Team & Partners

Managing Partner, Founder

Industrial Engineering, Oregon State University
Bellevue, WA

John Rossman is a business strategist, operator, and expert on digital transformation, leadership, and business reinvention. He has consulted with many great brands including Novartis, Fidelity Investments, Microsoft, Walmart, and Nordstrom. He served as senior innovation advisor at T-Mobile and senior technology advisor to the Gates Foundation. He is an operator and builder whose love is diving into business problems and customer needs designing solutions and business opportunities. 

EXPERIENCE

Former Amazon Executive Responsible for the launching and scaling the merchant integration team and played a key role in launching and scaling the Amazon marketplace business, which is now over 50% of all units sold at Amazon.com. Also responsible for the enterprise services business with responsibilities for Toys R Us, Target.com, NBA.com and other great brands.

Media Analyst Sought after expert commentary regarding Amazon as interviewed by New York Times, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg, BBC, Geekwire and many others.

Author Author of Big Bet Leadership: Your Transformation Playbook for Winning in the Hyper Digital Era. Releases Feb 27, 2024. Author of Think Like Amazon: 50 1/2 Ideas to Become a Digital Leader. Author of The Amazon Way on IoT: 10 Principles for Every Leader from the World’s Leading Internet of Things Strategies. Author of The Amazon Way: Amazon’s 14 Leadership Principles.

Assignments - Interim chief technology officer for the Gates Foundation - Innovation advisor to T-mobile - Interim CIO for a national retailer

Speaker Keynote speaker on innovation, leadership and digital transformation. John leads workshops on a wide variety of innovation, internet of things, digital strategy, and creating a culture of agility, trial and error, scaling and accountability. His goal is to give audiences tools they can immediately use to operate differently.

Advisor Rossman Partners helps it’s clients compete and win in the digital era. I work with my clients to both define strategy and create change for the organization. Bringing a broad range of expertise and trusted partners to the table, I first listen and understand, and then help create a customized approach for your situation.

Partner

University of Chicago, MBA
Seattle, WA

Kevin McCaffrey is an expert in Strategy Operations (StratOps) and focuses on the design of user-centered approaches to optimizing delivery of the most important strategic decisions that leaders must get right.

Kevin is a strategist with a passion for operations. He designs, and implements world-class approaches for defining trajectory-shaping strategies into reality. He empowers leaders to manage the success of their organizations through high quality, fast decision making in the fields of Big Bets, resource allocation, and metrics-driven operational interventions.

EXPERIENCE

Author Author of Big Bet Leadership: Your Transformation Playbook for Winning in the Hyper Digital Era. Releases Feb 27, 2024. Co-author with John Rossman

Director, Strategy and Operations for Google Ads Established the Operations team within Google Ads, growing the team from 1 FTE to 12 FTEs within the first 6 months. Our team supported the operationalization of Google Ads' long-term strategy while supporting near-term business steering of the $250B+ business. We accomplished this by (1) supporting executive-level resource allocation decsisions, (2) establishing a comprehensive metrics ecosystem, and (3) running core executive decision processes and forums.World" by Intercon, the Internet Tech conference - Member Newsweek Expert Forum, a community for pioneering thinkers and industry leaders

T-Mobile, Growth Agenda Management. Led a 12 person team reporting to the Chief of Staff for the CEO that was tasked with a mission to support T-Mobile's Senior Leadership Team in getting the right resources to the right places at the right times. Our approach involved a dual-mandate: (1) drive enterprise-wide clarity on the top-down strategies strategies behind T-Mobile's top corporate priorities, and (2) support the bottom-up execution required to translate those strategies into business impact. Our team worked to build broad and deep partnerships across the business in order to tackle the cross-functional roadblocks that served as barriers to some of the greatest sources of enterprise-level value creation.Led a 12 person team reporting to the Chief of Staff for the CEO that was tasked with a mission to support T-Mobile's Senior Leadership Team in getting the right resources to the right places at the right times. Our approach involved a dual-mandate: (1) drive enterprise-wide clarity on the top-down strategies strategies behind T-Mobile's top corporate priorities, and (2) support the bottom-up execution required to translate those strategies into business impact. Our team worked to build broad and deep partnerships across the business in order to tackle the cross-functional roadblocks that served as barriers to some of the greatest sources of enterprise-level value creation.…see more

McKinsey Consulting Engagement Manager

Partner

Finance, DePaul University
Chicago

EXPERIENCE

Manny Bernabe helps companies compete in a data-driven world. He is an expert in AI, machine learning, analytics, and data management technologies. Manny assists clients with AI strategy formation, use case identification, AI pilot management, and employee training.

Most recently, Manny was the Head of AI Product and Lead Data Scientist at Uptake, an AI industrial IoT startup that was listed as #3 on Forbes Most Promising AI Companies in America in 2019.

Prior to Uptake, Manny held the role of Investment Strategist for FlexShares. line of Northern Trust Asset Management. At FlexShares, Manny designed and launched quantitative financial products totaling +$13 billion in assets under management.

Manny earned his B.S. in Finance (Honors) from DePaul University, a Data Science. Specialization from Johns Hopkins University, and has passed all three levels of the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) exam series.

Digital and Innovation Advisor

Boston College
Bainbridge Island, Washington

Mr. Arens was a Managing Director at Alvarez & Marsal. Prior to that, he was Vice President of Merchant Services and Sales with Amazon where he was in charge of the commercialization of Amazon’s overall enterprise services business and responsible for driving enterprise direct sales, channels, alliances, and partnerships.

EXPERIENCE

Former Amazon Executive Vice President of Merchant Services and Sales with Amazon where he was in charge of the commercialization of Amazon’s overall enterprise services business and responsible for driving enterprise direct sales, channels, alliances, and partnerships.

Background Mr. Arens was a Managing Director at managing consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal. Prior to that he was Vice President of Merchant Services and Sales with Amazon where he was in charge of the commercialization of Amazon’s overall enterprise services business and responsible for driving enterprise direct sales, channels, alliances, and partnerships. Mr. Arens was a senior executive at Syncra Systems, a supply chain management company providing B2B internet-based collaborative planning, forecasting, and replenishment solutions. Mr. Arens started his career at IBM and served in various senior level sales management roles during IBM’s historic transformation from a hardware company to a services company. When he left he was responsible for IBM’s overall global B2B market place initiatives.

Consultant to CEOs Mr. Arens’ specialty is creating pragmatic digital strategies based on Amazon’s principles of leadership and customer innovation. Wes collaborates closely with CEO’s to refine their own vision for digital, define their unique market point of view for superior customer value, and build a roadmap to improve business outcomes. He knows the hard questions necessary to challenge and transform the business and can objectively assess internal capabilities and gaps and illuminate blind spots including talent acquisition. In the end Mr. Arens helps organizations build a plan to accelerate the speed and quality of day to day decision making. His approach has helped dozens of companies unlock their own brand of innovation and prioritize the bets necessary to transform and improve results.

Speaker Frequent keynote speaker and leads workshops on a wide variety of innovation, internet of things, digital strategy and creating a culture of agility, trail and error, scaling and accountability. My goal is to give people tools they can immediately use to operate differently (like we would at Amazon). Please contact me to discuss your event (johnerossman@gmail.com)

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