Overview

Since 1960, Brooks International has specialized in delivering the design, acceleration and execution of our clients’ strategic imperatives that instill a culture of continuous improvement and achieve the required financial objectives. Because each client is unique, Brooks International works diligently to understand the people, processes, measurements and organizational culture in place. Applying more than a half-century of management leadership with precise and thorough in-depth analysis and comprehensive implementation, we create custom-tailored transformations – with measurable and sustainable step-change results.


Mission

Our mission is to deliver significantly enhanced profits and predictable business performance to our CEO clients.

We do so by creating and delivering Execution Excellence, linking financial and operational models, while dramatically enhancing all execution methods, competencies and capabilities. We deliver substantial and sustainable organizational, operational and financial improvements … specializing in execution performance capability … working across all industries. Insight. Execution. Results.


Vision

To be the sustaining partner of choice in all client relationships


Core Values

  • Integrity above all
  • Client-centric
  • All commitments achieved sustainably
  • Business results required
  • Respected, engaged and fulfilled employees

Principles

Brooks International has always leaned upon our principles to guide us. As clients can attest, these principles resonate deeply and help us in steering transformation initiatives for our clients. As we continue to move forward in the 21st century, our principles keep us tethered to traditional business values.

GOALS & EXPECTATIONS

Both must be clearly communicated and understood, company-wide.

MOTIVATION

Incentives and recognition are tied to performance and behavior.

CONSTRUCTIVE MANAGEMENT

Managers proactively address and foster performance success.

IMPROVEMENT

Sustainable, systematic improvement is the goal at every level.

Our principles provide a roadmap for all endeavors. They influence our search for meaningful insights, our approach to transformational processes and the results of our work.


History

Brooks International was founded in 1960, in New Jersey, by two General Electric executives with a wealth of business performance success. The early focus on direct business outcomes continues to differentiate us in the marketplace today. Before the end of the ’60s, the first international assignment led to a European office, and Brooks International was born.

During the 1980s, our European presence expanded to three offices and a new management group purchased Brooks International from the founder. In the 1990s, our company developed an integrated approach that balances process with organizational culture and behavioral change. Our current leadership bought the company back from the management group and led Brooks International into the new millennium.

Today, our Tactical Planning Methodology refines the Brooks International process including an in-depth assessment, complete implementation and execution of our executive clients’ strategic imperatives. Corresponding with our growth in a new world economy, Brooks International maintains five locations in the United States, Europe, Canada and Asia.


Delivering Sustainable Value

Since our inception in 1960, Brooks International has specialized in helping corporate executives at industry-leading organizations in diverse industries around the world design and implement their strategic imperatives and instill a culture of continuous performance improvement.

We partner with our clients and are committed to their missions of achieving their strategic imperatives and reaching their desired future state together. We deliver tangible, sustainable, measurable value, including improved earnings, customer/market satisfaction, increased market share and improved bottom-line financial returns. Brooks International professionals are problem-solvers. Our employees are committed to ensuring exceptional quality in every detail. Our services and methods specifically address people, processes and technology utilization issues faced by most organizations.

Execution is a vital part of every initiative and our day-to-day operations. Simply stated, we deliver Execution Excellence. Our clients enthusiastically recommend Brooks International for that reason.

At the end of the day, we make a promise and keep it.

Lui Damasceno
CEO, Brooks International


7 Core Attributes

Brooks International’s seven core attributes set us apart and make us unique in the marketplace:

  1. We are value-driven. We’re highly mission- and action-biased, linking business outcomes to operational tactics with the implementation of transformational step changes.
  2. We start with the answer (i.e., the executive’s strategic imperative) and certify true performance potential and specific areas that will produce improved performance; then generate a specific tactical plan of execution and deliver the required outcome.
  3. We focus on delivering real measurable value, such as profitability, earnings, revenue and cash, with reconciliation of our benefits directly to the financial statement. Our impact will accrue within weeks and months versus months and years.
  4. Our comprehensive E-C-M (Expectations – Capabilities – Motivators) methodology blends behavioral and tactical considerations, which accelerate and sustain our clients’ targeted results.
  5. We are privately held and client-centric.
  6. Our employees are hand-picked, Brooks-certified, professional leaders. They specialize in the implementation of organizational and operational upgrades and results delivery.
  7. We are supported by a blue-chip International Advisory Board that supports shaping our industry perspectives and client-solution architecture.

Execution is the great unaddressed issue in the business world today. Its absence is the single biggest obstacle to success and the cause of most of the disappointments that are mistakenly attributed to other causes. — Larry Bossidy, retired CEO and Author


Leadership

To provide a level of insight and leadership appropriate for Fortune 500 chief executives, Brooks International employs our own team of outstanding leaders. Each member of our leadership team owns an extraordinary array of resources, experiences and educational prowess. Working in collaboration with one another, it’s hard to imagine a business challenge capable of exceeding Brooks International’s capacity.


Lui Damasceno
Global Managing Partner
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Leadership Team

Kevin Belovsky
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Paul Caruso
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Susan Schran Houghton
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Venkat Kannan
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Paul Kreis
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Dr. Richard F. LeBlanc
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Nelson Miller
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Aldo Nunez
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Rick Sapp
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Mark Zeffiro
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Morgan Baker
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Lui Damasceno
Global Managing Partner

Lui Damasceno is the Global Managing Partner of Brooks International. He has held that title since 1999. Mr. Damasceno began his career with the firm in 1984, and was both hired and mentored by Robert Lull, an ex-GE executive, who founded the firm in 1960. Mr. Damasceno started as an apprentice consultant, and over the span of his career, he has demonstrated uncommon and superior success at all key functions of the firm. Today’s primary areas of client oversight include engagement architecture and results delivery, business-wide analytics and new account development. In the 1990s, Brooks International was acquired and owned by Navigant Consulting, a $250 million publicly traded consultancy, during which time Mr. Damasceno was immediately promoted to run Navigant’s Value Delivery Practice. In 1999, Mr. Damasceno led a successful effort to once again privatize the Brooks organization. In the running of today’s practice, he personally oversees each and every commitment made to the firm’s clients.

Beyond his more than 30 years of management consulting and business leadership experience, Mr. Damasceno’s specific consulting areas of expertise include supply chain, inventory management and logistics, sales force effectiveness, greenfield launch and overall asset utilization and profitability performance. He is highly skilled in both the analytical and implementation aspects of the consulting field. He possesses a long-standing track record of success with clients in both North America and Europe. Throughout his career, Mr. Damasceno has led engagements that have generated dramatic improvements across many industries, including pharmaceutical, chemical, transportation, energy, heavy and light manufacturing, aerospace, financial services and insurance, healthcare and distribution, to name a few. Mr. Damasceno has designed and implemented numerous engagements that have required advanced change-management expertise coupled with deep tactical knowledge of the clients’ operations. Many of the more complex initiatives were characterized as post-merger/acquisition efforts and every case required significant enhancement in business performance. All engagements have included major behavioral shifts culminating in greatly enhanced client cultures, as well as dramatic improvements in bottom-line profit performance.

Mr. Damasceno resides in beautiful South Florida with his wife and six children. He enjoys spending time with his family and his hobbies are boating, golfing and reading.

Kevin Belovsky
Senior Managing Partner Delivery

Kevin Belovsky is a Senior Managing Partner Delivery at Brooks International and has been with the firm since 2005. Prior to his current role, he held positions as a Principle and Managing Analyst at Brooks International. Mr. Belovsky started his business career in the automotive industry, growing up in a family that owned and operated a large metropolitan Chevrolet automobile dealership.

In the late 1980s, Mr. Belovsky started in the professional services industry with the firm A.T. Hudson and Company, as a consultant. Over his several years with the firm, he held positions as Project Manager, Director of Operations and Vice President of Analysis and Operations.

In over 35 years, Mr. Belovsky has managed and led global engagements and assessments in multiple industries and countries. His experience and expertise have successfully delivered significant financial and operational performance improvements in highly complex environments. His experience includes large-scale program management, asset management and utilization optimization, green field and brown field analysis and development, analysis of strategic logistics, supply chain and vertical integration, sales/revenue enhancement, customer service and quality improvement, M&A integration, performance improvement, business process design, organizational change management and executive/leadership development. His experience also includes working with organizations in manufacturing, transportation, financial services, health care, insurance, consumer goods, information technology, aerospace, energy/utilities, oil/gas, non-profit, telecommunications, retailing field services and many others.

As a Senior Managing Partner Delivery, Mr. Belovsky serves a key role by working closely with Managing Partners to ensure consistency of Assessment and Engagement delivery to the Brooks International standards and thereby providing superior client satisfaction and success.

Mr. Belovsky lives in the Chicago area with his wife of over 30 years. He has a daughter that is a Doctor of Physical Therapy and a son currently completing his PhD at Vanderbilt University. When not working closely with his clients, Mr. Belovsky enjoys spending time with his family, cooking, sports, and music.

Paul Caruso
Advisor

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.

Susan Schran Houghton
Director of Organizational Development

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.

Venkat Kannan

A graduate of GE’s prestigious Corporate Audit Staff program, Mr. Kannan has 14+ years of diverse experience across Supply Chain, Finance, IT & Analytics, and across multiple GE industries (Transportation, Power Generation, Appliances, Digital, Healthcare and Aviation). Mr. Kannan is a strategic, process-minded and result oriented leader with a proven track record of delivering exceptional team performance in challenging situations. He has led projects across diverse areas, ranging from driving working capital improvements, optimizing factory footprint to reduce cost, identifying, and executing product and variable cost-out opportunities, enabling post-merger day-1 readiness, and integrating supply chain processes post-merger for his clients.

A few of Mr. Kannan’s past experiences and accomplishments include driving $300 million of working capital improvement for a large multi-national locomotives manufacturing company, achieved a $25 million customs duty reduction for a North American wind-turbine manufacturing facility and optimized the factory footprint for a North American, multi-national company in the power generation industry.

Mr. Kannan has a Master of Business Administration (Finance and Strategy) from the Indian Institute of Management Indore (Madhya Pradesh, India) and a Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science and Engineering from Pondicherry University (India).

Paul Kreis
Organizational Development Executive

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
Managing Partner

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
Managing Partner

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.

Aldo Nunez
Managing Partner

Aldo Nunez is a Managing Partner with Brooks International. Mr. Nunez has been with Brooks International for over a decade and holds over 30 years’ experience in professional services, serving CEOs and large organizations both in North America and across the globe. Mr. Nunez has addressed the critical strategic imperatives of CEOs on a variety of subjects including corporate and manufacturing strategy, rapid turnarounds, full scale reengineering, enterprise-level organizational restructuring, classical process, systems and organizational transformations, digital transformation and ERP implementations, commercialization and  international financing for global market entry. He has extensive international experience in manufacturing, oil & gas, financial services, insurance, health care and mining.

Prior to Mr. Nunez’s time at Brooks International, he held executive roles at both Ernst & Young and Deloitte. Prior to consulting, Mr. Nunez held senior P&L positions in the aerospace & defense industry including Business Unit and Program Office Head for McDonnell Douglas Missile Systems Company and Unit Chief for the Engineering Technology Division of McDonnell Douglas Aircraft. Mr. Nunez holds a B.S. in Engineering from Iowa State University and an MBA in Finance from the University of Central Florida. He resides between Toronto and East Coastal Florida with his wife. He enjoys the company of his six children and 12 grandchildren (and counting.)

Rick Sapp
Director of Delivery Quality

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.

Mark Zeffiro
Managing Partner

Mark Zeffiro is a Managing Partner at Brooks International. Mr. Zeffiro has more than 30 years in global business operations and finance in varied end markets including transportation, heavy industrial, white goods, healthcare, branded and packaged goods, automotive and financial capital businesses. Mr. Zeffiro’s most recent role took Horizon Global Corporate to the public markets as CEO building the entire governance, operating and business culture for a $1B company. Prior to that Mr. Zeffiro was EVP and CFO for TriMas Corporation – a diversified industrial business in which he led all financial operations, capital structuring and all M&A activities.  Mr. Zeffiro began his career at General Electric Company, spending 15 years across the corporate structure, Appliances, and Medical systems businesses, culminating in the position of Chief Financial Officer of a $3B business of GE Medical Systems Group. Mr. Zeffiro developed his leadership style and skills while an executive at General Electric and Black & Decker.

Mr. Zeffiro has deep board membership experience guiding businesses to their strategic requirements and currently is engaged with Atkore among several other private companies. Included in his career, he has had private equity partnership experience bringing companies to market and delivering business performance optimization. Mr. Zeffiro is a fact-based, process-oriented decision maker, willing to take on and deliver the biggest challenges. Mr. Zeffiro has been recognized for his passionate, pragmatic approach to enterprise development through culture and people transformation.

Mr. Zeffiro has an Associate of Science in Management and a Bachelor of Science in Quantitative Analysis from Bentley University in Waltham, MA. He serves as a Board and Executive Committee Member and Audit Committee Chair at Atkore, a Board Member and served as Finance Committee Chair at the Detroit Institute of the Arts and a Board Member and Academic Committee Member at Walsh College.

Morgan Baker
Vice President of Operations

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.

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