What is your background pre-Bain? And what is your current role at Bain/how long have you been here?
Before Bain I spent four years training with the U.S. Olympic Rowing team, culminating with a Silver Medal at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. During that period I also gained work experience at Harvard Management Company and a tech start-up as well as a degree in finance summa cum laude from Northeastern University. Following the Olympics, I attended Harvard Business School—working in investment banking at Salomon Brothers over the summer—and followed that up with another year rowing with the U.S. team. I joined Bain in Boston in 1995.
I am now a Partner in our London office, working primarily in our consumer products and energy practices.
How would you describe your role at Bain? What have been your most memorable case experiences? What were the results of which you were most proud?
The partner role at Bain is about ensuring that our clients get the full benefit of Bain when they hire us and that the best possible development opportunities are given to our people. A great deal of this comes through teaming. As a partner at Bain, I try to work very collaboratively with clients to understand their issues in depth and to identify how we can best support them to get to an outstanding result. It is equally important to team well internally, finding the right partners locally and around the globe that can help solve a client’s issue and working closely with our project case teams to help crack specific issues for clients.
My most memorable case experience was a project where we worked closely with a major global company to develop a luxury goods retail proposition from scratch, leveraging some of the company’s “hidden assets”. We formed a joint team comprised of people from the client, a major advertising firm, some independent consultants, and Bain, hired some offices and worked together there for six months to develop the concept and the launch plan. It was hard work, but also great fun. The business launched a few months after we wrapped up and now has almost 40 shops across Europe, Asia, the Middle East and North America.
My case experiences have been varied over time. For example, another case experience that was perhaps equally exciting was helping a European mid sized coal mining business escape bankruptcy and increase its market value 150x. To do this, our teams needed to support the client in restructuring the business and mine portfolios, but also in turning around business and mining operations. We spent two full years working with this company.
Tell us three interesting facts about yourself/ your interests outside work.
- I have two boys who attend a very academic school and have full extracurricular schedules, keeping me extremely occupied outside of school
- My wife is an entrepreneur and I inevitably get involved in some of the thinking. I try not to be “the voice of reason” too often —nobody likes an idea killer
- I try to do as much sport of whatever kind as possible, currently it’s mostly running. I ran a half marathon recently
