Two months ago when we announced our new Partner, Kevin Christ, we shared that he was not the last disruption for Concentre, but simply the next disruption. In fact, during the Partner Q&A, he explained that our next phase of business growth required the balance of onboarding new clients and finding excellent staff to serve those clients – a critical, yet challenging, “component of a successful consultancy.”
Kevin Christ also foreshadowed what was to come in the near future: interesting new hires who will bring diversity in thinking, capabilities, ideas, and experiences for the benefit of our clients.
It has been only eight weeks since Concentre self-disrupted by hiring our not-so-new-anymore Partner. Throughout this time, we continued an intensive recruitment process, thoroughly vetting and interviewing each candidate to ensure our next senior hire would be the perfect addition to our team. And despite the old saying “You don’t need a rocket scientist,” we decided that was exactly what we needed.
We are proud to announce that our next self-disruption includes the addition of a rocket scientist with 12+ years of consulting experience to the Concentre family.
Meet Our Rocket Scientist: Dan Garretson Ph.D.
When it comes to understanding the necessary processes and infrastructure required for a technology enabled business to excel, Dan Garretson is a force to be reckoned with. He graduated from the California Institute of Technology, receiving a bachelor of science degree with Honors in Physics. He then moved on to receive a Ph.D. in Astronomy from Harvard University.
Dan quickly discovered his passion for the ever-changing landscape of technology, from working with computer manufacturers and Internet Service Providers as a consultant at McKinsey & Co. to leading the development of Web strategies for Fortune 500 clients at the Strategic Interactive Group to driving thought leadership on connected/autonomous vehicles and Web-enabled manufacturing and supply chain systems at Forrester Research. Dan has also worked extensively with the public sector, including developing connected vehicle deployment scenarios for the US Department of Transportation and leading several major launch vehicle analyses for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Before joining us at Concentre, Dan led innovation and knowledge/thought leadership efforts at HPE, McKinsey & Co., and Grant Thornton. As Director, Enterprise Services Global Practices Knowledge Management at HPE, he crafted, communicated, and secured leadership support for the vision of a comprehensive growth planning and business development capability that provided core knowledge, practice materials, and expertise to support industry and practice go-to-market efforts as well as the identification and scaling up of innovative service offerings. As Knowledge and Practice Manager at McKinsey & Co., Dan drove the development of knowledge priorities and helped build the external thought leadership profile for the global Advanced Industries Sector (Aerospace & Defense, Automotive & Assembly, Advanced Electronics, and Semiconductors).
In short, with 12+ years of consulting experience and 4+ years in consulting practice management, Dan is truly a technology, innovation, and growth leader. His areas of expertise include technology, innovation and business strategy, internet enabled supply chain and logistics management, and growth planning and business development. More specifically, he exceeds expectations by helping drive organizational alignment with a company’s defined growth targets. Suffice it to say, Concentre has once again found our perfect match with the new Principal of our company.
More Disruptions to the Team
We whole-heartedly believe that when your company aligns behind a strategy, it should be executed to the highest degree. Concentre’s recruitment process became the epitome of success when it came to executing against our new growth strategy, and the proof is in our new team members:
Rory Jackson, Engagement Manager
B.S. in Finance at the University of Utah School of Business
MBA at George Washington University School of Business
Rory is a seasoned consultant who is passionate about finding inefficiencies and quickly adapting to improve processes, departments, and organizations. His expertise includes organization design, strategy, change management, process improvement, and communication functions. In his past positions as Manager for Ernst & Young and a consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton, he developed an implementation strategy for a large-scale transformation, managed an automotive remarketing organization project, assisted a customer HR system implementation, oversaw the development of interactive online training courses, and worked with an IT provider on their complete business transformation.
Michael Cole, Consultant
B.S. in Marketing, Summa Cum Laude at Oral Roberts University
Michael is a versatile consultant with a proven track record for delivering results above and beyond expectations. His expertise ranges from business and technology services, digital transformation, and strategic business development. Throughout his previous work with Hitachi Consulting, Deloitte Consulting, and Deloitte Digital, he performed a detailed technology capability / business process assessment of a major state agency and delivered strategic recommendations for achieving an ideal future state, defined strategic selection criteria for ITSM vendor selection, managed the development and execution of a custom reporting and analytics system, and engineered an IoT go-to-market strategy for a prominent IT provider.
Mandi Dundas, Consultant, Practice Development
BA in Supply Chain Management at Texas A&M University
Mandi is a high energy consultant who consistently delivers innovative solutions. She is passionate about process improvement and has significant experience in developing effective communication, management of change, and vendor management strategies for large, matrixed organizations. Prior to joining Concentre, Mandi successfully led transformation efforts for the Enterprise Services (ES) procurement organization at Hewlett-Packard (HP) & Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE). During this time she developed and implemented a global sourcing tool, stood up effective governance structures in multiple regions, collaborated with cross-functional business units to restore integrity of third party solutions in Sales proposals, and led management of change efforts to introduce a competitive bidding strategy that enabled the ES organization to collectively change buying behavior.
