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Morgan Baker is the Vice President of Operations at Brooks International. Mr. Baker joined Brooks International in 2014 and has over 10 years’ experience in business management in the areas of performance improvement and change management within large and medium-sized multinational companies.

Mr. Baker has conducted business assessments across several industries, locations and cultures to identify operational and financial potential and design transformation roadmaps. His experience covers all business functions such as supply chain, production and maintenance, as well as support functions including human resources and finance. He has worked in a variety of industries including automotive, manufacturing, railroad transportation, steel and aerospace.

Mr. Baker holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Management from Palm Beach Atlantic University and resides in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Matt Carstens is a Managing Partner at Brooks International. Mr. Carstens is an accomplished transformational executive with more than 25 years of leadership experience driving turnaround, growth, value creation, and strategic repositioning across agriculture, supply chain, distribution, sustainability, fintech, and emerging technology.

Prior to joining Brooks International, he served in a senior executive leadership role at Land O’Lakes, a $15B enterprise, where he launched and scaled a new ESG-driven business unit and led enterprise partnerships with Fortune 500 companies including Pepsi, Kellogg’s, Smithfield, and Walmart. He also served as President & CEO of Landus, a $2.5B enterprise with more than 600 employees across 60+ locations, where he led a full financial and operational turnaround, improved EBITA from negative levels to more than $30M, and repositioned the organization as a data-driven, technology-enabled platform.

Throughout his career, Mr. Carstens has built and scaled complex businesses through operational discipline, capital alignment, commercial strategy, and stakeholder engagement. He has founded or co-founded three ventures across private, cooperative, and nonprofit structures, including Conduit, a fintech and e-commerce platform that generated more than $500M in first-year volume and successfully exited through a strategic merger. His leadership experience includes enterprise transformation across multi-location operating environments, capital allocation and balance sheet restructuring, international expansion, supply chain optimization, digital commerce, and innovation ecosystem development.

Mr. Carstens has been featured in Bloomberg, CNBC, and The Wall Street Journal, and is a frequent speaker on transformation, commercialization strategy, innovation ecosystems, and the future of food and supply chains. Mr. Carstens completed the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School and holds a B.S. in Agricultural Business from Iowa State University.

Paul Caruso is an Advisor at Brooks International. Mr. Caruso is an innovative and strategy-oriented executive with deep experience on four continents, including P&L, M&A execution and integration, and business performance improvement responsibilities. He is a proven change agent, successful in building customer-focused teams and implementing rapid transitions that positively impact the bottom line and corporate culture.

Mr. Caruso is a dynamic business builder who navigates cultural boundaries and builds winning teams. He brings over 30 years of experience in industrial and consumer product companies across the public and private spectrum.

Mr. Caruso has expertise in P&L management, business strategy, M&A execution, acquisition integration, operations, ecommerce, marketing, startups, and joint ventures. His industry experience includes automotive OE, automotive aftermarket, industrial markets, manufacturing, and distribution. He is experienced in B2B and B2C go-to-market, change management, navigating cultural boundaries, product development, and brand strategies. Mr. Caruso has a passion for entrepreneurship, business building, and empowering winning teams.

In his over 30 years of experience, Mr. Caruso has made significant achievements. Notably, he developed and implemented a turnaround strategy for a $250 million business in the commercial vehicle industry. Additional accomplishments include acquiring the top two aftermarket trailer hitch companies in Brazil and implementing a successful new brand strategy, including brand positioning, rationalization of product offerings, and the launching of a new value brand to support premium brands, while improving competitive strategies.

Mr. Caruso holds an Executive MBA and Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Michigan State University.

Luigi (Gino) Damasceno is a seasoned management consultant and business leader, bringing over a decade of expertise in delivering transformative results for Fortune 500 companies. A graduate of Penn State Erie with a Bachelor’s in Business Administration focusing on Project and Supply Chain Management, Gino has honed his skills across various domains, including organizational restructuring, operational optimization, and business development.

His tenure at Brooks International Corporation has been marked by roles of increasing responsibility, culminating in his current position as Vice President of Business Development. Here, he has driven unprecedented growth, generating new revenue growth at a rate not seen in 10+ years.

Throughout his career, Gino has demonstrated an exceptional ability to identify and implement process improvements that yield significant financial and operational benefits. As an Engagement Manager at Brooks International, he led high-impact projects such as a $24 million annualized financial impact for a global security provider and a $100 million benefit realization for a $2.3 billion infrastructure joint venture. His leadership extended to diverse industries, including administrative services, automotive, heavy civil construction, manufacturing, oil & gas, and commercial glass & glazing. During his tenure as General Manager at Doetsch Broward Door & Glass, a leading South Florida glass & glazing contractor, Gino transformed the small business, tripling client relationships and increasing annual revenue from $1.1 million to $2.1 million in just two years.

A results-oriented professional with a passion for excellence, Gino’s work ethos is driven by a commitment to continuous self-improvement and optimization. Known for his strategic vision and hands-on leadership style, he thrives on building high-performance teams and fostering innovation to achieve organizational goals. With a deep-seated love for his country and a personal mission to contribute at the highest levels, Gino combines his business acumen with an unwavering dedication to creating value for clients and stakeholders alike.

Mario Damasceno is an Engagement Manager at Brooks International with more than eight years of experience leading enterprise-wide transformation, operational and financial due diligence, performance improvement, and value creation initiatives across complex industrial and private equity environments.

Mr. Damasceno’s experience spans production operations, manufacturing strategy, capacity utilization, supply chain and inventory management, digital and ERP transformation, post-merger integration, and project work management. He has worked across both the delivery and capital sides of value creation, including serving within middle-market private equity Value Creation teams and as Chief of Staff inside portfolio operating companies. His transaction experience includes operational and financial due diligence supporting a $90 million strategic acquisition, while his transformation work has delivered significant EBITDA expansion, cost reduction, and throughput improvement across complex manufacturing and service environments.

Mr. Damasceno specializes in translating strategic and financial objectives into executable operating plans, combining diagnostic analysis, implementation discipline, System for Managing principles, cross-functional leadership, and performance accountability to accelerate measurable results. His experience includes industrial manufacturing, heavy equipment manufacturing, specialty food manufacturing, steel, coal mining and energy, specialized freight and logistics, facilities management services, industrial distribution, and construction services. He also founded an AI-native transformation operating platform serving private equity-backed businesses, building a network that supported 26 active investors, 12 operating companies, and more than 130 specialist delivery partners. Mr. Damasceno holds a B.S. in Business Administration with concentrations in Management and Information Technology, and minors in Supply Chain Management and Philosophy, from Seton Hall University.

Surrin Grewal is a Managing Partner at Brooks International with more than 30 years of executive leadership experience across manufacturing, supply chain, operational excellence, and enterprise-wide transformation. Mr. Grewal has held executive leadership positions within Fortune 100 organizations and has advised senior leadership teams across complex manufacturing and distribution environments.

At Brooks International, he works with executives to translate strategic imperatives into executable transformation programs, aligning operating strategy, organizational capabilities, performance management, and leadership accountability to deliver measurable financial and operational results. His experience spans engagements with leading organizations including Kellogg’s, McDonald’s, Energizer Holdings, US Foods, Stanley Black & Decker, Lubrizol, and California Dairies.

Throughout his career, Mr. Grewal has led large-scale operating transformations across multi-site manufacturing and distribution networks, including enterprise supply chain optimization, organizational restructuring, continuous improvement, and operational performance recovery. Across these environments, he has strengthened service performance, customer outcomes, workforce productivity, and organizational resilience while establishing the operating discipline and leadership accountability required to sustain results. He has also served in an interim Chief Supply Chain Officer capacity, leading a major retailer through organizational restructuring and successful emergence from Chapter 11 bankruptcy within 10 months. Mr. Grewal is a Six Sigma Master Black Belt and holds a Toyota Production System Master Certification earned through Toyota North America’s Operations Management Leadership Program. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Management from National-Louis University.

Susan Schran Houghton is the Director of Organizational Development at Brooks International. She joined Brooks International in 2015 and has more than 30 years of international experience in organizational development, performance management, curriculum development, training, and adult education.

Throughout her career, Ms. Houghton’s focus has been on organizational and human dynamics and the effect they have on organizational performance and achievement of enterprise objectives. She has managed and supported the assessment of organizational needs, as well as the design, implementation and evaluation of programs that deliver organizational excellence through professional development and the application of continuous learning and performance improvement processes.

Ms. Houghton values the insights gained through operational analyses, which include both organizational and individual assessments, critical factors in the development of tailored curricula that address the transformative requirements of an organization and the professional development of its executive leadership team and emerging leaders. These provide the input that is critical to shaping individualized coaching and mentoring to ensure application of learned concepts to the realities of the organizational environment.

Ms. Houghton has designed organizational development strategies and processes, and implemented transformative organizational changes that have contributed to significant improvements in operational performance across a wide variety of industrial, commercial and service enterprises, which include manufacturing, automotive, aerospace, food processing, food service, agricultural production, chemical production, refining, forest products, mining, logistics, supermarkets, healthcare, hospitality, banking, financial services and insurance. She has developed relationships with key stakeholders to ensure sponsorship of and participation in engagements that align the enterprise mission and goals with the strategy, structure and culture required to address operational and organizational performance effectively.

Ms. Houghton holds an MBA in Management and Organizations from the Fox School of Business at Temple University. Originally from the Philadelphia area, Ms. Houghton resides in Southwest Florida with her husband, and enjoys travel, cooking, and reading.

Paul Kreis is an Organizational Development Executive at Brooks International, a role in which he works closely with every aspect of a client’s experience with Brooks International. Since 2019, he has developed and delivered executive teams and individual leaders through transformational change experiences to align with the requirements of a client’s desired outcome.

Prior to joining Brooks International, Mr. Kreis served in the U.S. Army for over 30 years. During this tenure, he proved himself to be an experienced executive leader with a record of achieving large scale consensus and transformational change outcomes, working in challenging, ambiguous, and high-risk/reward environments. He built innovative, cross-functional teams and developed successful transformation outcomes for large organizations with multiple stakeholders. For this reason, he was the natural selection to lead dramatic change under challenging conditions.

As the Senior Advisor to the Afghan Minister of Defense, he worked with senior U.S., NATO and Afghan military and political leaders, as well as deftly managed relationships with 250+ advisors from 41 nations to secure the necessary consensus to develop the strategy and policies to accomplish a common desired outcome that had long eluded previous efforts – long-term sustainability of the Ministry of Defense.

While assigned to the Pentagon, he created greatest sustained improvement not experienced in over a decade of equipping units to meet mission requirements. He established common purpose, improved communication among multiple stakeholders (military, Congress, defense industry, and multiple local communities), and coordinated all activities to monitor maintenance expenditures and workload across multiple depots to reduce $490 million in costs within a $1.9 billion budget.

Mr. Kreis has invaluable experience directly leading organizations to improve performance, successfully leading and implementing change to gain efficiencies and achieve desired outputs. His experience also includes training, coaching, mentoring, and relationship-building with executives, senior leaders, peer leaders, staff and subordinate leaders. He has decades of experience developing relationships with stakeholders to secure the consensus required to implement sustainable change in strategic environments. He has worked in both the public and private sectors, including the defense industry, manufacturing, healthcare, transportation and pharmaceuticals.

Mr. Kreis has a Bachelor of Science from the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York and a Master of Arts with a focus in National Security and Strategic Studies from the United States Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. Mr. Kreis and his wife raised two sons and now reside in the mountains of East Tennessee. He enjoys outdoor activities, rugby, and writing.

Dr. Richard F. LeBlanc is a Managing Partner at Brooks International. He is an internationally renowned business executive, behavioral scientist, professor of management & leadership, and operations analyst. He has worked as an international performance enhancement executive for more than 40 years.

With a focus on the design and strategic delivery of structures, systems, and methods to improve performance outcomes, Dr. LeBlanc has worked with the leadership of public, private, not-for-profit, and governmental entities in creating opportunities for successful attainment of vision, mission and bottom-line value creation. Dr. LeBlanc has designed and implemented performance enhancement initiatives for over 500 Global 2000/Fortune 500 clients. He has worked in over 60 countries, covering the spectrum of socio-political, industrial, and cultural boundaries. Dr. LeBlanc is renowned for his excellence in creating motivational environments, precision in decision making and for his brilliance in timely, systematic problem solving.

Dr. LeBlanc is a prophetic diagnostician and renowned “systems thinker” who, as a situational leader and professional manager, has guided value-driven organizations across the socio-economic, industrial, and cultural spectrum in conditioning practitioners in the optimization of supply chain (SIOP, Operations, Procurement and Logistics) delivery systems; building, growing, and maintaining a sustainable workforce and capturing insights from innovative, predictive data analytics. Dr. LeBlanc is a human capital industry leader, providing tools and methods designed to decrease talent attrition resulting from a lack of cultural fit.

Dr. LeBlanc holds a Doctorate in Behavioral Science from the University of Southern California, a Master’s in Education from California State University at Los Angeles and Bachelor’s Degrees in English and Political Science from the University of Southern California.

Nelson Miller is a Managing Partner at Brooks International. Mr. Miller has been with Brooks International for over a decade and holds 35 years of experience in professional services serving CEOs across the globe. He is highly experienced in performance diagnostics and benchmarking, solution design, and implementing improvement programs that generate sustainable results for clients.

He has worked extensively in manufacturing, transportation, mining, and banking / insurance. Mr. Miller possesses significant international experience, with demonstrated success in a variety of cultural settings.

Mr. Miller earned his Bachelors Degree in Political Science in Washington D.C. from the American University and is a Six Sigma Black Belt.

Rick Sapp is the Director of Delivery Quality at Brooks International. He has more than 30 years of experience in professional services and has generated value for major organizations around the world in a variety of industries including finance, insurance, transportation and manufacturing.

His areas of expertise include strategic alignment, linking operational performance with financial performance requirements, organizational design and governance, business process design and improvement, and program/project management and leadership.

Mr. Sapp began his career in banking and insurance, where he led three different branch banking optimization and improvement initiatives. Mr. Sapp then joined Accenture and became deeply embedded in the Global M&A practice during the late 1990s and early 2000s, where he led both pre-deal and post-merger integration efforts. Since joining Brooks International, Mr. Sapp has had responsibility for delivering significant performance improvement and optimization efforts for railroad, natural chemical and manufacturing companies, among many others.

Mr. Sapp has lived and worked in Europe and Asia, working with management teams to deliver sustained performance improvement, ensure consensus on strategy and direction, and develop and translate goals to deliver bottom-line benefits. Mr. Sapp served in the U.S. Navy and holds a Bachelor’s in Business Administration from Eastern Washington University.

Elazar Schwartz is an Engagement Manager at Brooks International with experience leading enterprise-wide transformation, value creation, and performance improvement initiatives across complex operating environments.

Mr. Schwartz combines operating leadership, financial acumen, and transformation expertise to align strategic priorities with organizational capabilities and disciplined execution. He works with leadership teams to strengthen operating performance, advance growth priorities, and translate strategy into measurable business results. His industry experience spans manufacturing, food production, pharmaceuticals, and consumer products, with expertise extending across global supply chain operations.

Mr. Schwartz has led initiatives that align manufacturing strategy, supply chain expansion, commercial growth, and digital transformation with enterprise value creation. His leadership has strengthened operating performance during periods of significant growth, expanded international supply chain capabilities, and advanced integrated planning and technology systems that sharpen executive decision-making and accelerate execution. Mr. Schwartz holds a Master of Business Administration, with High Distinction, and a Bachelor of Science in Economics-Finance, cum laude, from Bentley University. He also holds a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt from the University of Toronto.

Vaidya Venugopal is an accomplished executive with more than 20 years of global experience driving enterprise-wide operational and cultural transformations that unlock sustainable growth and EBITDA improvement.

A trusted advisor to CEOs, private equity investors and operating executives alike, he partners with leadership teams to design and implement high-performance operating systems, strengthen supply chains, and institutionalize performance governance across manufacturing, aerospace, industrial, and renewable-energy sectors.

Recognized for translating complex operational challenges into actionable value-creation programs, Mr. Venugopal brings a disciplined yet collaborative approach that engages people, simplifies processes, and delivers measurable, lasting results, bridging strategy and execution while building accountability and ownership at every level of the organization.

Mr. Venugopal holds a Master of Business Administration from Santa Clara University, a Master’s in Electrical Engineering from The University of Memphis, and a Bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering from Annamalai University.