“Sage Partners, my second entrepreneurial venture, represents a capstone to my career. As entrepreneur, advisor to senior leadership teams, Board member/Lead Director, and operating manager, I bridge the gap between theory and practice—between innovative ideas and what works. By design, Sage Partners incorporates these four experiences across our global team. We are a community of talented professionals working shoulder-shoulder with our clients to help them identify and master the ‘Big Things’ they face. And, since growth is the superior value-creating strategy, growth is my focus, our common destiny.”

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As co-founder of the strategy consulting firm Braxton Associates, Tom traveled the full cycle from concept to venture to sustainable business to a global entity (identified by Consulting News as one the few truly global consultancies), then to acquisition (by Deloitte) and finally to successful integration and ongoing growth. When Tom left Deloitte to start Sage Partners, Braxton was embedded in the Firm as the strategy and operations practice, generating over $500 Million of revenue with 1,000 professionals. Braxton’s average annual growth rate: twenty-five percent per year.

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Throughout his consulting career, Tom has focused on the strategic issues clients face as they strive to achieve high levels of performance. He works shoulder-to-shoulder with his clients to identify the Big Things they face and to create the initiatives that turn ideas into actions and impact. For example, he worked with the leadership of FabSuite (a MIS software platform) to identify a strategic partner to assist them in moving to the next level. In April of 2018 FabSuite was acquired by Trimble in a highly synergistic acquisition. In other instances, his work has identified organic growth options, e.g., for a large consumer-services client, a restructuring of its go-to-market organization to target higher value customers and achieve better collaboration across previously disconnected geographic silos. On the entrepreneurial side, he has assisted a number of young companies to realize their visions. His longest-running relationship is with StratBridge, where he assisted the Founder/CEO at the concept stage and served as Lead Director for two decades as it emerged as a highly successful provider of analytic software and services, and ultimately was acquired by AT&T in 2018.

 

Tom brings his deep knowledge of strategy and governance to a variety of Board assignments, including serving as the Lead Director and Chair of the Compensation Committee for Natrol (NTOL: NASDAQ), a manufacturer and marketer of vitamins and supplements, StratBridge where his focus was strategy and growth, Healthwise, a not-for-profit at the center of changes to health care, and on the Advisory Board for the Dean of Penn State’s College of Engineering. In addition, Tom was the inaugural Chair of the World Economic Forum’s Technology Pioneers and served as a director of Advanced Ticketing Systems (UK).

 

In order to codify and share the lessons learned over the years Tom has written Value-Creating Growth (Jossey-Bass (Amazon) --clients such as GE, Northrop Grumman, Kimberly Clark, and Deloitte have leveraged these concepts within their business practices. Tom continues to contribute his experience and intellectual capital over the years through writing, e.g. Teaming up for the 90’s, Dow Jones Irwin; articles in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and Columbia’s Ideas That Work; and speaking, e.g. the World Economic Forum, the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) and The Conference Board.

 

His educational background provided him with a solid grounding in technology (B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Penn State), and a broad appreciation of society and culture (B.A. in Arts & Sciences from Penn State). Tom’s MBA, with Highest Honors, from Columbia rounded out his formal learning by adding Marketing and Organization Behavior to his expertise.

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