Gary Jacobs spent his early career (1986-1994) working to become CFO and CIO at mid-size private equity owned companies. During this time, Gary honed his skills in corporate finance, accounting and operations; as well as implementing and using technology to automate transaction processing, reporting, and decision making; primarily with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Enterprise Data Warehousing (EDW), Business Intelligence (BI) and Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Reporting/Dashboard tools, which were the leading technologies at the time.
In 1994, Gary leveraged his proficiency at designing and implementing a wide range of technologies to transition his career to consulting, eventually becoming an ERP Systems and Process Re-engineering Practice Leader at Coopers & Lybrand Consulting. In early 1998, upon the merger of Pricewaterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand, Gary facilitated the consolidation of each firm’s ERP Systems and Process Re-engineering practices, and led the NY Metro Regional ERP Systems Practice at the newly formed PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).
Later in 1998, amidst the fervor over Y2K and the Dot Com boom, the Management Consulting industry turned its attention to Technology Consulting as an engine for growth. At the “Big-4” consulting firms (including PwC), this rapid growth collided with conflict-of-interest constraints, whereby the auditors at the firms could not sell their firm’s technology consulting services to their audit clients. In response to these conflict-of-interest constraints, many of the technology consulting leaders at the Big-4 firms left the firms to form specialized technology consulting firms. This was the impetus for the establishment of Jacobs Enterprise Management Consulting (jemcon).
From 1998 to 2012 jemcon established long-term relationships with several notable clients where jemcon led a wide variety of technology-enabled improvement programs and M&A transactions (see Success Stories).
In 2012, leveraging his proficiency at leading technology-enabled performance improvements in support of M&A transactions and other strategic imperatives, Gary assumed a leadership role at Alvarez & Marsal (A&M) to help grow A&M’s Private Equity Performance Improvement (PEPI) practice.
In 2019, after a successful stint at A&M, Gary joined FTI Consulting as Managing Director, Business & Technology Transformations & Transactions. Today, Gary continues to hone his expertise - and provides ever-increasing value to his clients - while maintaining his curiosity, passion and ambition for leveraging technology to improve business performance. Gary prefers, and excels at, working hands-on with sponsors and leadership teams, applying lessons learned over a varied career, and helping others achieve the success they are seeking.
Personally, Gary is married and has three adult daughters. He enjoys traveling, skiing, bicycling, hiking, motocycling, boating, live music, cooking, woodworking, reading and video gaming.