As co-founder and CEO of Synesis, Dr. Johannes Ziegler oversees operations and works directly with Synesis' clients. An expert in understanding the various facets of high-tech industry dynamics and a pioneer of the Organizational IQ concept, Dr. Ziegler brings years of hands-on, international experience to the Synesis team.

Prior to co-founding Synesis with Gregory Slayton in 1997, Dr. Ziegler conducted his Ph.D. research at Stanford University, in coordination with Augsburg University in Germany. His in-depth analysis of organizational practices of over 100 top international companies revealed the direct correlation between a company's Organizational IQ and its profitability. This concept has earned recognition from the academic world as well as the high-tech industry.

Before his tenure at Stanford University, Dr. Ziegler served as a member of McKinsey & Company's high-tech management consulting practice, where he spent several years working in a variety of industries ranging from telecommunications to consumer electronics.

Dr. Ziegler co-authored a book on the principles behind Organizational IQ and their applications in various Fortune 500 companies. Entitled Survival of the Smartest, it was published in 1999 by John Wiley & Sons, New York and became a business bestseller. Japanese and German translations are now available.

Dr. Ziegler holds a Ph.D. in business from Augsburg University, an M.S. and undergraduate degree in engineering (technical cybernetics) from the University of Stuttgart, Germany. In addition to English, Dr. Ziegler speaks German, and basic French and Chinese. Dr. Ziegler currently resides in Palo Alto, California with his wife Swenja and their five children.

As co-founder and an active member of Synesis' Board, Mr. Slayton helps to direct the company and maintain its emphasis on effective implementation and rapid, significant client results. Mr. Slayton brings to Synesis years of executive level experience with over a dozen leading high-tech companies. As Managing Director of Slayton Capital, Chairman of the Board of Federal Solutions, and Member of the Board of Quantum Corporation, Mr. Slayton enables Synesis to track the latest best practices among Silicon Valley's elite companies.

Prior to this, Mr. Slayton was president, chief operating officer and member of the Board of ParaGraph International, a 150+ person Internet software leader. Mr. Slayton also co-founded Worlds, Inc. and served as a senior executive during that company's rise to prominence. Before co-founding Worlds Inc., Mr. Slayton was responsible for overall financial results at Paramount's Technology Group, as well as Paramount's Venture Capital portfolio.

Earlier in his career, Mr. Slayton was an engagement manager with McKinsey & Company, where he was a part of McKinsey's Worldwide Multimedia Practice Group and served Fortune 100 clients in the multimedia and telecommunications industries.

Mr. Slayton serves on a number of high tech corporate Boards and is on the Board of Opportunity International, a large non-profit organization dedicated to providing micro-enterprise credit to small entrepreneurs in the developing world. He is also spearheading the Technology Advisory Board for the Republican National Committee.

Mr. Slayton, a former Fulbright Scholar to East Asia, holds an M.B.A. with Distinction from the Harvard Business School and a B.A. in Economics, Magna Cum Laude with Faculty Honors, from Dartmouth College. In addition to English, he speaks French, Spanish and Filipino. Mr. Slayton, his wife Marina and their four children live in Palo Alto, California.

As CEO of Synesis' European practice, Mr. Hudak leverages years of international executive experience in various industry segments. Before joining Synesis, he was Director of Business Development and Strategic Marketing at TEMIC Semiconductor, where he designed and implemented strategic business plans and managed vital partnerships and new venture start-ups.

Previously, Mr. Hudak spent several years in Japan and other Asian countries, gaining his expertise in Asian market analysis, international networks and supply-chain management. As Marketing and Sales Director at various high-tech companies, including Trumpf and Fairchild-Convac, he directed new market strategies, international partnership networks, customer service and total quality communications processes.

Mr. Hudak holds an M.B.A. in Business and International Marketing from the Institute for Technology and Commerce in Reutlingen, Germany, and M.S. and undergraduate degrees in optics and photo-engineering from FH Köln, Germany. Having spent over 10 years working internationally, Mr. Hudak is proficient in English, German and French.

Mr. Hudak currently resides in Mühlacker, Germany, with his wife Elvira and their three children.

As a member of Synesis’ Board, Mr. Petry brings several years of management experience in the management of successful high-tech start-up companies. Mr. Petry is the co-founder and vice president of marketing at Karient Inc., a Bay Area software company that develops next generation system management applications. Prior to founding Karient, Mr. Petry was the General Manager of CRM Solutions at Corio Inc. Under Mr. Petry's leadership Corio became the largest Application Service Provider for Siebel Systems software.

Before Corio, Mr. Petry was Senior Director of Development at Oracle Corp. where he helped launch Oracle's CRM division. Mr. Petry also worked as a management consultant at McKinsey & Comp. He holds a joint degree in Management and Computer Science from St. Gallen University in Switzerland, a University degree in economics from the University of Canterbury and a Master's in Engineering from Stanford University.

Mr. Followwill brings years of management experience to Synesis' Board, both in terms of strategic management consulting as well as marketing consulting.

He began his career as a management consultant with Marakon Associates in San Francisco. While there, his primary engagements were to manage the development of a profitability reporting system for a multi-billion dollar savings institution, to conduct an acquisitions analysis for a commercial construction firm, and to perform various other product and market evaluations.

Prior to joining Frost & Sullivan as VP in charge of the Healthcare & Life Sciences Practice, Mr. Followwill worked as Director of Client Services at Synesis, developing lasting relationships with key clients in the high-tech industry, including HP, Cisco, and IBM.

At Frost & Sullivan, Mr. Followwill has overseen the custom market research consulting enterprise in its early stages of development, as well as the successful turnaround of the healthcare business unit during which he systematically applied the principles of a high Organizational IQ. He has managed a wide variety of consulting engagements, including strategic analyses for IBM Life Sciences, 3M, Johnson & Johnson, Bayer (Diagnostics and Biologicals), Chiron, Agilent, Smith & Nephew, Baxter Healthcare, GlaxoSmithKline, Kimberly-Clark, Novo Nordisk, Amersham Biosciences, Novation, AmeriNet, and many others.

Mr. Followwill received his degree in The Management of Organizations from Stanford University. He now lives in the Bay Area with his wife, Blythe, and their five children.

Prof. Graf is an international expert in strategic and organizational consulting. She brings many years of management experience to Synesis and has proven her management skills in highly dynamic and challenging market environments.

In 2001, Mrs. Graf took over a professorship for International Management and Marketing at the Berufsakademie in Mosbach. She is a sought-after speaker and the author of numerous articles.

Prior to joining Synesis, Professor Graf was Director of Marketing Services for Nortel Networks in Germany. She significantly improved the organization's profile in the market and implemented a portfolio of professional marketing activities.

She previosuly held several management positions at DaimlerChrysler. As Senior Area Manager, she led Temic Semiconductor's expansion in Eastern Europe and Latin America. In addition to German and English, Professor Graf speaks French and Dutch. She lives with her husband in Heilbronn, Germany.

As a Synesis consultant, David Hansen spearheads Synesis' initiatives in the healthcare industries. Mr. Hansen contributions to these industries span two decades. Mr. Hansen has aided these companies- including Kaiser Permanente, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Siemens and Trigon- assess new products and services, target new markets, focus business strategies, link IT plans effectively to these strategies, and change organizations. Through renowned think tanks such as the Institute for the Future and SRI International, he has published extensively and inspired industry executives on strategic shifts in health markets.

Mr. Hansen offers clients insights gained from marketing, strategy and financial problem solving on behalf of clients in many industries besides health. His advice during more than 15 years as a consultant has benefited firms spanning industries from petroleum to electronics, government research to B2C Internet sales, broadcasting to automobiles. He has advised foreign governments on policy issues and guided them in exploring the keys to Silicon Valley's success. He has facilitated dozens of change processes in organizations across all levels, from Boards of Directors to front-line employees.

Mr. Hansen earned an M.B.A. from the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley and an M.A. in Applied Economics from the University of California, Santa Barbara. His undergraduate work was from the University of California and University of Bergen in Norway.

Mr. Hansen is father of two children and lives with his wife in Fremont, California. Mr. Hansen is active on the boards of two Bay Area not-for-profit organizations. He has spent a dozen years living in Norway and speaks English and Norwegian fluently.

As a Synesis project manager, Mr. Brubaker helps Synesis clients in the high-tech industry achieve focus and improve their organizational effectiveness.

Mr. Brubaker has several years of experience in strategic consulting with Oliver, Wyman & Company, where he was a project manager engaged with some the world's leading financial services companies. He has also consulted to a number of Bay Area organizations as the Managing Director of Brubaker Consulting.

As co-founder of Arbor Vita Corporation, a Bay Area biotech company developing leading-edge technology, Mr. Brubaker helped build an organization from its inception into a thriving company, now in its fifth year of operation. Previously, he worked as a business development/product marketing manager at Silicon Graphics.

In addition to applying the Organizational IQ methodology in client consulting projects, Mr. Brubaker was a key contributor to the concept of Organizational IQ and its presentation in the book Survival of the Smartest. He holds an M.B.A. from Stanford and undergraduate degrees in Finance and Mechanical Engineering, both Summa Cum Laude, from the University of Pennsylvania. An American raised in Austria, Mr. Brubaker is fluent in both English and German. He and his wife Hillary live in San Jose, California.

As a Synesis project manager, Dr. Dahlen helps Synesis clients in the technology and service industries achieve focus and improve their organizational effectiveness.

Dr. Dahlen was a Director of Business Development for ExciteAtHome, where he was responsible for international business strategy. He also negotiated technology licenses and equity agreements with cable operators in Europe, Australia and Japan. He brings with him an intimate knowledge of the international cable TV and Internet space, and has experience in restructuring high speed service providers.

Dr. Dahlen has more than 5 years of experience in strategic management consulting with McKinsey & Company in the U.S. and in Europe where he advised international clients in the technology and industrial sectors in merger situations, joint venture creation and spin-offs. His tenure included the turnaround of one of the world’s largest computer companies where he led the process to reorganize the company's sales force and developed the international marketing and sales strategy for a server division. Previously, Dr. Dahlen held various engineering positions in the aerospace industry and at academic research institutions.

Dr. Dahlen holds a Ph.D. in engineering from Stanford University, and an M.S. and undergraduate degree with honors in engineering from RWTH Aachen, Germany. In addition to English, Dr. Dahlen speaks German and French.

Richard Fancher        top
Senior Advisor

Mr. Richard Fancher has built his consulting career on the commitment to bring pricing management concepts - with the commensurate increases in profitability and shareholder and customer value - to his clients. Previously, Mr. Fancher was a senior partner of Decision Focus, Inc. (DFI), where he helped develop the concept and initial applications of pricing management solutions.

While at DFI, Mr. Fancher also pioneered the application of pricing management to the then-newly emerging wholesale power and natural gas markets. Mr. Fancher's efforts include not only the development of advanced yield management methodologies, but also working with senior management and mid-level managers to create the organizational change needed to capture the value that has been identified in the area of margin improvement.

Mr. Fancher developed several path-breaking mathematical models on systematic pricing methodologies, including the model that was implemented in Over/Under, the most widely licensed software of the Electric Power Research Institute. Over/Under uses internal pricing mechanisms to determine the most economically efficient reserve margin for electric utilities. Mr. Fancher frequently used insights and analysis from Over/Under when testifying at regulatory hearings.

Mr. Fancher's status as a leading authority on pricing models was confirmed by Pacific Gas and Electric's decision to choose Mr. Fancher as expert witness on the impact on wholesale power pricing of the multi-billion proposed merger of Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas and Electric.

Mr. Fancher was awarded a B.S. in Engineering from the U.S. Air Force Academy, a M.S. in Nuclear Engineering from MIT, and a M.B.A. from the University of Dayton.

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