Leadership Team
Christopher Rice (ChrisR@bwinc.com)
President and CEO
Recognized in each of the last two years as a "Top 100" thought leader by Leadership Excellence, Chris's expertise is regularly featured in business and human capital media, including Business Week, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Management Update, Newsday, Training Magazine, Talent Management, and HR Magazine. His contributions include a chapter on the connection between organizational culture and employee engagement in the reference Building High-Performance People and Organizations.
Chris works with senior-level clients, providing executive coaching and consulting on culture, leadership, strategic planning, employee engagement, and customer satisfaction. Recent clients include Johnson & Johnson, Toyota, Euro RSCG Life, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
Founded in 1973, BlessingWhite became employee-owned in 2001 after Chris led a buy-out to purchase the firm from Wolters Kluwer N.V., the Dutch publishing company.
Before joining BlessingWhite, Chris held senior executive positions at Drake Beam Morin, The Gallup Organization, and AchieveGlobal. He has undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Pennsylvania.
Chris is Chairman of our Board of Directors, and he is a member of the Executive Team.
Tom Barry (TomBarry@bweurope.com)
Managing Director, UK
Executive Team Member
Tom established BlessingWhite's UK office during his first tenure with us and grew the business from a small arm of a US company to a substantial division in its own right. He returned in 2005 as Managing Director to lead our current staff in developing and implementing solutions in Europe.
Clients at ABN AMRO, Amlin PLC and TNS value Tom's breadth of business and management experience and the early and practical results that this brings. He has worked in a leadership capacity with three coaching, leadership and career change businesses and most recently as Business Development Director with outsourcing specialists Williams Lea. Tom went to Oriel College, Oxford.
Tom is a member of the Executive Team.
Matthew Varava (MattV@bwinc.com)
Chief Operating Officer / Chief Financial Officer
Executive Team Member
Matt is responsible for BlessingWhite's corporate finance function and growing team of technologists for the past 11 years. He played a key role in our 2001 employee buyout and sits on our Board of Directors. Matt's commitment to client and shareholder value enables us to respond quickly to client requests with cost-effective, cutting-edge solutions.
Matt also lends his consulting expertise, by heading up our Employee Engagement practice. He has been actively involved in client implementations involving Employee Engagement measurement and Balanced Scorecard initiatives.
He has worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers and was the Controller/CFO at Hough Petroleum Corporation. He holds undergraduate degrees from University of Pennsylvania and Rowan University, and an MBA Finance from Philadelphia University.
Matt is a member of the Executive Team.
Chris Brunone (ChrisB@bwinc.com)
Senior Vice President, Eastern Region
Chris leads our operations in the Northeast and has a passion for helping sales leaders and service organizations differentiate their brands. His consulting experience includes leadership effectiveness, employee engagement and career development solutions. Clients at Johnson & Johnson, KPMG, Novartis, Foot Locker, TYCO and Weichert Relocation value Chris's commitment to their financial and market success.
Before joining BlessingWhite Chris served as an Executive Director at The Ken Blanchard Companies for nine years and Vice President of Sales with Golle and Holmes Custom Education for twelve years. He holds a BS and MBA in Finance/Economics from Seton Hall University.
Fraser Marlow (FraserM@bwinc.com)
Vice President, Marketing & Asia-Pacific
Fraser heads the company's worldwide Marketing capabilities, research function and materials production. He also oversees activities in Asia Pacific.
Fraser has held global marketing and product management roles for the last 11 years, working out of the UK, Sweden, Canada and the USA. Prior to joining BlessingWhite in 2007 Fraser was Head of E-commerce and Director of Web Marketing at GE Healthcare.
Fraser works with clients on employee engagement, effective internal communication strategies and optimizing managerial buy-in for large-scale implementations.
He holds a Business degree from the University of Bradford in the UK and is a member of the British Chartered Institute of Marketing.