Jerry Wolfe joins AlixPartners as Senior Advisor in Digital practice
Jerry Wolfe, the founder of US-based food experience platform Vivanda and a former consulting partner at EY, has joined global consultancy AlixPartners as a Senior Advisor in the firm’s growing Digital practice.
The food-industry expert brings more than 30 years of (senior) leadership experience to AlixPartners and will work closely with the firm’s retail and consumer goods teams as well as its digital team. Founded in 1981, AlixPartners is a global consulting firm with over 25 offices across the globe that supports clients with a range of management consulting and financial advisory services. The firm is headquartered in New York and is backed by a consortium of private equity groups and Jay Alix, the firm’s founder.
Wolfe is since 2014 the chief executive officer and founder of Vivanda, a food-industry technology business dedicated to bringing the consumer, manufacturers and retailers closer together using data analytics. Using people’s taste preferences and information from 125 years of food science, Vivanda’s FlavorPrint methodology allows consumers to enjoy personalised food experiences, contextualized to every moment, every day. The growth and value added of Vivanda on the industry has incited both retail and technology press to proclaim Wolfe a ‘disruptor’ in the field – he as well is a regular commentator on the digital disruption driving growth throughout the retail and consumer-products sectors.
Prior to establishing Vivanda, Wolfe was McCormick & Company’s first CIO and held the position for fourteen years. In this role, he led several business transformation initiatives at the Fortune 1000 food manufacturer to enable cross-functional capabilities and growth, including a major supply chain management and IT transformation. In his latest role at McCormick, which produces spices, herbs, and flavourings for retail, commercial, and industrial markets, Wolfe refocused McCormick’s technology strategy on consumer-facing connected commerce initiatives, which included the launch of an incubated tech platform innovation that yielded FlavorPrint after a spin out.
Earlier in his career, Wolfe was a Partner in the management consulting practice at Big Four firm EY, with a focus on supply chain, and held a range of positions in applications development, consulting and business development at Manugistics (acquired by JDA Software Group in 2006).
Commenting on the addition, Simon Freakley, Chief Executive Officer at AlixPartners, said: “Our clients are increasingly asking us to work alongside them as they strive to practically apply digital skills to transform existing, well-established business processes. Jerry brings a terrific combination of industry expertise and technological vision to the AlixPartners team, giving us an extra dimension to the support we can provide globally to the retail and consumer-goods sectors.”
Earlier this year AlixPartners added several senior consultants in Europe, including Andreas Vogt (joined from Deloitte; focus on Healthcare & Life Sciences), Roman Friedrich (joined from Strategy&; focus on Technology, Media and Telecommunication) and former Roland Berger heavyweight Bernd Brunke.
