Bio

David Brown is a Managing Director with Alvarez & Marsal’s Consumer and Retail Group in San Francisco. He leads the Consumer and Retail Group for North America. Mr. Brown brings over 25 years of experience in the retail, consumer goods and consumer facing industries, focused on organizational transformation, profit optimization, operating model design, and portfolio and capital structure alignment strategies. Mr. Brown’s experience includes leading the global corporate transformation of a luxury personal care company across all elements of growth, including branding, pricing, digital and promotions. He also led the transformation of the brand’s operating model resulting in an operating margin improvement from -4 to 12 percent while reigniting top line growth. Previously, Mr. Brown led a global transformation for a $45 billion retailer, focused on growth initiatives including consumer insights, store experience, merchandising and digital, as well as cost reduction focusing on global shared services and procurement optimization to enable new revenue growth and over $5 billion in cost savings. Mr. Brown has also led an organizational redesign for a $30 billion grocer that focused on speed and agility through organization and process changes; an organizational redesign for a $5 billion retailer that eliminated $750 million in costs and significantly reduced cycle times to support a planned 20 percent revenue growth; a corporate transformation for a Fortune 100 consumer packaged goods (CPG) company aimed at reducing redundant activities between corporate and the business groups, which resulted in a savings of excess of $450 million; a merger integration for a large CPG manufacturer that resulted in $800+ million in benefits; as well as a major function redesign and partnering project for a retail food company, reducing cost by $125 million and improving service levels across all functions. In addition to his client activities, Mr. Brown is an accomplished practice builder, passionate people leader and recognized thought leader, with multiple appearances on network television as an industry expert and multiple published articles in leading periodicals. Prior to joining A&M, Mr. Brown served in senior leadership roles at McKinsey & Company and A.T. Kearney as well as served as a successful software entrepreneur. Mr. Brown earned a bachelor’s degree in econometrics and classical studies and an MBA (corporate strategy and finance) from the University of Michigan.