Rick Chavez is a New York based Partner at Oliver Wyman. Rick co-leads CustomerFirst, Oliver Wyman’s offerings for positioning existing businesses and building new ones that thrive in a context of deep and rapid change.

Rick is an innovator with two decades’ experience at the forefront of the digital revolution. He has significant expertise applying proven methods for “dealing with disruption” — pressure-tested in the tech sector — to the challenges of growth and reinvention for executives in banking, insurance, and life sciences. His experience spans a wide range of organizations — from pure startup ventures through to $80 billion global corporations — as senior executive, adviser, and board member. He has deep expertise and relationships across ecosystem of innovation in leading hubs having lived and worked in Boston, Austin, San Francisco, and Seattle.

Some of his current clients are potential disruptors grappling with rapid growth; others are incumbents mounting their own defensive, transformational initiatives to ward off threats from disruptors. During the last 25 years he has guided growth and innovation strategies and programs at companies that include Adobe, American Express, D&B, Fox Home Entertainment, Kinko’s (now part of FedEx), Microsoft, the University of Michigan, Walmart, and Yahoo! He collaborates with Geoffrey Moore and his work has been the basis of case studies in Geoffrey’s most recent books on innovation, Escape Velocity and Zone to Win: Organizing to Compete in an Age of Disruption.

Rick’s thought leadership extends to his extensive writing portfolio at Oliver Wyman, including principal contributions to the State of Financial Services reports in 2017, 2018, and 2020. Rick is also a frequent keynote speaker at a wide range of prominent events, including AdWeek, Ad:Tech, ARF Re:Think, ProXXima, and Cannes Lions. Notable presentations include his TedX talk, Thriving in Turbulence, and InsureTech keynote, Turning the Risk Lens Inward: Coming to Terms with Disruption Risk.

Rick’s most recent operating role was with Microsoft, where he served as Chief Solutions Officer for Microsoft Advertising and Consumer Monetization, General Manager of Marketing Solutions, and founder of Microsoft’s Solution Studio415. He built and led an interdiscipline team of designers, analysts, consumer researchers, and software wizards to co-innovate marketing solutions with global corporations, drawing from Microsoft’s portfolio of consumer, internet, and enterprise assets. He worked with senior leadership and the CEO on growth initiatives at the intersection of cloud computing, sophisticated analytics, and business model innovation.

Prior to Microsoft, Rick was a managing director with TCG Advisors, a boutique strategy and transformation firm based in Silicon Valley and founded by Geoffrey Moore. He served as interim GM with Adobe where he helped catalyze Adobe’s move into the Customer Experience Management category; Adobe was quickly acknowledged as the market leader and used CEM as the springboard to significant revenue growth and increased market value. He served as interim executive for LOBBY7 (CEO) and Vice President, Corporate Development for Brix Networks (Vice President, Corporate Development). LOBBY7 was acquired by Nuance (NASDAQ: NUAN) and Brix was acquired by EXFO Corporation (NASDAQ: EXFO). He cofounded Viant Corporation where he worked on all aspects of getting the company and its brand established as a leader in the digital services sector, from startup through launch and successful IPO. Rick launched the first digital strategy offering in the management consulting sector while with CSC Index; he served on the management team of Cambridge Technology Partners; and he was President of Marble Associates, an early internet software pioneer.