Sage Partners is a community of professionals who have spent their careers as advisors to senior leadership teams, and as operating managers, and entrepreneurs. As such they bridge the gap between theory and practice.

Tom Doorley, Chairman

As co-founder of Braxton Associates, Tom traveled the full cycle from concept to venture to business to global entity (identified by Consulting News as one of three 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. Throughout his consulting career Tom has focused on the strategic issues clients face as they strive to achieve high levels of performance. His work in this arena led to writing Value-Creating Growth (Jossey-Bass) in order to codify the lessons learned over the years. Clients such as GE, Northrop Grumman, Kimberly Clark and Deloitte have leveraged these concepts within their business practices. On 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 continues to serve on the Board eight years later as it emerges as a highly successful provider of analytic software and services.

Larry Bennigson

Larry Bennigson is a Senior Fellow of Harvard Business School Executive Education. He oversees the growth of the school’s custom executive development services for individual companies and directs and teaches in some of the programs.

Larry has focused on growth, governance and organization since 1965. He has consulted extensively to companies in the US and Europe and has worked in Russia. He was President of the Scandinavian Institutes for Administrative Research in the U.S., a Managing Partner of The MAC Group, Senior Vice President of Gemini Consulting and has practiced as an independent management consultant. In the MAC Group he co-founded the practice in “Managing Strategic Change,” co-led the U.S. Industrial Practice, and directed the firm’s overall practice development. He has written numerous cases and articles and writes for, and serves on the Advisory Board of “Strategy and Leadership.”

He was Chairman of SBS Technologies, Inc., a NASDAQ company, at the time of its recent acquisition by GE. As an SBS Board Member he was Lead Director, chaired the Compensation and Management Development Committee and served on the Audit Committee. He was a Board and Audit Committee Member of the Central Maine Power Company and remained on the Advisory Board after their acquisition by Energy East. He worked with and served on the Advisory Board of Toffler Associates, the firm founded by Alvin and Heidi Toffler. Bennigson is active on other Advisory Boards and is a past President and Chairman of the Project Management Institute.

Larry taught graduate students and executives on issues of operations and manufacturing strategy while on the faculties of the Harvard Business School, Stanford University School of Engineering, London Business School and GSB Lund University, Sweden.

He holds a B.S. General Engineering from UCLA, as well as Masters and Doctorate Degrees in Industrial Engineering (with specialization in Human Factors Engineering and Industrial Organization) from Stanford University. Prior to his teaching and consulting career, he served for six years in the US Navy where he competed in the 1960 Olympic Trials in the sport of crew, served on destroyers in the Pacific and taught Naval Science at Stanford University.

John E. Conway

“Globalization, the ever-expanding information revolution, and offshore outsourcing of manufacturing and services have changed business models forever. In fact, business and technology have fused into a single system that will serve as the dominant operating platform for the foreseeable future.

An enterprise’s ability to survive and grow in this environment will depend on how well it leverages this new paradigm to impact the future of technology, customers, the marketplace and society.

Innovations will lead to the creation of entirely new business concepts, novel enterprise and marketplace collaborations and previously unheard-of efficiencies. Entirely new industries will form, driven by innovations yet to be brought to market.

The next decade will create bold leaders with new strategies that attract talent, manage innovation, establish visionary goals and execute profitably. Sage Partners will be at their side.”

John E. Conway brings over 25 years of enterprise and management consulting experience to Sage Partners.  He has worked extensively with and developed game-changing strategies and tactics for Media/Entertainment/Sports, Consumer Electronics, Healthcare, Telecommunications and Aerospace/Defense industry sectors. His clients have ranged from AT&T and IBM to DirecTV and The Walt Disney Company as well as numerous start-up ventures.  He served as co-founder and CEO of the sports media/product venture, Electric Red.

Throughout his career, John has focused on strategies and tactics in the areas of new product/ services development and on the creation of new ventures, both within enterprises and without. His efforts have led to breakthrough offerings in satellite television, broadband wireless, media creation/distribution, on-line advertising, business intelligence and sports technology.

John has published and spoken extensively.  Most recently he delivered a keynote speech on the Future of Advertising at the Cable and Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM) conference in Boston, MA.  On a lighter note, he is author of the best-selling book, Catboat Summers.

Hugo van der Zee

Hugo J.A. van der Zee studied civil and corporate law at the University of Nijmegen and tax law at the University of Leiden. He attended various curriculums, a.o. at IMD (Lausanne, Switzerland), one of the leading European business schools. Hugo started his professional career as Inspector of Internal Revenue (corporate taxation) in Arnhem. In January 1985, he joined Begheijn & Sneep as tax adviser. After the merger in 1990 with Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, he was admitted to the partnership of Deloitte & Touche. Amongst his clientele were medium and large national enterprises, mostly family held. In 1994, Hugo was assigned by Deloitte’s global head office to Deloitte & Touche Central and Eastern Europe, and he became chairman of Deloitte & Touche tax and legal affairs for this region (15 countries). From mid 1997, Hugo was chairman of Deloitte & Touche Amsterdam (The Netherlands).