Umbrex is pleased to welcome Kirstie Gust with Conintento Consulting. Kirstie has more than ten years of experience advising Fortune 500 companies in process and program design, implementation, improvement, management, monitoring, and auditing. With previous employers including KPMG and McKinsey & Company, Kirstie has built her career as a trusted partner for organizations across industries. Kirstie specializes in Operational Risk Management, Third Party Risk Management, Fraud Prevention, Finance and Accounting Processes, and Strategic Alignment….

  Tobias Baer tackles the issue of payment fraud, credit fraud, and money laundering and explains how the universal payee ID can reduce losses. He identifies how fraud schemes are enabled by and benefit from weaknesses in most banking and payment schemes around the world. One of the most amazing aspects of working in many different countries is the realization that a few countries have the perfect solution for a problem that costs most other countries literally billions of dollars….

  From her company blog, Nora Ghaoui shares a two-part series that examines the strategy statements of large companies and explains why strategy writing often results in generic statements. By the time a large company has finished its strategic planning cycle, it ends up with strategy statements that could apply to any company. The same phrases show up every time.  Why is that?  Do great minds think alike, are people running out of ideas, or are market trends forcing them…

Umbrex is pleased to welcome Bernhard Heine with Professional Business Coaches. Bernhard Heine is a Business and Executive Coach at Professional Business Coaches, Inc., (PBC, Inc.) a company he founded to help business owners and leaders achieve their vision. Bernhard has more than 30 years of experience working collaboratively with business partners in all phases of business management, restructuring and transformation, particularly in: strategic planning, marketing and sales, organizational design, engineering consulting, project management, coaching and facilitation. Prior to forming…

Umbrex is pleased to welcome Caroline Wooldridge. Caroline Wooldridge spent a few years at BCG after an MBA at Wharton. Since BCG, she has led operations at ~100 person start-up, and most recently spent a year in strategy & transformation work at WeWork. Prior to Wharton, she worked 7 years in marketing and media. She has just left WeWork to begin independent consulting. Caroline has particular experience in transformation, operating models and org structure, strategic planning, board / funding material,…

Umbrex is pleased to welcome Yevgeniy Rikhterman.  Yevgeniy Rikhterman spent three years as the Director of Strategy at Herff Jones, a PE owned CPG company. Yevgeniy has experience in creating strategic plans, as well as an evergreen strategic planning processes. Yevgeniy led the strategic planned that helped to maximize the value of Herff Jones during a critical PE transaction. He also led the corporate development, and M&A aspect, and as such has specific experiences that is applicable to mid-size companies…

Umbrex is pleased to welcome Ashu Dalvi with South Pointe Strategy.  Ashu has spent over 15 years as a consultant with various firms, including A.T. Kearney and Booz Allen Hamilton. He loves working on ambiguous problems and has developed and implemented transformational business strategies for tech, transportation, and non-profit clients. Ashu recently founded South Pointe Strategy, a consultancy that helps clients in all sectors build operating models that support their business ambition. Just prior, he was building out the strategy…

  Luiz Zorzella explains why non-strategic projects can be a distraction that get in the way of real strategic work and what you can do about it.    When companies define their strategic priorities, it is common to include in this list items that are not building blocks of the company’s strategic goals. At least directly. Some of these items are extraneous, pet projects and/or impositions from third-party actors or the result of internal politics and accommodations and at best…

David A. Fields provides an eight-week plan for an effective strategic planning process that will engage and enthuse your team of consultants for the year ahead. If you develop an annual plan for your consulting firm, there’s a decent chance you sit down with your senior team and/or advisors for a day or two to hammer out your objectives, strategies and tactics. (If you don’t engage in any strategic planning for your consulting firm then, as the old saying goes,…