Happy Holidays from Bain New York! We hope you enjoy reading about 2012 New York office highlights and the alumni spotlight on Bain NY alum Chris Gallant. Partner promotions and new partner hires Jason Barro is a partner in the Consumer Strategy & Marketing and Healthcare practice areas. At Bain, Jason has done extensive work in customer-focused NPS implementations in both business-to-business and business-to-customer environments across multiple industries, including healthcare and financial services. Within healthcare, Jason has experience across almost all subsectors, including strategy, organizational and go-tomarket work across medical devices, hospitals, payers and pharmaceuticals. Prior to joining Bain, Jason was an Assistant Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School from 1999-2004, where he did research and taught courses on microeconomics, corporate governance and health economics. Jason was also a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, MA. Jason earned his PhD, Masters, and Bachelor of Arts degrees in economics from Harvard University. Nirad Jain is a partner in the Private Equity and Healthcare practice areas. During his 7 years at Bain, he has focused on private equity diligence and post-acquisition work in Healthcare including many of the largest deals in the space, as well as advised several global corporate Healthcare companies across the value chain. In addition to New York, Nirad has also worked in Bain s San Francisco office. Nirad holds an MBA from The Wharton School, a Master of Science from Stanford University, and a Bachelor of Science with honors from Columbia University. Vandana Radhakrishnan is a partner in the Retail and Private Equity practice areas. She has worked with retailers on a variety of strategic and operational issues including international growth strategy, multichannel strategy, localization, customer strategy and organizational transformation. In her private equity role, Vandana has evaluated assets in retail, consumer products, media and publishing, industrial manufacturing, travel, technology, health care and building products. In addition to her client work, Vandana is a member of the Northeast Consultant Promotion Committee (CPC) and leads the New York office summer meeting. Vandana received her BA from Wellesley College and her MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Roger Sawhney is a partner in the New York office and is with Bain s Healthcare practice. Prior to arriving at Bain in 2012, Roger was the Global Head of Corporate Strategy for Novartis pharmaceuticals. Roger was also a charter member of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), a partner in BCG s healthcare practice and the founder and manager of Avatar Capital. Roger earned his MD from Harvard Medical School in 1995 and a BA in Economics from Stanford University. Rebecca Tadikonda is a partner in the Financial Services practice area. Rebecca has deep expertise in P&C insurance, consumer and commercial lending and payments. Her work in Financial Services includes developing growth strategies, design of customer value propositions, development of risk-based pricing models, improving sales force effectiveness, and driving organizational change to ensure results are delivered. Her experience includes P&C China growth strategy which encompassed an assessment of macro-trends, the regulatory environment, industry dynamics, and development of a differentiated growth strategy with strong local and global alignment on the investments required for success. Rebecca has also handled a US commercial bank strategy mobilization of 100 people including training and design of tracking scorecards. Rebecca graduated from Dartmouth College with a BA in Economics and from Stanford Business School with an MBA. 2012 Bain World Cup The NY office was in full force at BWC 2012, with over 60 office participants of all tenure levels attending the tournament. Due to our impressive turnout, we were able to field an exclusive team for every tournament of the weekend. Our teams had a combined 4-1 record against North American offices; volleyball went undefeated in pool play, and both social soccer and volleyball advanced to elimination rounds. Meanwhile, the serious soccer team put forth a valiant effort in pool play but had the misfortune of drawing tournament champion South America and tournament runner-up Madrid in its pool play round. Overall, it was a highly successful weekend and we look forward to a similarly strong showing in Amsterdam in 2013!
Alumni events In March, the Consumer Products and Retail partners hosted an alumni dinner at Ça Va Brasserie. Over 50 current and former Bainies enjoyed connecting with each other and hearing a presentation by Darrell Rigby on the future of shopping. On September 27, over 150 alums and Bainies reconnected at the New York annual alumni reception which took place at the R Lounge at Two Times Square. Log in to the alumni website to view more photos from the event. The Technology, Media and Telecom partners hosted their first ever NY alumni dinner on October 25. Charlie Kim, leader of Bain s Americas Media and Entertainment Practice led a presentation on the future of video. Close to 50 alums, Bain partners and managers were in attendance.
Bain Cares We have undertaken a project in partnership with Teach for America to better understand what makes transformational school leaders, and the ways in which current systems could be improved to get more of these types of leaders into principal roles. Incredible school leaders are critical to creating outstanding schools that address the achievement gap that persists with low-income students and schools compared to higher-income peers. We plan to gather input and perspectives on this topic from a number of the leading organizations and districts from around the country that are involved in developing and deploying current and future principals from different angles. We d ultimately like to develop perspectives which could be applied to leadership development practices throughout the country e.g. recruitment, preparation, hiring, and retention. Our findings will also inform new strategies Teach for America can employ to help transition more of their alumni into school leadership roles. NYC teacher attrition levels far exceed the national average negatively impacting student outcomes and school culture. Over the last three months, a New York based case team has been supporting New Visions for Public Schools in their design of a new model of talent deployment in schools to break this cycle. The team has been tasked to answer two critical questions: How can we make this model both high impact and achievable within the constraints of the NYC public education system? What is the implementation plan and path toward sustainability? spring! Last month, the Bain City Year leadership team organized an informal, informational City Year kick-off breakfast, featuring all 10 Bain-sponsored corps members serving at P.S. 83 in East Harlem and allowing Bainies to learn more about the organization. With over-anticipated interest, the colleague program has expanded this year each City Year corps member is assigned to 2 different Bainies from various tenure levels for career advice and coaching. The Bain City Year team looks forward to all the events in store for rest of the year, from colleague events to the office-wide service day in the The NY Inspire office has been busy and completed three pro-bono cases in the past quarter. Three CTLs and 13 volunteers, including all of our ACIs, participated in case work. The Computers for Youth team worked with an organization that provides computers and a digital working platform to lowincome communities, helping assess various models for revenue generation. Our Breakthrough NY team worked with the organization s teacher training program to explore and create a plan for sustainability and create avenues for monetization. Lastly, our STRIVE team worked with the national employment readiness non-profit to create a strategy for its affiliate network. So far this fall, we have had two additional cases start up. The first case is with Public Prep, a network of charter schools aimed at college readiness. The second case is working with a program within Echoing Green, an organization that supports social entrepreneurs through grants and educational programs.
Alumni spotlight: Chris Gallant, general manager and cofounder, The Bronx Brewery Chris Gallant Offices: Boston & New York Bain tenure: 2006-2009 How would you describe your business? The Bronx Brewery. We make beer. Well sell beer. We re in the Bronx. A little more detail: The Bronx Brewery is a craft brewery based in the South Bronx. It was launched in 2011 by a small team with two things in common: a maniacal focus on creating high-quality beer and a passion for the Bronx and New York City. Its traditionally-crafted pale ales use only premium and minimally-processed materials to create fresh, bold beer from a borough known for its own uniquely bold character. The team is enthused to bring a rich brewing tradition back to the Bronx and craft a beer that the people of the Bronx and New York City can be proud to call their own. You can find their beers throughout New York City and Westchester. Visit www.thebronxbrewery.com for more details. What is your geographic focus? Currently, New York City and Westchester County. As we expand production this year, we plan to move into the rest of New York State, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Beyond that, we ll focus mostly on the northeast, though international markets are an interesting opportunity right now for American craft beer. Describe your journey in founding your own company. After leaving Bain in 2009, I worked with Heineken on M&A projects throughout Central and South America. It was a fun, interesting, and educational experience in an amazing part of the world. But after a couple of years, it was time to move home and time to put my lessons from Bain and from Heineken to use in my own company. And in September 2011, I launched The Bronx Brewery with a few business partners. What are the two biggest challenges you face right now? 1) Raising capital. It s a challenge for which I was not prepared. In particular, raising capital for a consumer goods company, in a relatively competitive market, in the midst of an economic downturn has proven difficult. But, with some creativity, we have been able to collect funds from a number of sources and should be closing on this second round of funding this year. 2) Sales and distribution. On a macro scale, the craft beer market is expanding rapidly, so there is room for additional brands and volume. But on a micro scale, at an individual outlet, it is a zero-sum game: another beer has to go so that yours can be sold. We are working closely with our distributor to grow the brand throughout our market. What did you learn at Bain that helps you now? Beyond simply learning how to think and structure my business for a long-term, strategic path, I learned two pretty specific things that have helped my business thus far: 1) Focus on your core. It is important to focus your product offerings around your core and expand out from that in a smart, efficient, and differentiated manner. We have a pretty concentrated portfolio of beers in the pale ale category, with our flagship brand the Bronx Pale Ale accounting for the vast majority of sales. 2) Make production as efficient as possible. With our hybrid production model, we will be able to fully utilize the capacity in our wholly-owned production brewery, while at the same time not limiting growth by having a portion of our beer produced in a larger, third-party facility. What is the next big thing for your business?
Finalizing the build out on our new brewery and taproom, scheduled to open in fall 2013! What is the funniest anecdote you have experienced to date? When we started, we were pretty tight on cash. My business partner and I did everything ourselves, including power-washing our Bronx warehouse. Another local business owner mistook us for a cleaning company and offered us a job washing his warehouse. Having little cash in the bank, we walked over to his building and started pricing out the job until one of our customers, a local bar owner, walked by and called us out! What advice would you give to current and former Bainies who want to start a business? Build the right team. It s easy to build a team of smart, ambitious people from business school or work. But too often, such a team has a similar background, with a similar set of skills and approach to solving problems. Getting together a team with a diverse set of skills and approaches has been a key factor in our success to date. If you have any questions or would like more information about the above events, please contact Caitlin Haughey, Bain northeast alumni manager.