Joe Marchese

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About me

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Running

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Traveling

My Profile

I am a senior executive with over 25 years of experience as a business leader with the demonstrated ability to deliver breakthrough results.  [Breakthroughs as those outcomes which were not predictable given the history and trajectory of current behavior and performance.] Besides the discipline of management, which I call the Architecture, my favorite tool (a service in the Architecture) is IT... it's a great differentiator for playing offense.  [Too bad most orgs see it as an expense and only suitable for defense.]

My career is divided in thirds: first, the big corporate route in financial services.  Saw it then as most people are only seeing it now, as exciting, and lucrative, and frustratingly unsatisfying.  Second third was my entrepreneurial and small company phase... learned things you couldn't learn any other way.  Last third has been professional services, but with the slant to take operating accountability for results and displaying leadership as a critical success factor.

I think an organizational leader's primary role is to create the conditions of success for his/her people to gain competitive advantage, generate revenue, and deliver great experiences to customers.  I've been successful in roles as President, CIO, and consulting partner, have built organizations, and led strategic, operational and technical solutions for industry-leading global companies. My industry experience includes financial services, manufacturing, electronics and communications, retail, and transportation.  Of the dozens of clients I have served, some of the more notable companies include AT&T, Citigroup, Dow Jones, Federal Express, GE, Goldman Sachs, Holy See, Lockheed Martin, Merrill Lynch, Moody’s, Morgan Stanley, Motorola, National Association of Securities Dealers, and Prudential.  Some fun gigs, but the small and mid-size clients are often more fun, if less recognizable.

I have deep experience managing people and organizations.  I have received consistent feedback about my abilities as a strong leader with a consistent track record of achieving results previously thought to be unattainable, in the areas of revenue generation, project delivery, innovative use of technology, and customer satisfaction.  I've been blessed with a lot of respect as a builder of teams and organizations, with a proven ability to convert underperforming organizations into highly effective workgroups.

Prior to forming McKeever and Sullivan, I was a Practice Leader at Tatum LLC, where I served mid-market companies in transition.  Previously, I was a Vice President for Sapient Corporation where I sponsored the initiative to reverse the steep contraction of a $500 million business.  The initiative was successful in returning the organization to growth (37% and 24% sequentially).  SAPE is the only company in its category to have survived the bursting of the technology bubble... I'm proud to have been a catalyst to break the firm out of its death spiral and get everyone moving to grow. It will be a $1B company in 2011.

I was an Executive Director at EDS where I led teams in delivery of projects in industries including finance, publishing, and pharmaceutical.  It was there that a did a billion dollar deal for the NASD... nice to be able to say you've done a billion dollar deal.  I was also CTO for Corporate Technology at Merrill Lynch where I directed all development and support activities for corporate functions worldwide. 

My small company experience included the CIO role at FirstWave, a startup with a great value proposition but a flawed governance structure where the investors were also suppliers (ask me about it sometime). The job that got me hooked on my present course was at Lloyd’s Register, where I was President of operations in North and South America, as well as CIO globally.  [That's at least one hat too many.]

My education was very important to me, but my commitment to lifelong learning is built on top of that foundation. I hold a Bachelor of Engineering from The Cooper Union, among the few remaining tuition-free private institutions in America. I also have Master of Business Administration from Adelphi University, which is a small college on Long Island.  Adelphi's had some scary moments in the last decade, but was among the most innovative of programs back in the day. I'm delighted to see the university innovating and thriving again. When you pursue your MBA part time with other working professionals, you learn at least as much from your fellow students as from the faculty, which was smart enough to foster that dynamic.

My only professional society membership is as a senior member of the American Society for Quality.  Quality gets a bad rap as being perceived as only about statistical process control and recently Six Sigma, but is at its essence about performance excellence... hence, it speaks to me as the core management framework.  I wanted to win my bona fides in that way, so I became a member of the Board of Examiners for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. There I was taught a discipline I put into practice every day, and was privileged to view and assess some of the greatest companies in America.