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In The News

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

BRIDGE AVENUE PARTNERS LAUNCHES EXECUTIVE ADVISORY FIRM
Focus on ‘Bottom-up insight, top-down execution’

Chicago, Illinois—June 24, 2003—Bridge Avenue Partners, a global executive advisory firm, today announced its services for assisting organizations to connect their leadership and culture with strategy. Bridge Avenue Partners represents a new breed in professional services, combining the best of the major global consulting firms, executive search firms and human resources consultancies to help executive teams maximize their performance.

The firm serves leading global corporations, mid-market companies, start-ups and non-profit organizations through a combination of experience, innovation and integrity. Bridge Avenue Partners is headquartered in Chicago, with offices in Washington, DC and Denver. Based on a favorable early response from the market, the firm plans to open offices in London, Beijing, San Francisco and several other cities over the next 12-18 months.

“We believe the timing is right to launch a firm that focuses exclusively on helping top executives align their leadership, culture and strategy,” said Brian Winne, one of the founders of Bridge Avenue Partners. “With the pervasive concerns about corporate governance and ethics, and the challenges leaders face in growing business in a slow global economy, effective leadership is more essential now than ever. Bridge Avenue Partners fills a gap in the market by generating breakthrough ideas about leadership effectiveness and helping our clients apply them. The ultimate measure of our success is the ability of our clients to execute their strategy.”

Bridge Avenue Partners offers a range of services to meet the challenges facing today’s executive teams and Boards. The firm’s proprietary BridgePoint^SM diagnostic is used to pinpoint the unique needs of each client. The Bridge Avenue team then works with the client’s senior management to orchestrate and deliver services based on insight from the bottom-up and execution from the top-down. The firm’s services include:

- Interim executive placement
- Executive search
- Executive coaching
- Executive education
- Culture alignment
- Corporate governance best practices
- Management structure redesign.

Another offering is BridgePV, an executive team assessment that assists venture capital and private equity firms in conducting performance verification as part of the due diligence process.
In addition to Brian W. Winne, formerly CEO and COO at Insignis and Senior Partner at Accenture, where he led the Chicago Financial Services Group, Bridge Avenue Partners was founded by Gary L. Wolford, Ph.D. and Richard W. Greene. Gary Wolford was previously an executive at Accenture, Hay Group, Watson Wyatt, Marathon Oil and Citigroup. Richard Greene was formerly a Partner at Deloitte Consulting, where he led the Americas division of the People practice and served on the Americas Management Committee. With assignments in over twenty countries over the course of their careers, the three combine substantial global client experience with the insights gained from their own tenure as executives to bring a powerful set of capabilities to the market.

To infuse the firm with breakthrough ideas, Bridge Avenue Partners has formed a world-class Advisory Council including: John C. Aplin, Ph.D., Managing Director of CID Equity Partners and an experienced corporate Director; Richard Cosier, Ph.D., Dean and Leeds Professor of Management at the Krannert Graduate School of Management at Purdue University; Marshall Goldsmith, Ph.D., widely-recognized as one of the premier executive coaches in the world and editor of numerous best-selling books on leadership; Sharon Karmazin, President of the Karma Foundation and an award-winning Broadway producer; and Michael Maccoby, Ph.D., formerly of the Kennedy School at Harvard University, and a recognized authority on executive leadership.

Bridge Avenue Partners supplements its management team and Advisory Council with a global network of executive Affiliates who are available to serve as interim executives and executive coaches. By bringing all of these capabilities together in one firm, Bridge Avenue Partners is uniquely positioned to help organizations grow their performance through leadership.

State Farm Insurance’s Judith Gleason said, “We chose Bridge Avenue Partners based on the experience of its team and their ability to quickly assess the specific needs and challenges of our business. BridgePoint^SM was able to quickly characterize our organization and the plan we executed through this creative program provided results and raised employee performance levels and enthusiasm almost overnight.”

About Bridge Avenue Partners
Bridge Avenue Partners is a global executive advisory firm focused on assisting organizations to maximize their leadership capability and connect their strategy, leadership and culture. The firm’s offerings, delivered by its senior team and executive Affiliates, are designed to ensure that clients have the executive talent and culture they need to achieve their strategic objectives. The firm is headquartered in Chicago, with offices in Washington, D.C. and Denver. Contact: 980 North Michigan Avenue, Suite 1400, Chicago, Illinois 60611. Telephone: (312) 751.2700. Fax: (312) 652.7744.

Contact
John Jordan
Principor Communications
(202) 595-9008 x63
jjordan@principor.com