JACK KOOLEN

Managing Director,Monitor Group,

Johannesburg

Jack is the Managing Director in Monitor Group's Johannesburg office.
Since joining Monitor, Jack has been a project director in the areas of telecommunications, logistics, mining, retail and financial services in the private sector, as well as a key thinker and advisor on country competitiveness and tourism. In addition, he has directed projects focused on reducing crime in South Africa, and has played an advisory role in the (old) Reconstruction and Development Office of the President of the Republic of South Africa. His current work includes strategy assignments in the areas of healthcare, tourism and HIV/AIDS. He advises a range of projects teams in India, the Middle East, Europe and Africa.
Jack has focused on the area of regional and country competitiveness over the past few years, and has directed various projects, both within and beyond South Africa, in the area.
Examples of some of his recent projects, which Jack has directed, include working with:
· The Ministry of Trade & Industry on improving South Africa's competitiveness
· The Ministry of Trade & Industry on the government's cluster programme
· The Wheat, Milling and Baking Cluster to create the conditions for action through a cluster process
· The prime minister of Lebanon, where Jack led a large national competitiveness study aimed at developing an economic reconstruction plan for Lebanon.
· The City of Johannesburg where Monitor assisted the new Unicity in the development of its long-term strategy, including the development of a strategic decision-making framework to support the city's management to optimise long-term allocative decision-making towards economic growth and upgrading of the quality of life of its residents
· The City of Durban where Monitor advised the newly formed single city authority on the development of an outcomes-based visioning process and on the application of the country competitiveness frameworks for use in enhancing city competitiveness
· South African Tourism on the development of an international national tourism marketing strategy (ongoing)
· The government of Botswana, together with ACHAP (the African Comprehensive HIV/AIDS Partnership, formed by the government, the Merck Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) on strategies to prevent HIV transmission

Prior to joining Monitor, Jack worked at McKinsey & Company in the Netherlands where he developed pan-European strategies in the pharmaceutical industry, worked in a turnaround strategy project for inter-post office networks, developed strategies in various agricultural sectors and worked on merger projects.

His career prior to this included several years as an independent strategy consultant in South Africa, and Arthur Young & Company, as well as working in the capital markets for Barclays, as well as project management at IBM, both in South Africa and the U.K.

Jack is an independent, non-executive director on the Board of Edgars Consolidated Stores (Edcon) since 2001, is a founding member of CityYear South Africa, and serves on the Advisory Board of the CIDA University in Johannesburg.

Jack is originally a Dutch citizen and holds a BComm degree from the Hogere Economische School in Groningen, Netherlands, as well as an MBA from Wits. He has taught Strategic Management from 1994-1999 at the part-time MBA program offered at the Graduate School for Business Administration of the University of the Witwatersrand. Since 2000, he teaches a competitive strategy module for the University of Pretoria business school (GIBS) MBA programme in Johannesburg.