AIMC Executive Advisory Board

AIMC Executive Advisory Board (EAB) Mission Statement

The Executive Advisory Board (EAB) was formed to provide high-level guidance to the Board and AIMC overall in the following areas:

1. Optimal positioning with the C-Suite and other enterprise leaders to help ensure growth and sustainability of their internal consulting organizations.
2. Key current and future areas of focus for internal consultants to provide maximum value and impact to the enterprise.

• Robert Kath – Chairman
• Connie Conboy – Board of Directors Liaison

Members:

• Gary Fischer – Chevron
• Daniel Lee — Pfizer
• Peter Barschdorff – Bayer
• Rich Berard – Hunt Power
• Mike Holtschlag – Fidelity Investments
• Jon Donnelly – Johnson & Johnson

Robert Kath is the Manager of the Change Leadership practice in Chevron’s Project Resources Company (PRC). Robert advises Major Capital Project leadership in the areas of stakeholder management, change management, capital stewardship, project and operational readiness and CPDEP methodology. He has worked with most projects currently in development and leads a team of internal and external consulting resources.

Robert works with most projects currently in development and leads a team of internal and external consulting resources.

Robert has been advising senior leaders in the energy, life science, finance and technology industries for over 25 years. He is a graduate of Northwestern University and Samford University and is the Vice-Chairman and Chair of the Executive Advisory Board of the Association for Internal Management Consultants. He lives in the Houston, TX area with his wife and three children.

Connie Conboy is currently Director of Strategy and Business Development for the Performance Review Institute (PRI). In this role she is responsible for the new MedAccred program, an industry managed critical manufacturing oversight process for the Medical Device Industry designed to improve product quality and most importantly enhance patient safety.

Prior to joining PRI, Connie was Vice President of Corporate Quality and Business Excellence for Bayer Corporation a global enterprise with core competencies in the fields of healthcare, nutrition, and innovative materials. In this role, she established a vision and strategy to enhance compliance and improve products, services, and customer experience utilizing a total quality and strategy to enhance compliance and improve products, services, and customer experience utilizing a total quality focus. While driving quality and process optimization across all business units, Connie directed the implementation of key initiatives, including Lean Six Sigma, Continuous Improvement, and a Corporate Change Leadership Process, which was benchmarked by the United Nations as a global best practice to successfully drive change across large, intricate organizations.

As a Corporate Vice President, Connie was responsible for a team of internal consultants that worked with the President and CEO and senior leadership throughout the corporation to deliver strategic solutions, improved customer and product quality, and significant improvement in business performance.

Connie reported directly to the President and CEO and spent over 20 years with Bayer Corporation. During her career also served as Vice President of Strategic Initiatives where she acted as a member of a select senior leadership team for initial formation and oversight of a transformational change team charged with driving efficiency improvements and supporting future business growth—which resulted in a cost reduction of over $100 million. She also worked with trade associations, government bodies, and internal teams to collaborate on industry issues relevant to the company and created an approach for evaluating sensitive issues from the legal, political, communications, and health and safety perspectives to shape the strategic direction of the business.

While serving as Vice President of Bayer MaterialScience Business Excellence, Connie was responsible for leadership and optimization of all key business processes, including NAFTA global supply chain, continuous improvement, and core enterprise-wide business processes. Among her significant achievements was her spearheading of the corporation’s first successful process reengineering approach to organizational efficiency, which drove transformational change across six core processes and resulted in improved overall annual financial performance. Connie also initiated and led a Lean Six Sigma process and developed high-potential talent for the organization.

Most recently Connie also served as President of SherTrack, LLC, a fast growing highly innovative software technology company using predictive analytics to enable a customer centric Lean-Pull approach to transform complex supply chain operations.

Connie was named as one of Pennsylvania’s Best 50 Women in Business by the Governor and is also the recipient of several national recognitions, such as the Women’s Leadership Assembly’s Susan B. Anthony Leadership Award and Bayer Corporation’s Quality Excellence Award.

Utilizing her expertise in the field of quality and business excellence, she served as Board Chair of ANSI/ASQ National Accreditation Board (ANAB) from 2005 to 2015 and currently is serving as Board Chair of the Association of Internal Management Consultants (AIMC). In addition, Connie has collaborated and served in key board leadership roles for many organizations, including the Registrar Accreditation Board, ANSI and RAB Joint Operating Board, and the American Heart Association.

Gary Fischer is General Manager of Chevron Corporation’s Project Resources Company (PRC) Consulting Services Group located in San Ramon, CA. In this position, Gary is responsible for Chevron’s project management system, providing functional expertise to projects and support across the corporation’s worldwide major capital project portfolio.

Prior to his appointment in January 2007, Gary held the position of Project Director with PRC for Eurasia, Europe and the Sasol-Chevron Gas-to-Liquid Global Joint Venture.  In this role, he was responsible for staffing major capital projects with project professionals and ensuring those projects were developed and executed to meet business unit objectives. He also served on major capital project decision review boards and represented Chevron’s interests on key project related joint venture partner committees.

A native of Colorado, Gary graduated in 1979 from Colorado State University with a Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering. That year, he joined Chevron’s Engineering Department as a Design Engineer in San Francisco, CA. He has held numerous technical and leadership positions across downstream, chemicals and upstream including: Lead Engineer for a Shale Oil Semi Works Plant in Salt Lake City, UT; Construction Manager for a Dimersol Project in Eva Beach, HI; Engineering Manager for a Linear Low Density Project in Cedar Bayou, TX; Construction Manager of a High Density Polyethylene Project in Orange, TX; Project Manager of a Clean Fuels Project in Richmond, CA; and Benchmarking Manager for PRC in San Ramon, CA. He also served on the team that formed PRC in 1997 and in 2001 led a team on special assignment for Chevron’s CEO to develop and deploy an initiative targeted to improve Chevron’s capital stewardship.

Gary is a member of the Construction Industry Institute (CII), the Engineering and Construction Contracting association (ECC), contributes to other related associations such as the Project Management Institute and serves on the Executive Board of the Association of Internal Management Consultants.

Gary is married and has two children.

Dan Lee is Vice President Pfizer Consulting and Execution (PCE).   The PCE team is a global internal management consulting team that focuses predominately on business strategy, strategy execution and complex problem solving.  Typical engagements focus on developing a business strategy, identifying new revenue, developing and implementing more efficient operating models, or mitigating different types of risk.

Dan has been with Pfizer for fourteen years and held numerous roles including Chief of Staff for Pfizer Diversified Businesses where he was responsible for the division’s strategy and operations.  Dan has also held roles in business development as head of the Operations and Analysis department and Executive Director Transactions where he was a key member of the deal team that drove the $68B Wyeth acquisition and subsequent integration.  Dan started his Pfizer career in Corporate Finance in the Treasurers organization focused on capital market activity and financial risk management.

Prior to joining Pfizer Dan worked at the General Electric Co. starting as an engineer testing and designing military aircraft engines and moving into an internal consulting organization working on broad global cross-company corporate projects.  He also has previously worked at the Applied Research Laboratory running the Spray Metal Forming laboratory while conducting his research.

Dan holds a Master of Business Administration degree in Finance from New York University Stern School of Business.  He also holds a Master of Science in Engineering Mechanics from Pennsylvania State University and a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan.

Outside of work Dan is a sports fanatic and while after 16 years his passion for sports has not yet rubbed off on his wife, it certainly has on their three children.

Rich Berard is senior vice president of Hunt Consolidated, Inc.   In this capacity, he heads the Office of Program Management, which is responsible for the project management, oversight and coordination for many of the growth, investment and business building programs of the company.   Prior to this assignment, Berard led groups within the Hunt organization in the areas of strategic management reporting, corporate finance, financial administration and strategic planning.  

Prior to joining the Hunt companies in 2002, Berard was employed by Arthur Andersen, LLP, and managed multiple projects from Andersen’s Global Energy practice in Houston, Texas.   While at Andersen, he consulted to global energy clients in the areas of business transformation and reengineering, M&A integration, strategic cost management and organizational optimization and design.   In his consulting career, Berard has consulted to dozens of clients in the energy sector including oil and gas, power and utility companies.   Before joining Arthur Andersen’s consulting practice, he spent three years as an energy economist employed by an international government.   Berard serves on the board of directors of Power Capital Partners, a power generating investment company in New York.   He is the author of articles in industry journals and books and has served as a speaker and presenter at energy-related industry events.

Berard received a Bachelor of business administration degree from the University of Miami and a Master of Science degree in economics with honors from Bentley University.   He is also a graduate of the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business’ advanced management program and a Doctoral candidate in Business at Georgia State University.

Mike Holtschlag is a Senior Vice President and the head of Fidelity Consulting, a ninety person organization that provides strategy, operations, and technology-based management consulting services to all of Fidelity’s businesses, including its global private equity and venture capital units.

Mike joined Fidelity in 2007 to develop and execute the strategy and planning processes for Workplace Investing. From there, he moved to Personal Investing where he initially led a finance team supporting PI’s distribution channels, then moved on to lead PI’s overall strategy, planning, and budgeting efforts. Mike joined Fidelity Consulting in 2013 to lead the consulting efforts provided to Personal Investing business unit. He was promoted to his current position within Fidelity Consulting last year.

Prior to Fidelity, Mike spent six years as a Principal at The Boston Consulting Group, where he led a range of engagements from operations to strategy and corporate development. Mike began his career at Liberty Mutual. He received his B.A. from Harvard University where he played varsity football and his MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Mike lives in Hingham, MA with his wife and four children.