Founder & CEO, LeadFirst Learning Systems, LLC

Mr. McDonough is founder and Chief Executive Officer of LeadFirst Learning Systems, LLC. His career spans 30+ years and includes a diversity of experience in senior corporate positions and successful business start-up and scale-up ventures in the electronic information, leadership development, and business strategy consulting space. He has experience in both competitive business-to-business and business-to-consumer markets with senior executives for corporations including Bank of America, Merck, ExxonMobil, American Express, JPMorganChase, and New England Sports Network (NESN). He has demonstrated expertise forming and leading organizations, allocating enterprise resources, developing customer centric governance teams and cultures, maximizing the value of large, complex customer portfolios, all to create shareholder value. He also facilitates leadership development programs for experienced executives as well as cultural interventions for client companies in a variety of industries. Gerry has been co-founder, or on the founding management teams, of four companies, three of which were acquired by larger corporations. Prior to founding LeadFirst, Gerry was Senior Vice President of Customer Value Analytics for Bank of America. Earlier in his career, he was founder and managing principal of Booth Morgan Consulting, a customer value strategy consulting firm. Before that, Gerry held senior positions with two successful leadership development and culture change companies. He was Vice President of the Business Intelligence Division for The Atlanta Consulting Group and Mid-Atlantic Regional Director of Strategic Services for Zenger-Miller, Inc. An accomplished business strategist, speaker, facilitator and executive coach, Gerry has established long-term relationships with FORTUNE 250 executives, has had budget oversight responsibility to $60 million, and has enjoyed award-winning recognition for turnaround successes and for start-up profitability from USA Today and Business Week. He has been published in refereed business journals and is a guest lecturer at Bentley College. Trained in economics and finance at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., Gerry has authored several papers on corporate governance, leadership, managing intangible assets (customer portfolios and organizational culture) to maximize shareholder value, customer value profiling, and customer-profit causal relationships. From 2009 to 2012, Gerry was Vice President of the Board of Directors of SwimMAC Carolina, an 850-athlete USA Swimming “Center of Excellence” based in Charlotte, NC. SwimMAC placed three elite swimmers on the USA Olympic Team that competed in Beijing, and five athletes and an assistant coach on the 2012 London Olympic team. During these Olympiads, SwimMAC athletes won multiple gold, silver and bronze medals. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of Rhor McHenry Distilling Company, a Pennsylvania-based company operating since 1812.