A few months ago, we announced that we were searching for the top 10 consultants across all industries. We are excited to announce that we’ve found the consultants who have actively utilized their expertise, leadership, and talent to build companies that achieve success by helping their clients reach — and exceed — their goals.
The “Top 10 Consultants”is a list of today’s leading consultants whose expertise spans from startups to big businesses across industries ranging from mobile to entertainment. They allow their passion to fuel their creativity and excitement, and their dedication to their industries makes each of the individuals some of the most sought-after experts in their respective fields.
1. RameetChawla: Founder of Fueled, an award-winning design and development company based in New York and London, Rameet Chawla is also the founder of the Fueled Collective, a co-working space comprised of over 25 startups in downtown Manhattan. Combining a decade of experience building Web and mobile applications with his innate sense of style, Chawla has created apps for a wide range of industry clients from high-end fashion brands to successful tech startups. Always up for a challenge, Chawla is passionate about building and being involved in disruptive technology ventures.
2. George Cogan: Partner of Bain & Company’s Silicon Valley office and the head of Bain’s global technology practice, George Cogan has more than 12 years of management consulting experience. He has led major client relationships in strategy development and organization restructuring for numerous international corporations. His broad range of expertise focuses on technology-driven businesses, including semiconductor components, computer hardware, storage and other peripherals, several software segments, information services, and telecommunications. His functional expertise includes corporate and divisional strategy, marketing strategy, new product and new business development, sales force and channel effectiveness, customer loyalty, and organizational design.
3. Joey Coleman: Joey Coleman is the chief experience composer at Design Symphony, a customer experience branding firm that specializes in creating unique, attention-grabbing customer experiences. He has been a lead consultant for clients that range from individual entrepreneurs, startups, and small businesses to non-profits, government entities, and Fortune 500 companies. For over a decade, Coleman has worked with clients that include NASA, Hyatt Hotels, and Zappos. Joey is a recognized expert in customer experience design, an award-winning speaker at national and international conferences, and has taught business and creativity courses at both the college and graduate school levels.
4. Jason Fisher: Jason Zone Fisher has spent his entire life in the entertainment industry. At the age of 9, Jason landed the lead child role in the Cleveland Play House’s production of “Conversations with My Father.” After a number of other theatrical and film roles, Jason co-hosted two-time Emmy-nominated “Browns Blitz” on NBC. Moving forward with his passion, Jason went on to found his own production company: In-The-Zone Productions. He directed, wrote, and produced “Swing State,” his feature documentary film directorial debut. Jason’s experience in the entertainment industry has made him a sought-after consultant for major brands such as Gillette, Nestle’s Butterfinger, Esurance, Progressive, and Skype.
5. Matthew Goldfarb: Matthew Goldfarb is a professional copywriter who has spent the past 12 years creating award-winning ad campaigns for some of the largest companies in the world. His experience spans conceptual and long-form copywriting to TV, print, interactive, and integrated copywriting. As founder and chief renegade officer, Goldfarb is now bringing his expertise toCorporate Renegade, a company that aims to make its small business owner and entrepreneur clients stand out.
6. Michael Goldstein: Michael Goldstein is the founder of Exhilarator, a startup accelerator that helps consumer Internet startups get traction and funding. He has founded five businesses and sold three, including DealPal to XL Marketing in 2010 and Magazine-of-the-Month to Magazines.com in 2004. As a serial entrepreneur with 15 years of experience, Michael’s focus is on e-commerce, online content, and subscription businesses. He has a passion for growing startups, and he has been involved with multiple startup businesses as a consultant and mentor.
7. Jason Grill: Television analyst for Fox 4 WDAF in Kansas City, a regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal Radio Network, and founder, producer, and host of the “Entrepreneur KC Show” on KMBZ Business Channel, Jason Grill is a true entrepreneur. He is a member of the advisory board of Neighbor.ly, SquareOffs, and the Partnership for Technology Innovation. Jason offers his consulting expertise in publications such as The Huffington Post, Politico, KC Business, Politix and The Recovering Politician. As an expert consultant, Jason has worked in the White House for a senior advisor to former Vice President Al Gore and an advisor to former President Bill Clinton.
Read the rest of… Jason Grill: Top Ten Consultants
By Artur Davis, on Tue Aug 20, 2013 at 10:00 AM ET
The counter-attack on NBC’s Hillary Clinton miniseries will end up, like most of the pseudo fights in the culture wars, paying dividends for every faction in the dispute. Republicans will stoke their base with this newest evidence that powerful media elites harbor a liberal bias; NBC will end up reaping as many as 40-50 million viewers for two nights of television, the kind of ratings bonanza that is supposedly a thing of the past for non football events; and Hillary’s status as a political heavyweight is enhanced. Everybody not aligned with Joe Biden’s or Cory Booker’s presidential ambitions ends up winning.
But rather than dwell on the lines that a network crosses in promoting a potential candidate’s image when its news division will regularly be making coverage judgments about that candidate, and vetting tips and storylines that could weaken the bet its entertainment division is placing, Republicans would do better to remember why those lines are being crossed. Putting partisan blinders aside, it has infinitely more to do with the television industry’s single mindedness about money than any cheerleading agenda. And the nature of the popularity that makes NBC confident that a Clinton miniseries will pay off ought to stress Republicans considerably more than what questions an NBC moderator would pose during a Republican debate.
This is the Hillary threat in its broadest context: she is for a generation of professional women, the most conspicuous example of an exquisitely successful balance between motherhood, marriage, and career; for consumers of the last twenty years worth of political/celebrity culture, the Clintons are on a very short list of figures in this era whose reputation has survived so long and actually prospered (maybe Oprah, Buffett and Gates) ; and the resilience inside that survival is the kind of narrative that props up the self help-fixated space in our psychology that knows no class, gender, racial or ideological boundaries. Note that not one line of that portfolio has anything to do with her emerging childcare platform, her just rolled out proposal to undo voting restrictions, or her stewardship of the massive infrastructure that is the State Department, or any of the other standard policy components of a candidacy that her putative 2016 rivals are laboring to assemble right now.
Put another way, NBC is not so much creating a phenomenon around Hillary Clinton: it is preparing to make money from the phenomenon that already exists. And since the mythology that makes Hillary worthy of a commercial gamble is completely separated from her politics, conventional campaign attacks—politics as usual—will struggle to diminish that foundation. That’s not to say that 2016 is destined to be a coronation, but that certain casual assumptions about a Hillary race shouldn’t be as glibly tossed off as they are some in GOP consultant circles—namely that Obama fatigue will damage her, that she has already blown one presidential opportunity, or that the appetite for something novel will undercut her as it did in 2008.
Every one of those intuitions about Clinton’s vulnerability seems sound enough until they roll up against one undeniable fact: five years ago, her brand wasn’t strong enough that a network (and let us not forget a big screen movie in development) would have even considered betting its capital on her. The Hillary of 2008 was too wrapped in the psychodrama of her husband’s adventures, too polarizing, too retrograde to justify that kind of high stakes wager. For whatever combination of reasons, from one more bout of redemption by serving the president who defeated her, to the possibility that after the last four years, experience and bipartisan appeal seem valuable again, the Hillary of the present is decidedly more formidable: ultimately, she has reversed the disintegration over time concept that erodes most brands, a sizable achievement given our chronically weak attention span.
Not only did The RP appear as a panelist on MSNBC’s popular Sunday morning talk show, “Up with Steve Kornacki,” they kept him on for 45 minutes. Slow news day or does The RP have some dirt on the show’s producers? You decide.
By Jonathan Miller, on Wed Aug 14, 2013 at 2:30 PM ET
MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes” talks with Piper Kerman, the real-life inspiration behind the series, “Orange is the New Black”, and Jeff Smith, a former Missouri state
senator who read Kerman’s memoir while in prison on campaign finance violations, about the prison system in the U.S. and AG Holder’s recent remarks about mandatory prison minimums.
(Click here to read Jeff Smith’s body of work about his time behind bars.)
The Missouri Times collected a list of more than 100 people in the world of politics and political media that you need to know if you don’t already. The list doesn’t include legislators, but rather their staff and the governmental relations personnel and consultants that affect the outcomes of the legislator’s actions. Follow them on Twitter, familiarize yourself with their work and keep an eye out, because these people are not going anywhere.
Recovering Politician and former Missouri State Representative Jason Grill made the cut:
Jason Grill Principal, JGrill Media & Consulting Twitter: @jasongrill
This former member of the House has a leading media and governmental relations firm in Kansas City while also continuing to practice law. He seems to never sleep with all of the hats he wears, including hosting a radio show.
By Artur Davis, on Tue Jul 30, 2013 at 10:00 AM ET
Count me as being in the camp that thinks the press’s fixation on Anthony Weiner’s sexual misdeeds was not worthy of the live cable deathwatch before his latest confessional press conference: in fact, it was the raw equivalent of inadvertently wandering into a pornographic chat-room and the browser breaking down. That’s not to excuse the most brazen or lurid elements of Weiner’s actions, or to venture into the parlor game over what Weiner’s conduct, particularly if it persisted after the implosion of his career, says about his judgment or some other cryptic zone within his psyche.
But I’ll hold onto a broader point that I made over a year ago in the context of a set of similarly unbecoming revelations about a figure decidedly more consequential than Weiner: the late John F. Kennedy, who—if we believe an woman who stayed silent for almost 50 years until a book deal incentivized her—gave Weiner a run for his money in promiscous crudity and unlike Weiner, poached on his own official staff and even shared his spoils with another member of his entourage. My argument, then and now, is that given a choice between trying to extrapolate character from sordid private conduct that gets unmasked and the readily available public record, I’ll take the latter, because it almost always gives off fewer false positives and tells us infinitely more about just how a particular personality would use or misuse power.
In the context of JFK, his public courage on civil rights and forging a détente with the old Soviet Union struck me as more dispositive of what and who he was than the considerable evidence that his presidency would not have survived if the door had come off the hinges of his private life. The opposite is just as true for, oh, several thousand public figures whose private pristineness has never much interfered with their pursuit of enrichment at the public’s expense, or their trading of reelection for the price of failing to lead, or their mediocrity in wasting a role of responsibility out of laziness or disinterest.
Weiner is obviously no Kennedy, and but for highlighting the wrong handle and sending a dirty tweet to the wrong twenty-something, would have stayed stuck in obscurity. Therefore, he is like those thousand or so other mortal politicos who don’t require a deep character dive to understand. In fact, the public profile of the former congressman tells any discerning observer plenty: therein lies the thin record of a legislator of genuine intelligence who still managed to avoid shaping any major bill in the decade or so he spent in the House; who routinely subordinated his hearings and floor time to his cable appearances; and whose penchant for verbally abusing staffers and changing staff leadership was noteworthy even in an environment where petty, whim-driven browbeaters are a dime a dozen.
If Weiner’s “narcissism”, the sin people with keystrokes keep assigning to him, is the fault that legitimizes the dig into his personal misdeeds, there is just as probative an exhibit in the first couple of months of his candidacy for Mayor: the Sunday Times profile that sounded weirdly but exactly like an ex athlete touting how easy it is to get free stuff, and bragging about the sale price of his jersey. And on a routine day, his stump speeches and debate performances have resembled more a mash-up of his extemporaneous speeches on the House floor than any deeply thought out platform for the world’s greatest city. He seems, for example, under the spell that a city that, if it had to keep books like a company would be insolvent, could sustain its own publicly run health insurance program: that, more than his sex talk, is what unmasks him as a fantasist.
I might cut the press voyeurism some slack, and might even justify the elevation to mainstream discourse of a website whose disclaimer mentions that it does not get in the weeds of discriminating between the true and the untrue (I avoid a link in the interest of not abetting their traffic) if dirty messages were actually necessary to unearth the real Anthony Weiner. But they aren’t. And that’s no ad hominem kick on a guy I admit I liked when I served with him: no, it’s instead a sober reflection about going into dark places on the flimsy excuse of finding light.
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Jul 23, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
I wonder if anyone will ever do a retrospective—a “Where are they now” — special on the Teletubbies.
Normally I don’t care much for these sorts of programs unless I really find the person fascinating.
I don’t find the Teletubbies fascinating, but couldn’t help think they were a fluke, a children’s TV sort of “one hit wonder.”
Television characters like that –after they drop off the public radar–often fall hard and aren’t heard from again. Until death or some public crises or tragedy.
I especially worried about Po.
Who seemed to “appear” happy and functional throughout the series but was masking some deep pain and seemed on a collision course with reality, despite the happy-go-lucky persona.
Po seems to have a lot of parallels with the Partridge Family’s child star Danny Bonaduce ….but as a terrycloth children’s TV character.
This latest one is taking shape in Wyoming, where Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, announced Tuesday that she’s challenging incumbent Sen. Mike Enzi in the 2014 Republican primary.
Her announcement is a fitting prelude to the next four years, when voters will witness America’s political royalty in its full glory.
Cheney is just one of a gaggle of legacy candidates running for the Senate next year. In the South, Sens. Mary Landrieu, daughter of the former New Orleans mayor and sister to the current mayor; and Mark Pryor, the son of former Arkansas Sen. David Pryor, are both seeking re-election. Out west, Alaska Sen. Mark Begich and Colorado Sen. Mark Udall, both sons of congressmen, are also vying for another term. So is Udall’s cousin, Tom, who is New Mexico’s senator and himself the son of a congressman.
In fact, pick any place on the map and you’re likely to find dynasty politics in full bloom. In Texas, George P. Bush, son of the ex-Florida governor and grandson of a president, is running for the statewide office of land commissioner. In Rhode Island, Lincoln Chafee, a senator’s son, is running for his second term as governor.
And that’s just a sampling.
The scope will become even broader as the 2016 presidential race kicks off. Consider the current top prospects: the son and brother of a former president (Jeb Bush); the wife of a former president (Hillary Clinton); the son of a governor who was once a presidential contender (Andrew Cuomo); and the son of a congressman who ran for president three times (Rand Paul).
Surprised? You shouldn’t be. Until Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, every winning ticket since 1980 featured a son of a United States senator or president.
“Americans were born in rebellion, but they crave connection and familiarity. The temptation of dynastic politics may be a contradictory note in our national character, but it’s perfectly explicable in human nature,” says Rick Wilson, a Florida-based GOP political consultant. “People look for signifiers that give them a quick shorthand to a candidate’s views and character, and because candidates are known generally more by who they are than what they advocate, a famous family name becomes a cornerstone of political branding.”
The practice of political inheritance is as old as the nation. In his book America’s Political Dynasties, scholar Stephen Hess counted at least 700 families in which two or more members had served in Congress since 1774 — and that was back in 1966, when the book was first published.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with dynasty politics. If anything, it underscores the deep commitment of some of the nation’s most prominent families to public service.
But it comes at a cost. There’s no denying that political scions often have an advantage over candidates of lesser lineage.
“They begin with near universal name identification. They begin with a huge rolodex. They begin with a huge understanding of how politics works,” says former Missouri state Sen. Jeff Smith, whose long-shot 2004 campaign for Congress against a scion of a prominent political family was the subject of an award-winning documentary film. “Are any of these skills necessary to become a great public servant? No, but if you understand the game, you may end up spending less time banging your head against the wall learning how things work.”
Sometimes, congressional seats end up in the same family’s hands for decades — even when the talent and charisma skips a generation.
“My experience coming from a state with lots of prominent political families is that in many of these cases, the political talent and policy depth so evident in the first generation isn’t always present in the second generation, in part because it’s not as necessary to fuel the rise,” says Smith, who’s now a professor of politics and advocacy at The New School in New York.
By Mark Nickolas, on Mon Jul 15, 2013 at 12:30 PM ET
Friend of RP Mark Nickolas has hit the big time. His short film on Occupy Wall Street, and the famous bull that sits near the stock exchange, was the feature of a Kai Ryssdal story on NPR’s “Marketplace.”
Forget Lloyd Blankfein, Jamie Dimon or Warren Buffett. For the past 23 years, there’s been only one non-stop observer to Wall Street’s goings-ons.
The Charging Bull of Wall Street, the iconic 7,000-pound bronze sculpture, sits just a couple of blocks from the New York Stock Exchange. And is pictured in media reports, movies and just about any other popular representation of U.S. financial markets.
“He’s still just a temporary installation. There’s a city ordinance that says you can’t have a private work of art that’s on public property for more than a year,” says Mark Nickolas. “And I think they’ve just turned a blind eye to that rule.”
Nickolas says his movie is told from the point of view of the bull and so, perhaps, can personify Wall Street and New York in a very physical way:
“The fact that the Occupy protests actually began Vancouver, Canada, from his point of view as a New Yorker, there is this sense of ‘how can you target me? I began as a work of art, and who’s Canada to be lecturing us about protesting government.”
2. George Cogan: Partner of Bain & Company’s Silicon Valley office and the head of Bain’s global technology practice, George Cogan has more than 12 years of management consulting experience. He has led major client relationships in strategy development and organization restructuring for numerous international corporations. His broad range of expertise focuses on technology-driven businesses, including semiconductor components, computer hardware, storage and other peripherals, several software segments, information services, and telecommunications. His functional expertise includes corporate and divisional strategy, marketing strategy, new product and new business development, sales force and channel effectiveness, customer loyalty, and organizational design.
3. Joey Coleman: Joey Coleman is the chief experience composer at Design Symphony, a customer experience branding firm that specializes in creating unique, attention-grabbing customer experiences. He has been a lead consultant for clients that range from individual entrepreneurs, startups, and small businesses to non-profits, government entities, and Fortune 500 companies. For over a decade, Coleman has worked with clients that include NASA, Hyatt Hotels, and Zappos. Joey is a recognized expert in customer experience design, an award-winning speaker at national and international conferences, and has taught business and creativity courses at both the college and graduate school levels.
4. Jason Fisher: Jason Zone Fisher has spent his entire life in the entertainment industry. At the age of 9, Jason landed the lead child role in the Cleveland Play House’s production of “Conversations with My Father.” After a number of other theatrical and film roles, Jason co-hosted two-time Emmy-nominated “Browns Blitz” on NBC. Moving forward with his passion, Jason went on to found his own production company: In-The-Zone Productions. He directed, wrote, and produced “Swing State,” his feature documentary film directorial debut. Jason’s experience in the entertainment industry has made him a sought-after consultant for major brands such as Gillette, Nestle’s Butterfinger, Esurance, Progressive, and Skype.
5. Matthew Goldfarb: Matthew Goldfarb is a professional copywriter who has spent the past 12 years creating award-winning ad campaigns for some of the largest companies in the world. His experience spans conceptual and long-form copywriting to TV, print, interactive, and integrated copywriting. As founder and chief renegade officer, Goldfarb is now bringing his expertise toCorporate Renegade, a company that aims to make its small business owner and entrepreneur clients stand out.
6. Michael Goldstein: Michael Goldstein is the founder of Exhilarator, a startup accelerator that helps consumer Internet startups get traction and funding. He has founded five businesses and sold three, including DealPal to XL Marketing in 2010 and Magazine-of-the-Month to Magazines.com in 2004. As a serial entrepreneur with 15 years of experience, Michael’s focus is on e-commerce, online content, and subscription businesses. He has a passion for growing startups, and he has been involved with multiple startup businesses as a consultant and mentor.
7. Jason Grill: Television analyst for Fox 4 WDAF in Kansas City, a regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal Radio Network, and founder, producer, and host of the “Entrepreneur KC Show” on KMBZ Business Channel, Jason Grill is a true entrepreneur. He is a member of the advisory board of Neighbor.ly, SquareOffs, and the Partnership for Technology Innovation. Jason offers his consulting expertise in publications such as The Huffington Post, Politico, KC Business, Politix and The Recovering Politician. As an expert consultant, Jason has worked in the White House for a senior advisor to former Vice President Al Gore and an advisor to former President Bill Clinton.
