Services

  Strategy

  Market Research

  Branding

  Training

  Financial Services

  Packaged Goods

  Energy

  Healthcare

“Needless to say, there are many firms that provide research and strategy consulting services, but few can deliver the value demonstrated in performing the scope of analysis, strategies, product evaluations and practical recommendations. Your commitment and ease of doing business with your firm insured that we had a sound basis to address our most challenging business decisions."

Mr. Peter Flattery

CEO, Healthcare Insurance Reciprocal of Canada

 

Our talent is our greatest resource. Our      consultants average more than twenty       two years of experience. The industry     average is twelve years.

Consultants

Merril Mascarenhas - Strategy and Change Management

Merril Mascarenhas is a management consultant with over 20 years of research and strategy experience. He has led strategic initiatives with senior management across industries to assess business processes, identify revenue growth opportunities and improve organizational practices. He has served clients in energy, technology, retail, consumer products, health care and financial services  industries  on  a  broad  range  of  strategy,  business building and operation  issues.  Merril's  experience  in  strategic  consulting  gives  him  a  unique perspective on business challenges. Merril is passionate about bringing fresh

thinking to all business issues and challenges. He has advised senior management at leading companies like J&J, P&G, State Farm, Unilever and GlaxoSmithKline in North America, Europe and Asia. Merril has completed several Harvard Business School management programs. He also holds engineering and business degrees. Merril is a trained facilitator and frequent speaker on business strategy, brand building and competitive intelligence. He advises several non-profit organizations on management and marketing best practices. He serves on the board of Toronto East General Hospital, High Park Initiatives and BoardMatch.org. He also serves on the Branding and Strategic Planning Council of the Canadian Marketing Association and Energy and Environment Planning Committee of the Ontario Chamber of Commerce. 

Dr. Marianne Fedunkiw, Ph.D - Strategy and Communications

Dr. Marianne Fedunkiw has more than 20 years of consulting experience and offers clients a unique combination of communications, media and academic experience.  Most recently, she was Director, Outreach and Communications at the Ontario Genomics Institute.  She has served as a communications consultant for the Public Health Agency of Canada (formerly Health Canada), The Arthritis Society, and was the first Communications Director at the Arthritis Community Research and Evaluation Unit (ACREU).

In addition to the healthcare and health policy sectors, Marianne has communications experience in postsecondary education at George Brown College and University of Toronto.  She also has media experience, in newspapers, magazines and television, having worked at The Globe and Mail, The London Free Press, Maclean Hunter Ltd., and was a member of the team that launched The Discovery Channel (Canada) in 1995.

Marianne’s education also combines science and communication.  After receiving a BSc from University of Toronto in biology and English, she completed her MA in journalism at The University of Western Ontario in 1989.   She went on to complete a doctorate in medical history at Toronto in 2000 and was subsequently awarded a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Oxford in the UK.

An award-winning writer, her own publications include a book, Rockefeller Foundation Funding of Medical Education at Toronto, Montreal and Halifax (2005), and articles in  McMaster University Medical Journal, The American Journal of Public Health, The Medical Post, Proceedings of the ‘Philanthropic Foundations and the Globalization of Public Health and Scientific Medicine’ Conference, Medical Woman:  Bulletin of the Medical Women’s Federation (UK), and Enhancing Communication and Community: A Proactive Healthcare Archives Assistance Policy.  Marianne has been an invited speaker on healthcare, communications/media training and biotechnology issues at conferences and workshops around the world including at the Canadian High Commission in London, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine as well as throughout Canada, the U.S., Hungary, Spain, Switzerland and Italy. Marianne currently serves on the Board of The Arts and Letters Club (Toronto).

Francine Burel, Operations Management

Ms. Burel offers an operational management background combined with over 20 years of consulting and auditing experience in the Public Service of Canada. Ms. Burel was Chief of Human Resources at Revenue Canada. She managed a large number of projects requiring in-depth analysis of complex issues and creative problem solving. She has served several organizations in a consulting role, including Transport Canada (Project Manager, Audit & Advisory Services), Veterans Affairs:  Chief, Veterans Allowances & Pension Payment, Labour Canada:  Special Advisor to the ADM, Operations, Public Service Commission:  Senior Policy Advisor, Treasury Board:  Evaluation Officer, Personnel Policy Branch, Supply & Services:  Management Auditor. Ms. Burel has worked in a variety of projects ranging from organizational studies to the development of performance measures for senior executives.  Ms. Burel’s superior communication and presentation skills in both official languages combined with her broad experience serve to establish a climate of confidence with clients bringing parties together to develop common solutions.

David Johnston - Change Management and Communications

David has over 25 years of change management experience in diverse industries, countries and skill areas. His international experience will provide a unique perspective on best practices in change and strategy programs worldwide. He has participated in the design and was the on-site facilitator for the delivery of a course dealing with leadership, policy making, change management and teambuilding for the Civil Service Training Development Institute of the government of Hong Kong, the Canadian Centre for Management Development in the

areas of Policydevelopment. He has also given these courses to senior civil servants on-site inJamaica and in Brazil. David regularly facilitates organizational development workshops for the Canadian civil service, notably for Public Works and Government Services, Transport Canada, the Department of Justice and the Canadian Security Establishment, and others. He has delivered programs to personnel from Bombardier in their Leadership Certification Program and with management staff from Alcatel Canada and Nissan Canada.

He currently delivers courses to Exxonmobil Business Service Centres in North America in the areas of Communication, customer service and team dynamics. He is a certified administrator of the Myers Briggs Type indicator and certified Neuro-Linguistic Programming practitioner. His professional experience include work for the Government of Canada- Department of Transport, Department of Justice, Department of Public Works and Government services, Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Department of Natural Resources, Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, Canadian School of the Public Service, Alcatel Canada, Bombardier, Nissan Canada, Lexus-Nexus, ExxonMobil, International, the Civil service training and development institute of Hong Kong, the National School for Public Administration of Brazil, the government of Jamaica.

Jo Verde - Change Management and Training

Jo Verde brings over two decades of expertise and experience as a consultant, facilitator and trainer for both private and public sector organizations in Canada, England, Ireland and Portugal.  Ms. Verde specializes in interpersonal skills development, leadership skills, change management, customer relationship management and BCP recovery team training and has offered her training to a diverse clientele, ranging from front line employees to senior management teams.  Distinguished by the International Business Training Association as a

Master Trainer Certified Business Professional (C.B.P.), Jo thrives on challenging conventional assumptions about Human Resources. She has focused her energies on providing counseling, coaching, training and facilitation and in the course of these assignments; she has both designed and deployed human resources interventions and trained thousands of individuals from a broad spectrum of industries. Given the depth and breadth of client engagements, Ms. Verde has a broad range of experiences from which business cases are extracted, and individual components of those cases applied in order to formulate optimal solutions.  Her business experience is comprehensive which allows her to relate to the client’s unique needs and link the learning to their business issues. Her industry background includes telecommunications, finance, utilities, not for profit, and hospitality (a sampling of clients includes Bell Canada, The Royal Bank of Canada, BBC, Yorkshire Water (UK), Mercury Communications (UK), Portugal Telecom and The Bank of Canada.  The unique niche Ms. Verde has created is a strategy where she has created a methodology linking the learning and transfer of skills to the client’s personal development. Her unwavering commitment to developing human resources makes a lasting and meaningful impact on the corporate bottom-line.

Robert Coffey - Strategy and Organization

Robert Coffey is a Management Consultant, Advisor and Coach. He has held numerous executive and management positions including Managing Partner for Canada of the Management Consulting Services for Ernst & Whinney, Executive Partner, Thorne, Ernst and Whinney and Vice Chairman of KPMG. He is a past Vice President of Geneva Merger & Acquisition Services of Canada (Ont.) Inc. Mr. Coffey is a Chartered Accountant and senior business advisor and management consultant to industry and government. He has participated in a number of Royal Commissions and has lectured at McGill University and the

University of Toronto on costing and budgeting. Mr. Coffey is active in the field of mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance, corporate turnarounds, and is a co-author of Purchase and Sale of a Business. Mr. Coffey is the founder of The Canadian Association for Corporate Growth and the founder of the Toronto Chapter of The Turnaround Management Association. Mr. Coffey was advisor to Kinghaven Capital Corporation and was the Senior Vice-President, Commercial Lending, ABN AMRO Bank Canada. He is Chair of the Kiwanis Music Festival Foundation, director of the Toronto Kiwanis Foundation, President of the Kiwanis Club of Toronto, a member of the Institute of Certified Management Consultants of Ontario, and a past member of the Advisory Board of ACE Canada. Mr. Coffey is a Director of the Afton Food Group (241 Pizza and Robins Donuts), and InterRent International Properties Inc. (low rise residential buildings). Vice Chair and Head Coach of Townson & Alexander.

Dr. Barbara Bunker, Ph.D. - Organizational Change and Organizational Effectiveness

 

Barbara Benedict Bunker (Ph.D. Columbia University) is an organizational social psychologist and Professor of Psychology Emeritus at the University at Buffalo (SUNY). Her research and writing interests are diverse but focus in the area of organizational change and organizational effectiveness. She is a licensed Psychologist. Her activities in the area of planned organizational change span more than 25 years. As an organizational consultant, Barbara Bunker has assisted clients with individuals, teams, departments, and the whole organization. She has worked as a coach and consultant to individuals in areas of performance appraisal, career development and leadership skills. At the team or department level, she consults about long range vision and strategy, work analysis, organizational design, blocks to effective functioning. At the organization level, she has worked on interdepartmental issues, managing diversity and organizational culture change.

 

At the community level she has worked with churches and community church coordinating groups, mental health associations, the Red Cross and other agencies to plan their futures and increase their effectiveness. She has worked with major business, governmental, voluntary, educational, and professional organizations. Her clients have included Corning, Inc., The Bush Foundation Educators Program, Eastman Kodak, Cummins Engine, Lubrizol, ITT, IRS, NASA, British Air, The King’s Fund, Irwin Financial, Kaleida Health, The Erie County Mental Health Association, the Universities of Cincinnati and British Columbia, Canisisus College, Columbia, Stanford, and Zayed (United Arab Emirates) Universities. She participated in some of the first Organization Development(OD) projects. As an active member of NTL (National Training Laboratories) Institute, she was a Director for 7 years and Chairperson of the Board for 3 years. 

 

For the past 15 years, Barbara Bunker has become nationally and internationally known for her work systematizing a number of new methods of organization and community change that work at the systems level. These Large Group Methods bring together stakeholders in a common enterprise to discuss, debate and search for common ground on which to move forward. She has written about them, used them in her own practice, and written two books and edited two journals about the exciting work that is being done in this area of practice. Barbara Bunker is a frequent lecturer in the executive development programs of Columbia, Harvard, and Pepperdine Universities. She has been an invited keynote speaker at numerous national conferences. She has presented invited seminars (with Billie Alban) on Large Group Interventions in England, Canada, Netherlands, Sweden, Singapore, New Zealand, and Korea.

 

In 1984 and again in 1990 she was selected as a Fulbright Lecturer to Japan. She taught at Keio University and at Kobe University in the School of Business Administration. In 1998, she was exchange professor at Konan University in Kobe, Japan and at Hangzhou University in China. During these exchanges, she has had the opportunity to study Asian organizations. She has also published a study of Senior Japanese women executives with data collected in the 1980s and in the late 1990s in Japan. Her books include Conflict, Cooperation, and Justice (1995) with Jeffery Rubin, and Large Group Interventions: Engaging the whole system for rapid change (1997) and The Handbook of Large Group Methods: Creating systemic change in organizations and communities. (June 2006) with Billie T. Alban.

Christiane Roberge - Change Management and Training

A graduate of McGill University, she was also trained at York University in Toronto, Christiane Roberge has more than eighteen years of experience in consulting and projects coordination in fields such as training development, quality management, service quality, Human Resource Management and semi-autonomous teams implementation. She has substantial “train-ther-trainer” and ISO 9001-9002 experience. She applies the PEP approach based on Practice, Experimentation and Progress allowing small and medium enterprises to reach their goals more rapidly. As a trainer, Christiane has developed and delivered many seminars and workshops in different fields such as communication, supervision, team management and ISO 9000. Her experience includes work for STCUM (Montreal Transit Commission), Xtrata Zinc inc and Marconi. She has also done assessment of training needs and implementation of a Global Training planning for Emballage Ecco, Allied, Groupe Lincora, Pros de la Photo, ModelCom, Matco Ravary, Vast Auto distribution, L.L. Lozeau, Commonwealth. Christiane has extensive experience with BDC in Quebec on small, medium and large business engagements. She is an active member of several associations: Laval Chamber of Commerce, St-Laurent Chamber of Commerce and Quebec Society for Quality (Mouvement Québécois pour la Qualité).

Robert Benson Lilly - Corporate Strategy and Business Transformation

Benson leads contact worldwide at the chief executive level with leading organizations in the public and private sectors such as London Underground, HP/Compaq, Metronet Rail, Tampa Tribune, MDC Communications, Thomson Learning, GO Transit and British Airways. From 1996 to 1998, Benson led Brand Potentials, a  consulting company which he founded, specializing in branding architecture, new business development and channel management. There he created Pathway, a business development tool and consulted with industry and leading business schools on “go-to-market” strategies. As Director Brand Development, at Allied Domecq, Benson generated six key product launches internationally generating $70 million in new business.

He led the brand acquisition program in Canada and negotiated a multimillion dollar distribution agreement with Russian suppliers. In the US market he managed the development of mature brands and devised strategy and plans for new business. Additionally, he negotiated exclusive production and distribution agreements to support subsidiaries in Europe, Japan and the US. Benson also has a broad base of consumer marketing experience in growth oriented environments, including Product Management responsibilities at General Foods (Jell-O, Maxwell House, New Product Development), Bristol Myers (Windex, Fleecy, Household Cleaners), through Marketing Management and General Management positions in developing Canadian companies.

David Terry - Corporate Strategy and Business Transformation

David's experience includes work in the public sector in the UK to bring about a more commercial focus to these client organizations including London Underground and British Rail. He has led the business process initiatives with a number of clients including British Rail, TTC, Sun Life, Rome Metro, Barclays Bank, SITA and Pennzoil. Mr. Terry was one of the principal architects of the COTRAL transit project in Rome Italy. David has over 22 year’s industry and consulting experience. He has an MBA Warwick University, Diploma in Transportation Studies London University UK and a Diploma in Management Studies University of Westminster UK.

Jennifer Morris - Change Management and Training

Ten years of experience designing and delivering company-specific training programs. Training using both in-house and third-party systems on business continuity, corporate performance management software, accounting and finance systems, customer care solutions and integrated billing systems. A strong focus on customer service and quality, have provided professional training services to a diverse audience base at locations across Canada, the United States, Europe, the Caribbean and Asia.  Jennifer has extensive experience in conducting training needs analysis, managing training initiatives and developing and delivering training programs. She has an expert knowledge and working experience with instructional media, including self-paced and live and online e-learning, classroom instructor-led training and job performance support tools. She has substantial experience with clients like RBC Financial Group in delivery of classroom instructor-led and live online training on RBCFG’s enterprise-wide financial reporting system. She has worked with clients to identify and analyze training needs, formulate training strategies, evaluate training methodologies and provide recommendations for improvements. Her experience includes engagements with Liberty Life Insurance, Greenville, South Carolina, Dain Rauscher, Minneapolis, Burton Snowboards, Vermont, Amdocs and Bell Nexxia.

Charles E. Coté PMP, P.Eng.- Business Transformation

Over 10 years of senior-level management experience in Consulting, Outsourcing and Communications organizations, in addition to 8 years IT experience in transportation, finance, government, utility and telecommunications industries.Charles focuses on high-tech and telecom industries with functional consulting specialization in enterprise architecture, network architecture, , software systems, contact centers, product/marketing management and project management. Results-oriented with a strong technical, business and people management background; highly effective strategic planner focused on enterprise & telecom architectures and software product management. Developed solutions and managed clients through direct and outsourcing relationships. Fluently bilingual in English and French. Led IT Strategy consulting projects for Hydro One and OPG focused on enterprise IT and network architectural evolution. Developed strategic recommendations on governance models, network enhancements, network-based services, infrastructure, security and service management tools, along with multi-year programs for their implementation. Built roadmaps, developed solutions, launched releases and owned product Profit and Loss responsibility for four major product portfolios:  1) J2EE-based Business Process Management Language (BPML) software vendor product line; 2) Canadian long-distance voice and fax services products;  3) International wholesale VoIP services;  4) Global consulting firm Business and Operational Support Systems service line offerings.

Philip M. Howard – IT Systems Strategy, Enterprise Content Management, and Web 2.0

Enterprise Architect, Technical Strategist, and Project Manager specializing in the design and deployment of web-based Internet and intranet/extranet eBusiness systems: strategy, architectural design, vendor selection, and deployment planning. With over sixteen years experience in technical management and consulting, Philip has contributed to eBusiness systems technical strategy, design, and deployment for government as well as global enterprises in the financial, media, telecommunications, manufacturing, and retail sectors. Formerly a Senior Consultant with a Big Four consulting firm, Philip has a strong background in collaboration portal and ECM solutions. Recent engagements include preparations for the acquisition and implementation of Provincial Archives Records & Document Management System (R/DMS) and vendor selection & implementation planning for ECM at a mid-sized insurance company. Philip has undertaken major projects in Canada, the US, Brazil, and Japan – for clients such as Eaton Corporation (Cleveland), Editora Abril (Sao Paulo), and Toyota Motors (Tokyo) – leading technical teams in network & systems infrastructure deployment, IT solution fit & gap analysis, and technical strategy/emerging technologies. Philip is a published author of technical research white papers on Enterprise Content Management and closely follows trends and issues in Web 2.0, open standards, and emerging open source technologies.