Rada Drobnjak (EGP), please forward an email to the Academy of Business Strategy.

James Augustine (AGP) – Toronto (Canada)

THE ACADEMY OF BUSINESS STRATEGY - CANADA

JAMES AUGUSTINE (AGP) CGA CTP BAccS BCom
ASSOCIATE GLOBAL PARTNER (AGP)

GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION: Toronto (Canada)

HISTORY
Toronto, on the north shore of Lake Ontario, is the largest of Canada’s vibrant urban centers. It is the hub of the nation’s commercial, financial, industrial, and cultural life, and is the capital of the Province of Ontario. The city had people living there for a long time but the urban community only dates to 1793 when British colonial officials founded the ‘Town of York’ on what then was the Upper Canadian frontier that grew to become the ‘City of Toronto’ in 1834. Through its subsequent evolution and expansion Toronto has emerged as one of the most liveable and multicultural urban places in the world today. At the mid-point of the 19th century, on the eve of the railway era, Toronto was very much a British colonial city in an expanding empire. In 1851, 97 per cent of the population claimed origins in the United Kingdom but gradually it accepted people from many other countries and is a multicultural center and is called “City of the World”. Construction on a railway to the outside world started in 1851 and two years later, the first train of the Ontario, Simcoe, and Huron line pulled out of the city along track that ran north to Barrie on Lake Simcoe. In 1855, the first east-west railway line opened when the Great Western ran to Toronto from Hamilton.. With increased rail construction, Toronto quickly became linked to Montreal, Quebec, the Atlantic colonies, and the United States with a previously unimagined efficiency. The net result was that the city became the main railway hub in Canada West, which further deepened and extended Toronto’s dominance over other cities in Canada. At the same time, Industrial needs, along with those of the railways and the port facilities that serviced them, transformed Toronto Harbor. Beginning in the 1850s, the port became a busy industrial zone. With the transformations brought on by railways and industrialization, other businesses opened or grew with the expanding city, such as Eaton’s and Simpson’s, in 1869 and 1872 respectively, two firms that would dominate the city’s retail world until the latter part of the 20th century. Other factors fostered economic expansion in the Victorian city, such as an inflow of British and other investment and the development of the city’s own capital infrastructure through the founding of the Toronto Stock Exchange in 1852. Like the railways, factories, and department stores, these ventures extended their reach well beyond the city, especially with the expansion of the national market after the confederation of Canada. In 1867 Toronto became a city within a country instead of a colony when New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and the United Province of Canada formed the ‘Dominion of Canada’ within the British Empire. The creation of the dominion and the concurrent formation of modern Ontario resulted in Toronto becoming the capital and the largest urban center in the most populous province of the new nation. Those changes further solidified the city’s already-dominant influence in the region.

CURRENT POSITION
People from different countries immigrated to Toronto and their motivations for coming to Toronto varied greatly. A large portion of the immigrants in the years immediately after 1945 were Europe’s ‘displaced persons,’ who found it difficult, if not impossible, to return to their former homes after the terrible upheavals of the Second World War and its aftermath. Others were refugees from some later trauma, such as Hungarians who fled here when the Soviet Union invaded their country in 1956, or Vietnamese who began to arrive in the latter 1970s after the fall of the pro-western government in Saigon. Many individuals chose to come in freer circumstances in hopes of achieving the good life they believed Canada could offer them, as represented by post-war Dutch immigration, while some moved here to join family members who had preceded them to the new country. In addition to immigrants, of course, a significant portion of the Toronto’s newcomers came not from foreign lands, but were Canadians from elsewhere in the country, which chose to seek their fortunes in the big city. A continuous influx of newcomers from Atlantic Canada, and large numbers of immigrants from around the world, has contributed to the steady growth of Toronto and its surroundings since the Second World War. Today, Toronto is the primary destination for new immigrants to Canada, the vast majority from the developing world. According to a United Nations report, Toronto has the second-highest proportion of immigrants in the world, after Miami, Florida. Almost half of Toronto’s residents were born outside Canada.[16] The resulting cultural diversity is reflected in the numerous ethnic neighborhoods’ of the city. The proliferation of shops and restaurants derived from cultures around the world makes the city one of the most exciting places in the world to visit. Moreover, the relative tranquillity that mediates between such diverse populations is a testament to the perceived tolerant character of Canadian society. Toronto is home to the CN Tower, world’s tallest freestanding structure.

FUTURE OUTLOOK
Toronto is the 5th largest city in North America with about 3 Million residents. Its economy comprises 11% of Canada’s GDP. It’s GDP in 2011 was about 144 Billion, exports of about 70 billion and retail sales of about 60 billion. Five of the largest six banks in Canada have their head office situated in Toronto in addition to 75% of Canada’s foreign banks and 65% of Pension fund companies. Toronto is home to 9 of Canada’s 10 largest law practices, 9 of the top 10 accounting firms and all 10 top human resources and benefits firms. Toronto has three major universities and two MBA schools offering courses in all major areas. Toronto’s Pearson International Airport is within easy reach of the city’s central business district and provides flights to over 300 destinations in 54 countries through 64 carriers. With four major highways, multi-modal railway facilities, a Great Lakes port and an international airport handling over 30 million passengers and 350,000 tons of cargo annually, Toronto is a true North American gateway. Toronto’s public transit system is the second largest in North America and has the highest per capita ridership rate on the continent. More than 2,400 subway vehicles, buses and streetcars make it easy for more than 1.4 million business riders to travel throughout the city daily. As with all other major cities of the world, recent economic problems had a major impact in Toronto. But because of the strength of our banking system and the measures taken by our central bank, Canada and Toronto in particular recovered faster than other major cities. Toronto attracts a lot of new immigrants and new business, the economy is expanding rapidly. The crime rate of Toronto is much less than other major cities. With four major highways, multi-modal railway facilities, a Great Lakes port and an international airport handling over 30 million passengers and 350,000 tons of cargo annually, Toronto is a true North American gateway.

PERSONAL DETAILS:
James Augustine
Global Partner status (Associate – Executive – Senior): Associate
Country of registration: Canada
City of registration: Toronto

SERVICE SKILLS:
Cash Management
Treasury Operations
Short term investment and financing
Cash forecasting
Budgets
Process Improvement
Liquidity Management
Banking relationship management
Financial Risk management
Foreign Exchange

INDUSTRY SECTOR EXPERIENCE:
Automotive
Food and Beverages
Non-Profit
Nutrition

QUALIFICATIONS AND EDUCATIONAL ESTABLISHMENT:
Certified Treasury Professional Association for Financial Professionals
Certified General Accountant Certified General Accountants
Bachelor of Accounting Science – University of Calgary Canada
BCom – University of Kerala India

CLIENTS OR EMPLOYERS:
ABC Group Inc
Maple Leaf Foods Inc
University Health Network
Nutreco Canada Inc

LANGUAGES
English

PERSONAL PROFILE:
A Certified Treasury Professional (CTP) and a Certified General Accountant (CGA) with extensive experience, spanning over 10 years in the following areas: Financial Accounting, Budgets, Consolidations, Cash Management, Cash Forecasting, Liquidity Management, Short Term Financing & Investments, Banking Relationship Management, Foreign Exchange Management, and Financial Risk Management. Obtained Bachelor of Commerce (B.Com) from University of Kerala, India and a Bachelor of Accounting Science (BAccS) from University of Calgary, Canada. I am a self-starter and a self-motivated Finance and Treasury professional, with experience in risk management, strategy development, process improvements, internal control implementation as well as Cash management product selection and implementation. I started my Accounting career as an Accounts payable person in ABC Group Inc. and promoted to the position of Senior Accountant in two years and then to Treasury Manager in 2002. My achievements include development of the new Treasury department, policy and process development, implementation of cash management products for the department, and developing new banking relationships in Canada and the US. Managed cash forecasts, short term financing, investments, foreign exchange trading, hedging of financial risks, and Insurance program. Documented and Implemented process and procedures, evaluated performance, and introduced continues improvement program. Successfully negotiated rate savings with Banks and Insurance Brokers, and participated in negotiation of new funding arrangements as well as introduction of new insurance coverage. Developed new shared services department, hired and trained employees, implemented control procedures and supervised staff. Provided management with up to date information on financial position of the organization, and supported strategic decision making and Mergers and Acquisitions initiatives. Maple Leaf Foods Inc. hired me as a consultant to handle Treasury Operations in the absence of the Manager. Created a new cash forecast model to increase accuracy, and to track variance between forecasted and actual cash position. Handled cash reporting, banking relationships, factoring, investments, as well as issue, renewal and cancellation of bank guarantees and letter of Credits. In University Health Network, I was responsible for cash forecasting and forecast reconciliations using Wall Street Treasura, Treasury System. Also responsible for letter of Credits, Banking, Reconciliations, Period end accounting entries, and updating leasing information. Joined Nutreco Canada Inc. as a Treasury and Taxation Analyst in November 2011. Responsible for Cash forecasting, forecast reconciliation, internal fund transfers, foreign exchange market value calculation, loan interest calculation, wire and EFT payments, tax compliance and producing simplified process and procedures and its documentation.

GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION
Toronto, Canada
Edmonton, Canada
Calgary, Canada
New York, USA
Dallas, USA

Global Partner preferred location
City: Toronto
Country: Canada

CONTACT
To contact James Augustine (AGP), please forward an email to the Academy of Business Strategy.