Our Advisory Board

Dr. Kumar is the ING Chair Professor at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut. VKs distinguished career and research focuses on marketing research methods and customer relationship management strategy. He is the author or co-author of five books among which are the leading three marketing research books in the field of marketing: Marketing Research (IX Edition, 2007), International Marketing Research (2000, Prentice-Hall), and Essentials of Marketing Research (II Edition, 2002). His most recent books focus on the issues of customer relationship management, segmentation and customer profitability: Customer Relationship Management: A Data-based Approach (2006, John Wiley), and Managing Customers for Profit (2008, Wharton School Publishing). In addition to these books, VK has published over 100 articles on a broad array of special subject matters in marketing research. For his contributions he was recently cited as one of the top five ranked scholars in marketing worldwide.

VK is also a prolific consultant to numerous companies. He worked as a researcher or consultant for IBM, P&G, ING, Wells Fargo, ICICI, Pitney Bowes, Chick-fil-A, BP/AMOCO, MGM mirage, Polo Ralph Lauren, All State, People Soft, Sigma Genosys, Houston Cellular, AT&T, Southwestern Bell, ExxonMobil, American Airlines, Coca-Cola Foods, Houston Lighting and Power, GTE and DuPont to mention a few of his clients.

Over his career, VK has developed sophisticated statistical models and creative marketing strategies for solving marketing problems. Some of these models were implemented by clients, which lead to significant gains in profits. For this work, VK was recently recognized by the INFORMS Marketing Science Society for his work on customer lifetime value and marketing-mix modeling based applications.

VK received Bachelors in Engineering (with Honors) and Masters in Industrial Management (with Honors) from the Indian Institute of Technology, and his Ph.D. in Marketing from the University of Texas at Austin.

VK works from three locations in New York City, London, and Mumbai.

John Diefenbach is one of the most highly regarded and innovative leaders in the world of branding.

John co-founded Diefenbach Salzberger with a vision to provide clients with the best possible branding solutions at an affordable price. Unencumbered by the traditional constraints of organizational structure and geographic proximity, at DS John has handled a variety of international branding assignments.

An authority on global branding issues, John is one of the few executives with a deep understanding of both the consumer and business-to-business product and service areas. He has also been fortunate to work on national and cultural branding issues for Nelson Mandela of South Africa and King Hussein of Jordan, among others. John was also responsible for development of the branding system for the Nobel Prize and its affiliated institutions.

He has been closely associated with the brand stewardship of major companies, including: British Airways, Saturn (GM), MasterCard, Del Monte, Coca-Cola, Kodak and Safeway.

Before the co-founding of D+S, John has played a major role in building two highly regarded branding companies: Landor and Diefenbach-Elkins (now FutureBrand). John was CEO and major shareholder of Landor during his 17-year tenure and is credited with building Landor into a worldwide brand franchise. He then founded (with Claude Salzberger) Diefenbach-Elkins, and co-invented the Futurebrand methodology.

Kevin Lane Keller is the E. B. Osborn Professor of Marketing at the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration at Dartmouth College. Professor Keller received his B.A. in Mathematics and Economics from Cornell University in 1978, his M.B.A. from Carnegie-Mellon University's Graduate School of Industrial Administration in 1980, and his Ph.D. in Marketing from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business in 1986.

Professor Keller is acknowledged as one of the international leaders in the study of strategic brand management and integrated marketing communications. His advertising and branding research has been published in three of the major marketing journals - the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Marketing Research, and the Journal of Consumer Research. With more than forty published papers, his research has been widely cited and has received numerous awards.

Actively involved in brand strategy assignments, he has served as brand confidant to marketers for some of the world's most successful brands including Disney, Ford, Intel, Levi Strauss, Nike, Procter & Gamble, and Starbucks. Additional brand consulting activities have been with other top companies such as Accenture, AC Nielsen, Beiersdorf, General Mills, Goodyear, Kodak, Mayo Clinic, MTV, the New York Knicks, Nordstrom, Shell Oil, Unilever and Young & Rubicam.

His book, Strategic Brand Management: Building Measuring and Managing Brand Equity is a seminal contribution in brand management.

Dr. David Collis is the MBA Class of 1958 Senior Lecturer at the Harvard Business School. His research focuses on corporate strategy, industry analysis, and global competition. He is the author of over twenty articles and book chapters, more than fifty Harvard Business School cases that have sold over 400,000 copies, and the books "Corporate Strategy" and "Corporate Headquarters".

Previously he was a professor at the Yale School of Management for five years. Prior to that, he was at the Harvard Business School where he jointly developed an MBA course on corporate strategy and, in 1996, was rated the top teacher among all strategy faculty. He is a strategic consultant to top management of major U.S. and U.K. corporations including Merck, Fidelity Investments, and Fortis Inc., and a frequent speaker and consultant on higher education. He participates in and chairs executive education programs at the Harvard Business School and on in-house management education programs for multinational companies. He serves on the Advisory Boards of WebCT, MLX.com and previously Ocean Spray. He holds a Ph.D. and an MBA from Harvard University, and an MA from Cambridge University.

Barry Nalebuff currently serves as the Milton Steinbach Professor at Yale School of Management, where he teaches competitive (and cooperative) strategy. Nalebuff has written on a wide variety of subjects ranging from strategy to pricing, bidding to bargaining, and innovation to incentives. He is an expert on game theory and has written extensively on its application for managers. Professor Nalebuff's work on strategy focuses on the fundamental duality in business - the conflict between cooperating to create a pie and competing to divide it up. The result is his book on business strategy, Co-opetition.

His most recent book, Why Not?, focuses on providing a framework for problem solving and ingenuity. Professor Nalebuff frequently writes op-ed articles for the country's major newspapers on subjects as diverse as credit cards, the term structure of debt, political strategy, innovation, and complementors. His work on product bundling was featured in the European Union's investigation of the proposed GE-Honeywell merger.

In addition to his academic roles, Nalebuff is a sought-after consultant and speaker. Companies that have benefited from his guidance include Columbia Forest Products, Eli Lilly, US Borax, Johnson and Johnson and General Electric. Nalebuff also serves on the boards of Bear Stearns Financial Products, Honest Tea, Trader Classified Media and Plats du Chef.

A Rhodes Scholar, Nalebuff holds both Doctorate and Masters degrees from Oxford University, and a Bachelor's degree in Economics from M.I.T. Nalebuff was awarded the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, the Bicentennial Preceptorship at Princeton University, and a Junior Fellowship of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University.

Dwight recently retired after 25 years at PepsiCo where he was, most recently, Senior Vice President of Consumer/Customer Insights. In this role, Dwight identified consumer and marketplace growth and innovation opportunities to accelerate PepsiCo's leadership in the snack foods and beverage industries.

Prior to that, Dwight was Chief Marketing Officer for Frito-Lay International, and subsequent to that, for Frito-Lay North America. Dwight also served as Senior Vice President of Marketing for PepsiCo Restaurants International.

Dwight joined PepsiCo in 1982 as Research Principal Scientist and held various positions of increasing responsibility in the company's Research and Development department. In 1986, he became Director of Marketing Information and then Vice President. Dwight next led New Products Development, consisting of Marketing Information, New Products and Focus Brand Marketing. Prior to PepsiCo, he was a Research Scientist with General Foods.

He holds a Bachelor's, Master's and Doctorate degree from the University of California, Los Angeles. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania and has taught at several colleges and universities. In his retirement, Dwight works as a part-time business consultant, and recently started his own company, Riskey Business Solutions, Ltd.

Anthony is a Director of Ashridge Strategic Management Centre. He was previously a Director (Senior Partner) at McKinsey & Company in the U.K, where he worked for 18 years. He was the leader of McKinsey's Marketing and Sales Practice across Europe. He is an experienced consultant, counselor of CEO's and Marketing Directors and facilitator of Board-level decision-making, having led McKinsey teams across multiple industries and engagement types, with a special focus on marketing and sales topics. In addition to conducting research into marketing and sales change programmes, he is currently working with several clients on these topics. He is currently working with leading marketing services companies to help their businesses become more client centric. He has recently become a trustee of UnLtd, a new UK charity with a $100m endowment focused on social entrepreneurs. He is on the editorial board of Market Leader, the journal of the Marketing Society.

Anthony was the leading expert in McKinsey on transformational change in marketing and sales. Within marketing and sales, his particular interests are: Marketing Transformation and Capability Building; International marketing; Branding; Marketing spend Effectiveness; Marketing strategy; Go-to-market strategy and execution in B2B organizations; and the application of market research to business. He has spoken and published extensively on these topics.

His academic record includes Open Scholarship to St John's, Cambridge, Double First Class degree, Masters and PhD in Management Studies from Cambridge University, England, with several academic publications.

The new imperative in business today is the Brand Leadership Model. Rather than tactical and reactionary, brand leadership requires strategy and a deep vision.

David is a Professor Emeritus at the Haas School of Business, University of California of Berkeley. David is the recognized authority of brand equity and brand strategy and was the 1996 recipient of the Paul D. Converse Award for outstanding contributions to the development of the science of marketing. Among his ten best-selling books are: Building Strong Brands (1996) and Managing Brand Equity (1991).

Marc L. Bertoneche holds a chair as Professor in Business Administration at the University of Bordeaux and has been on the Faculty of INSEAD, the European Institute of Business Administration in Fontainebleau France, for more than twenty years. His areas of interest include corporate and financial strategy, mergers and acquisitions, venture capital, financial markets, corporate ownership and governance, risk management and international finance.

Professor Bertoneche has been a Visiting Professor at the Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University in 1974 and at the Harvard Business School in 1986-1987 and 1990-1991, where he taught finance in the MBA program and in the Advanced Management Program. He is regularly teaching in various universities and business schools all over the world. He has been elected best teacher on numerous occasions and has won several awards for excellence and innovation in the classroom. In 1999 and in 2000, he received the Harvard Business School's Faculty Award.

Professor Bertoneche has been for more than ten years a regular Faculty of the Advanced Management Program at Templeton College, University of Oxford, where he was a co-founder of the Oxford Senior Executive Finance Program and a Visiting Fellow in Finance in 1997.

Professor Bertoneche is the author or co-author of six books, two videos and more than forty published articles on various financial topics.

Professor Bertoneche has also developed and taught in a large number of executive programs all over the world. Clients have included L'Air Liquide, AstraZenaca, Baxter International, Carrefour, Disneyland Paris, Electrolux, Goodyear, Hewlett-Packard, Honeywell, IBM, Kimberly-Clark, L'Oreal, Philips, Rhone-Poulenc, SAS International Hotels, St. Gobain, Schneider Electric, and Unilever among others. He has been a consultant to a wide variety of organizations. Assignments have involved him in many different finance related topics including financial planning, working capital management, corporate valuation, mergers and acquisitions, value management, new ventures and hedging interest rate and foreign exchange exposures. He is a very popular guest speaker all over the world. Professor Bertoneche is a Director of the Board of several organizations, ranging from multinational companies such as Radisson SAS Worldwide Hotels to smaller ventures where he has been part of the founding teams.

Professor Bertoneche holds Master degrees with Honors in Economics (1967) and Political Science (1969) from University of Paris and a Doctorate in Business Administration (1978) with Distinction from University of Bordeaux. He received his MBA (1973) and his Ph.D. in Finance (1976) from Northwestern University's Graduate School of Management, where he has been a Distinguished Scholar and a Beta-Gamma-Sigma.

Paddy Miller is a Professor of Organizational Behavior at IESE in Barcelona, Spain. In the year 2000, Paddy was also a visiting scholar at the Harvard Business School. Paddy's expertise lies in leadership and change management. Recently he has focused on specific issues of leading change in multinational organizations during transition to globalization. Last year he was awarded by the American Academy of Management for his work in the field of globally distributed teams.

Dr. Glenn Woroch is Adjunct Professor of Economics, University of California, Berkeley, and Executive Director of the Center for Research on Telecommunications Policy at the Haas Business School. Dr. Woroch is an internationally recognized expert in the economics of the telecommunications industry, and has served as a consultant to the government and private sector on a wide range of telecoms issues.

Dr. Woroch has published numerous articles on industrial organization, regulation, antitrust, corporate strategy and intellectual property. He served on the editorial boards of Information Economics & Policy and the Journal of Regulatory Economics, and was a founding member of the International Telecommunications Society.

Dr. Woroch has an active practice with large corporate clients around the world including Latin America, the Pacific Rim and Western Europe. As a member of Deloitte & Touche's "eBusiness Strategy Brain Trust," he also advised several startup companies. Besides his expertise in telecommunications, Dr. Woroch has deep experience in the television, computer software, personal computer, ecommerce, electric power and beer industries.

Previously Dr. Woroch taught economics at the University of Rochester and Stanford University. He has also developed and delivered custom executive education programs for large international corporations and government agencies. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics and M.A. in Statistics from Berkeley.

Brand strategy is not what you think, it is what you do. It can create meaningful organizational change.

Hubert is the founder of the Institute of Growth and Innovation in Munich, Germany. His research focuses on the role of the brand in organizational change and post-merger integration. Previously, Hubert was a consultant with CSC Index and a facilitator and seminar leader at Germany's leading executive development institute, USW Schloss Gracht. He holds a Ph.D. and a Diplom-Kaufmann degree from the University of Frankfurt/Main.

Marco Taborelli studied business economics at the University of Zurich and began his career at Unilever. During his ten years at Unilever, Marco held various local and international positions in marketing. The following ten years he worked for Mars Incorporated as General Manager for the German, Austrian and Swiss markets. In addition to his position as General Manager, Taborelli served as head of Mars’ North Europe division and member of its European Board.

From 2003-2006, Marco held the position of Global Head of Marketing at Credit Suisse, and was a member of the company’s extended Executive Board.

Since 2007, Marco has independently covered various mandates as board member or president of the Switzerland Board. He is currently a private lecturer for the EMBA program at HWZ (Hochschule für Wirtschaft Zurich), and member of the Swiss Marketing Association’s Foundation Board.

In his professional accomplishments, Taborelli has personally managed more than 100 brands in the FMCG and financial business world. With more than 25 years of international experience, he is an ideal sparring partner for owners and CEOs.