Andy is an experienced consultant; a former university professor, and has worked in risk management for large financial service firms.
He has consulted for a wide range of industries on topics that include finance, accounting, risk management, information, web design & development, and marketing (and graphics).
His rare combination–of academic background and professional experiences across multiple fields–allows him to rapidly develop innovative and creative solutions for clients, particularly for organizational problems that span across traditional functional areas.
His PhD is from Carnegie Mellon University–from the Graduate School of Industrial Administration, which now the Tepper School, and he has an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh.
As a professor, Andy researched information, incentive, corporate finance, and quality areas, and has won research awards from national organizations in both accounting and finance.
He has won teaching awards from both weekend Executive and evening Professional MBAs. His teaching at both Washington University and the University of Minnesota focused on:
- Decision Making and Preferences;
- Strategic Cost Analysis (the design of cost and information systems);
- Control & Incentives, including transfer pricing, budgeting, and performance measurement; and their linkage to strategy.
He is particularly interested in the intersection of these areas: the selection of goal-maximizing strategies and their complementary structures, incentive mechanisms, and information systems. To him, almost everything within a business or organization is a managerial control problem, because control problems involve determining the means to reach the ends:
- Determine what you want;
- Determine ways to get it and what’s stopping you from doing so;
- Determine ways to overcome that (or those) obstacle(s);
- Analyze the obvious (and not-so-obvious) costs and benefits of removing the obstacles; and
- Choose the best ways (the value-maximizing or cost-effective strategy and tactics) to get what you want.
He notes that when organizations implement isolated—rather than integrated—practices and systems as “solutions” to their problems, there are often severe and negative “unintended” consequences, which he hates with a passion.
In addition to consulting and academic experience, Andy has extensive corporate risk management experience spanning both market and credit risk. Within firms, he often served as an internal consultant to other departments and to external customers facing challenging problems.
He has developed:
- Sophisticated valuation and risk models, including many Monte Carlo simulations;
- Traditional Financial projection software for mergers and acquisitions; and
- Enterprise-wide hypothetical scenarios and stress tests for varied portfolios.
He likes to think that he is similar to his Basenjis–as an “all-round” hound. Andy can be reached at 412.779.9028 or via our contact form.
