About
JAMES MCPHERSON
JAMES is a Strategy and Operations practitioner as well as an educator and coach. He has held founding operational, financial, and business development roles in various educational, telecommunications, and technology ventures.
James was the founding Chief Financial Officer, Director of Business Operations, and Director of Human Resources at Cristo Rey Research Triangle High School and Corporate Work Study Program.
He led Operations and R&D for TDSI, an early stage 5G & 6G Networks Technology and Environmental Metrics venture.
James started the Carolina Science Online business unit at Carolina Biological Supply Company, an 86-year-old science supply company with 450 employees teachers, professors, and professionals in health and science-related fields worldwide.
Co-founded the Avalon Education Group, an educational non-profit which opened its first school less than a year after incorporation and three institutions in four years.
James has been a Start-up Judge and Advisor for the Software Information Industry Association (SIIA) Innovation Incubator, The Florida Education Technology Conference (FETC) Goldfish Tank Innovators Competition, Duke University’s DukeGEN Start-up Challenge, and the Elon University Innovation Challenge.
James received his B.A. in Classics with honors from Johns Hopkins University where he was a Maryland Distinguished Scholar. As a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland he studied Leadership and Organizational Goals in Homer’s Iliad.
James completed his M.B.A. at Duke University with concentrations in Strategy and Decision Models. At Duke he was an Executive Fellow, an Alumni Fellow and a graduation speaker.
He edited the third edition of On Moral Character: A Practical Guide to Aristotle’s Virtues and Vices, and is currently completing Throw Thunder: Lead Like Zeus.
Substack: https://jalmcpherson.substack.com/
DAVID KEARNEY
Started up and led successful management consulting practices at EY, Deloitte, IBM, GR Consulting, and SAS. All practices included both sales and delivery leadership, and utilized people, processes, and technology alignment to support strategy and performance improvement.
Created successful alliances with Capgemini, Lawson Software and QAD. Supported alliances with Intel, HP, Accenture, JD Edwards, Hyperion, and numerous software, hardware and services providers.
Sold and delivered 100+ high-impact projects, ranging from $20K – $2 Billion in revenues each, with high returns for clients ranging from startups through Fortune 100 companies. Have served nearly every major industry extensively. Adept at interacting with all levels within organizations, across all functions. Keen understanding of relationships and interdependencies, and skilled at orchestrating all resources to support initiatives through coordination and thoughtful change management. Leverage CPA background to measure and maximize value creation.
20+ years of leveraging emerging technologies, including ERP, BI, e-Commerce, Advanced Analytics, Visual Analytics, Social Media, Mobility, IoT, Big Data, Cloud, SAAS, and Machine Learning. Focused on performance improvement and strategic advantage through analytics and related technologies since 2002.
Accomplished at creating innovative service offerings, methodologies and solutions. Built numerous programs from the ground up, including hiring, training, development, sales and marketing materials, pre-sales and project scoping tools, delivery artifacts, and post-delivery support. Coordinated development with the entire ecosystem of sales and marketing, R&D, product management, education and training, delivery, tech support, legal and alliance partners.
JACK BENSON
Jack Benson is the executive principal of Performance Partners, an organizational strategy and performance management consultancy serving North America. Mr. Benson specializes in the design and implementation of strategy enabling systems that engage employees at all levels within an organization, aligning strategy goals and objectives broadly and deeply within the entity. Using scorecard, dashboard and gamification techniques as the means to provide an iterative performance management platform, employee engagement is assured. The alignment of strategy with people, process and technology is widely regarded as the critical success factor in performance outcomes.
Jack Benson has provided advisory services to a broad spectrum of organizations such as General Motors and Kia North America, and also to organizations in utilities, aerospace, financial services, manufacturing and technology sectors. Engagements have provided management advisory services in the areas of continuous process improvement, customer experience, marketing and operations. His career includes larger-scale regional industry workshops in process best practices adoption and implementation, focusing on the customer experience. Early in his career Mr. Benson also was a founding member of ESI Automated Systems, a technology business-to-business enterprise. During this time he participated in the corporate growth strategy through merger and acquisition and managed operations for twenty two sales locations and eight regional distribution centers. He holds an MBA from Kent State University.
performance partners southeast 