Thought Partners to Leaders

Each of TruePoint’s senior advisors brings several decades of exceptional experience and accomplishments in line management, academia, and consulting.

We have held senior leadership positions at industry leaders such as GE. We’ve taught at academic institutions such as Harvard Business School and Cornell University. And we bring decades of consulting experience from our work at firms such as McKinsey & Co. and TruePoint’s predecessor organization, The Center for Organizational Fitness.

TruePoint’s team consulting model allows our clients to access this exceptionally broad and deep experience base and expertise on strategy, organization, leadership, and change. (See How We Work for more details on the TruePoint consulting model).

Michael Beer, Partner Mike’s 40-year career, beginning at Corning in the 1960s, has been dedicated to understanding and improving the way businesses enhance performance while building capability and commitment. He is renowned and honored in several business disciplines — including management, organizational design, strategic human resources, organizational psychology and organizational development. Mike is the Cahners-Rabb Professor of Business Administration Emeritus at Harvard Business School and award-winning author or co-author of nine books, including (with Russell Eisenstat) The Critical Path to Corporate Renewal.

Russell Eisenstat, Partner For nearly three decades Russ has partnered with senior leaders to achieve breakthroughs in large-scale organizational change and innovation, strategy implementation, and the design of complex organizations. A former Harvard Business School Professor and for five years Senior Organizational Fellow at McKinsey & Co., Russ has written extensively for Harvard Business Review, McKinsey Quarterly, and other publications. He is the co-author (with Michael Beer) of the award-winning book The Critical Path to Corporate Renewal.

Nathaniel Foote, Partner For more than 25 years Nathaniel has focused on the linkage between strategy and organization in creating high-performing enterprises — how adaptive, iterative approaches to strategy, organization design, and knowledge management help complex businesses perform amidst rapid change. Prior to TruePoint, Nathaniel spent 19 years with McKinsey & Co. in roles that included leading McKinsey’s Organization Design practice, Director of Knowledge and Practice Development, and leading the European Organization practice.

Björn Frössevi, Partner Björn brings more than 15 years of experience in helping organizations improve performance. Prior to joining TruePoint, Björn served as the CEO for two of Sweden’s leading management consulting firms, and managed business development for a $700 million logistics company as well as for top IT and real estate firms. Björn has facilitated mergers and reorganized product and sales units for a variety of telecommunications, IT, real estate and logistics companies. Björn is the co-author of the 1995 book Core Competence – the Key to Future Competitiveness and served as the editor of Strategy and Leadership – a handbook for managers – from 1998-2004. He participates in an executive Ph.D. program at Chalmers School of Technology and holds an MSc from Stockholm School of Economics. Björn also studied and lectured for one year at the University of Wisconsin.

Flemming Norrgren, Partner Flemming has spent nearly three decades developing management skills, building industrial R&D functions, and coordinating large international R&D projects in pharmaceuticals, technology, and other knowledge-intensive industries. During the 1980s he spearheaded a number of large change projects within the manufacturing industry that encompassed the redesign of factories, work organizations, and logistics. As a researcher, Flemming is founder and associate director of the Fenix Executive Ph.D. program and research center. He has led more than 30 different management research projects – in change management, industrial R&D management, project management, leadership and socio-technical systems design – for leading companies such as AstraZeneca, Ericsson, TELIA and Volvo. He received his Ph.D. in psychology at Göteborg University in 1982, where he later served as associate professor.

Niclas Adler, Director Blending academic and management expertise, Niclas has spent more than 15 years as a strategic advisor to science and technology-based organizations ranging from startup companies to research centers to large multinational firms. He is currently Managing Director and Dean of Jönköping International Business School (JIBS), Sweden. He has co-founded and managed multiple research centers in collaboration with leading institutions such as Stockholm School of Economics, Chalmers University of Technology, Institute for Management of  Innovation and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tokyo University,  Ecole des Mines de Paris and Judge Business School, Cambridge University.  He has co-founded 14 companies, he currently serves as a board member for nine startups and has been a strategic advisor to multinational companies including Ericsson, Volvo, AstraZeneca, ABB, TeliaSonera, NovoNordisk and UCB Pharmaceuticals.

Magnus Finnström, Associate Director Prior to joining TruePoint, Magnus served as CEO of the Swedish management consulting firm Consultus and its sister organization Consultus Management Institute. Magnus also spent seven years at global telecommunications giant Ericsson during the 1990s leading many of the company’s most critical business development and operational endeavors. As a consultant, Magnus helps large companies structure honest conversations throughout the organization, identifying barriers to process improvement and instilling learning capabilities for adapting to changing business conditions. His work in an assortment of industries has enabled companies to reduce costs, improve employee morale, increase customer satisfaction, and enhance stakeholder relationships. Magnus holds an MBA from Warwick Business School.

Tobias Fredberg, TruePoint Center Fellow Since the late 1990s, Tobias has researched and consulted in a vast array of industries. Combined with his work in TruePoint and the TruePoint Center, Tobias is on the faculty of the Chalmers University and a research fellow at the Technische Universität München. His research focuses on strategic change and on the management of innovation. He currently heads two large projects in those areas, as well as an international network on innovation research. He has published in a larger set of books and journals. His publications include the July 2008 HBR paper “The Uncompromising Leader” (with Beer, Eisenstat, Foote and Norrgren).

Jay Galbraith, Director An internationally recognized expert on global organizational design, Jay specializes in solving strategy and organizational design challenges across corporate, business unit, and international levels. Over more than 40 years, he has transformed organizations across industries including consumer goods, manufacturing, health care, financial services, telecommunications and others. As the original creator of the Star Model™ and the Front–Back organization structure, his theories on gaining a significant competitive advantage through organization design and customer–centricity have been implemented by executives throughout the world. Jay has served on the faculty of the Sloan School of Management at MIT and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He is Professor Emeritus at the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) in Lausanne, Switzerland and an Affiliated Research Scientist at the Center for Effective Organizations at the University of Southern California. Additionally, Jay is a prolific author; his most recent book is “Designing Matrix Organizations that Actually Work.”

Kathleen MacDonald, Associate Director Kathleen – or Kathy – has nearly 20 years experience delivering improved performance and leading change, in corporate roles and as a consultant. At TruePoint, Kathy has worked with leadership teams on strategic alignment and organization design in health care, retail and other service industries. Prior to joining TruePoint, she worked at Timberland as Director of Strategic Initiatives and as Director of US Marketing, at McKinsey & Company where she served senior executives in the retail, consumer products and financial services industries, at Key Bank where she built a marketing function for the education finance group, and as an independent consultant.

Shankar S Raman, Associate Director Shankar’s interests lie in helping companies address the organizational and performance challenges of growth and transformation. He has consulted to organizations around the world and across diverse sectors, including but not limited to energy, telecommunications, technology, financial services, retail and the government. Prior to TruePoint, Shankar was a Managing Partner with Towers Perrin and headed their businesses in South East Asia. He was also a member of their global M&A practice leadership group. Before Towers Perrin, he worked with Tata Motors in India. Shankar has a Masters degree in Management from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and multiple degrees in economics from India.

Thomas Rice, Director Internationally recognized for his expertise in leadership coaching and organizational alignment, in the past 25 years Thomas has consulted with more than 200 organizations in the public, non-profit, and private sectors. He is CEO Emeritus of Interaction Associates as well as co-founder and Chairman of The Interaction Institute for Social Change. Previously, Thomas was Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Georgetown University and a Research Associate at Harvard University.

Christopher Richmond, Director Chris has spent nearly three decades as a chief executive managing change in finance-related businesses. A GE Officer from 1997-2001, Chris led three different businesses during his 11-year tenure at GE Capital, growing Commercial Equipment Financing into a $40 billion business and quadrupling profits. Previously President and COO of Syska and Hennessey, the nation’s largest engineering firm, and Executive Director of The Dormitory Authority of New York, Chris is Chairman of e-Credit in Boston.

Derek Schrader, Associate Director Derek’s diverse career spans managing and management consulting for technology, financial services, and retail companies in the U.S. and across the Asia/Pacific region. Prior to TruePoint, Derek advised CEOs for Marakon Associates in Singapore, managed products at an Idaho high-tech startup, and was a Panasonic marketing manager in Tokyo and Jakarta. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he received a Society for Human Resources fellowship, and is fluent in both Japanese and Indonesian.

Richard Shafer, Director Dick is widely recognized for his research and practice focused on business leadership, strategic human resource management and change management. Dick recently completed eight years as Associate Dean for Corporate Relations at Cornell University’s business school, the Johnson School.  He maintains his connections at the Johnson School as Executive in Residence, involved in a variety of activities focused on entrepreneurship at Cornell.  Prior to joining Cornell, Dick was a consulting partner in the change management practice at Deloitte and National Director of Human Resources for Deloitte for 12 years.  He previously held a variety of senior executive positions at Corning.  Dick complete his PhD at Cornell University with his research focused on developing an organizational model for creating agile organizations, built to deal with continuous, unpredictable marketplace change.

Malcolm Wolf, Director Malcolm Wolf has 25 years experience of consulting to some of the world’s leading corporations on critical issues of strategy, performance, organization, and IT. He was formerly a Partner at McKinsey, where he built and co-led McKinsey’s IT practice in the UK. He has also been a Partner of KPMG, where he built and led an M&A Business Advisory practice in TMT sectors. Malcolm is keenly interested in helping ambitious leadership teams to make great strategic decisions, and build high-performing organizations. He is a mentor on London Business School’s Entrepreneurship program. Malcolm holds degrees in both Philosophy and Chemistry, as well as a PhD in Theoretical Chemistry from University College London. His academic distinctions include the UCL Faculty of Science medal, for top science degree, and the UCL Ramsay medal for research.

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