Bio

Josh Jacobs is a Managing Director with Alvarez & Marsal Consumer Retail Group in Chicago. Mr. Jacobs brings nearly 20 years of technology experience, focusing on merger integration, carve-outs and interim management. He specializes in optimizing technology and organizations to align with overall business strategy. Mr. Jacobs’ notable engagements at A&M include leading a team to restructure and operationalize the multichannel organization for a Fortune Top 50 retailer that improved demand management, portfolio governance, executive reporting and decision making; created more structured real-time financial data; and built resource capacity models to advise C-suite. After the build phase, his team transitioned the work offshore. Mr. Jacobs was the global delivery lead for a major US retailer’s global multi-channel strategy and implementation, leading overall design and delivery of 40+ enterprise applications, the re-platform of a new e-commerce application, web content management platform, and datacenter build out. He led teams in Canada, US, the U.K. and India, resulting in the successful launch of the platform for the Canadian and U.K. businesses. Mr. Jacobs led a technology assessment for a top retail wholesaler, focusing on point-of-sale and ERP dependencies and opportunities for improvement and implementing a plan for multiple integration improvements and overall technology optimization. Previously, Mr. Jacobs led an IT and multi-channel assessment of the largest US outdoor retailer that focused on optimizing and aligning applications, infrastructure, data and organization and yielded 30+ actionable recommendations. He served as the interim CIO for a retail insurance agency, focusing on the stabilization and improvement of a new B2B multi-channel portal and addressing business process optimization, application consolidation, cost optimization, vendor management and developing a transformational organizational model. Prior to joining A&M, Mr. Jacobs was the North American E-commerce and Digital Marketing Lead for Avanade (joint venture between Accenture and Microsoft). He was responsible for online, e-commerce and digital marketing strategy, roadmap and delivery, and was global industry leader for Avanade. Mr. Jacobs earned a bachelor’s degree in computer information systems from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. He sits on the President’s Council for the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and the Museum’s Digital Strategy Board.