Value Staging LLC is a team of seasoned consultants and Alliance Partners in major markets across the country working to structure your company for high valuation, breakthrough growth, M&A and capital acquisition.

Members of the Value Staging team have coached both F500 leadership and small business owners and possess specialized skills and hands-on experience, focusing on a number of key business processes. They have worked in confidence with leadership and companies both small and large, locally and globally. Their formal training and experience ranges from organizational development & strategy to organizational psychology, HR, sales & marketing, communication, coaching and project management, and expertise and certification in process improvement techniques such as CAP, Six Sigma and Lean Manufacturing.

Herb Kessner, Ph.D.
Organizational Effectiveness
Mergers & Acquisitions

Leadership Development

CEO, Value Staging LLC

Herb is a Senior Consultant and coach in Organizational Effectiveness and M&A based in The San Francisco Bay Area. He is CEO of Value Staging LLC, working with companies and their leaders to increase their valuation for sale, growth, capital acquisition and IPO, and CEO of MergerTeam LLC, specialists in organizational change, leadership development and merger integration. He worked for General Electric and their Fortune 500 customers in the U.S., Europe, and Latin America, where he was certified to implement G.E. WorkOut™ and CAP (Change Acceleration Process) for Six Sigma. Herb has developed and implemented change management, organizational effectiveness, leadership and sales training, consulted in due diligence and merger integration, and facilitated the development of key marketing and sales strategies for a global list of clients and business leaders.

Herb’s previous positions include senior consultant with the national Merger & Acquisition practice at Mercer Consulting, change management consultant and organizational psychologist with Drake Beam Morin (DBM), mainframe marketing representative with IBM in New York, and with DLJ, and Lehman Brothers in capital markets and institutional corporate bonds on Wall Street. He served as consultant at GE Crotonville, and as adjunct Professor of Organizational Assessment, Leadership and Change Management at the University of San Francisco and Dominican University of California. 

Herb holds an M.S. in Industrial and Management Engineering from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in Organizational Psychology. His clients include GE, Charles Schwab, Raytheon, Cisco Systems, Kimberly Clark, PG&E, Bank of America, IBM, Kaiser, Levi Strauss, Thomson Reuters/Solucient, ChevronTexaco, ISL, AgriBank and a variety of small and mid-cap companies.

Herb is a Charter Member of the International Positive Psychology Association and an active member of the Association for Corporate Growth, TiE, Rockies Venture Club and the DaVinci Institute.

Joe Blank

Joe is a Principal at Value Staging LLC based in San Francisco, assisting companies in organizational effectiveness and risk management and with developing and launching new products, acquiring target customers, developing strategic partnerships and raising investment capital.

Joe has extensive experience in senior management with a broad background in technology, operations and sales on a domestic and global landscape. He has had revenue and budget responsibility since 1985, along with investor and boardroom experience. Joe brings expertise in project management, cross-functional team building, systems development life cycle, website design and launch, technical management and software quality assurance. He has experience in B2B, and B2C e-Commerce, Six Sigma, Systems Development Life Cycle and Business Process Management. He has a Green Belt in Six Sigma Process Improvement.

Joe’s direct sales background includes team building, business development, commission structuring, packaging, pricing, strategic planning, recruiting, training and budgeting. His has held high level management positions as President and Chief Strategy Officer for Virsalent, Inc., and with GE Insurance, Ernst and Young and First Nationwide Bank. Joe has been a founding member several Internet start-ups and an angel investor for over 10 years. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from the University of San Francisco and Masters of Business Administration from Golden Gate University.

Remembering our mentor and friend Bob Furlong

Pam Porath, Ph.D.

Pam Porath, Ph.D. focuses primarily on organizational culture assessments, cultural integration for mergers and acquisitions, facilitating strategic planning sessions, implementing large-scale change initiatives and leadership development. She has consulted both domestically and internationally in multiple industries with such clients as GE, Chevron, The Stanley Works, 3M, Nordson, University of Virginia Health Systems, Mount Sinai NY Health Care Systems, Hovensa, Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, California State Automobile Association, Hitachi and Toshiba. Her most recent internal consulting role was as Manager of Organizational Effectiveness at The Stanley Works, where she was responsible for developing and executing both leadership development and enterprise-wide organizational change initiatives. At GE and Crotonville from 1991-99, Pam served in leadership and consulting roles involving training and development, leadership development and organizational culture change.

Denise Codgen

Denise Codgen specializes in change management, leadership development, team processes, customer partnering initiatives, business and acquisition integration, process improvement, organizational dynamics and competency modeling. Denise has held HR leadership positions in three GE businesses, both in the field and at division headquarters. In addition, she led process improvements in GE practices areas of succession planning, union awareness, compensation and healthcare cost management. She is also a Six Sigma Green Belt. Denise began her career at a division headquarters of Bristol Myers Squibb, and later established an HR function at an acquisition. Her consulting clients include Babcock and Wilcox, BHP Minerals, Cablevision/WE.tv, the Chilean Air Force, China Eastern Airlines, Florida Power and Light, The Schaeffler Group, Kimberly Clark and all GE businesses including the Corporate Audit Staff and Crotonville. She was an adjunct faculty member at Nova Southeastern University teaching Organization Behavior.

Eric Balinski

Eric is a Managing Director of Goodrich Capital in the New York Metropolitan Area and assists small & mid-cap companies with M&A, and growth capital needs. He is an independent thinker who can analyze complex business challenges and then effectively communicate and work with a variety of audiences, including senior management, line managers, functional departments and customers to help them achieve dramatic breakthrough results. He is also working with private equity firms and their acquisition programs nationwide.

He has worked worldwide to assist senior leaders develop and implement value acceleration and growth initiatives for a variety of business and leadership objectives.   Eric developed his value acceleration approach first inside Dow Chemical Company, while serving as their Global Leader of Business Education.  In 2003, these practices were featured in a book he co-authored, Value-Based Marketing for Bottom-Line Success, published by McGraw Hill and the American Marketing Association.  Prior to joining Goodrich Capital he had his own consulting firm, Synection, which was built upon his 20 years of business experience and leadership roles at GE, Dow Chemical, and AlliedSignal (now Honeywell).   

His past clients have included Glaxco-Wellcome, Wyeth-Ayerst International, Shell Oil, Dow Chemical, Verizon, The IRS, Accenture, Panasonic, Xerox, Deloitte & Touche, Hewlett-Packard and a variety of small to mid-cap companies.

Dan Montgomery

Dan Montgomery, in Boulder, CO, has a background that includes operations, business planning, information technology, leadership development, communication, business process improvement, and human resources. He has worked with clients in a variety of industries, including technology, energy, financial services, construction and health care.  Dan’s previous business management experience was in banking, information technology and health care. Dan’s expertise lies in the areas of strategy and brand, strengthening externalrelationships, leadership and organizational capacity, communication and internal systems and processes. His particular passion involves helping companies develop and execute sustainability and green strategies.

Dan has been a professional management consultant with major firms including Accenture and Ernst & Young, and has been an independent coach and consultant since 2002.  He has an MBA from the University of Colorado, and holds the Certified Management Consultant (CMC) designation. 

Danny Segev

Danny Segev is highly experienced in organizational effectiveness, evaluating acquisition deal targets, performing due diligence, and developing and executing integration plans to achieve the most out of a corporate or equity acquisition strategy. His hands-on implementation approach results in measurable productivity improvement, cost reduction and operational excellence.

He has more than 13 years of experience in training, consulting and delivery of productivity and process improvement programs. He has held senior positions with Invitrogen Corporation where he was Director of Acquisitions and Integration, executing due diligence studies and managing post merger integration programs. He also held the position of Director of Process Improvement, focusing on implementation of Lean Six Sigma principles across the corporation. Prior to Invitrogen, Danny held the position of Director of Life Science / Healthcare practice at Tefen USA, an operational management consulting firm.

Danny holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Industrial Engineering and Management from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, has earned a Six Sigma Black Belt and has trained in Lean Manufacturing.

Steve Sorensen

Steve Sorensen has been instrumental in helping major telecommunications and other business organizations nationwide reach high, sustainable growth velocity and increased profitability. Steve brings his experience and expertise in Customer and Employee Retention and Sales & Client Strategy to Value Staging.

Steve has hired, managed, trained, mentored, coached and led numerous national high-performance sales teams and direct and indirect sales channels. He has successfully launched and managed numerous national marketing initiatives, product introductions and winning and innovative customer-centric engagements for Fortune 500 clients. Steve also has experience in commercial real estate, having negotiated various multi-million dollar lease and sales projects.

Steve’s highlights include:

• Vice-President, Sales, Avaya, Inc. Telecommunications

• Manager of Corporate Accounts, Nextel Communications

• Regional Manager at Latitude Communications, launched new telecommunication products and services for multinational clients

• A top-ten income producer for Grubb & Ellis, a multinational commercial real estate company.

Steve holds a Master’s of Science in Management from Regis University, with an emphasis in Leadership. His master’s thesis focused on the profitably of customer and employee retention and the creation of high performance organizations from the bottom up.

Shara Di Sarro

With more than 20 years of independent, corporate and public-sector experience in human resource management, Shara Di Sarro has produced measurable results in the areas of management training, leadership development, recruitment and selection, benefits administration, labor relations, organizational effectiveness and executive coaching. 

Shara has provided consulting, training and coaching to such clients as GE Energy in the US and Europe, Owens Corning Fiberglass and Avon Products Inc., General Motors, and the New York State Governor’s Office of Employee Relations.  She also worked with the United Nations in Rome, Italy. As an adjunct instructor for Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, NY, Shara designed and presented programs on Conflict Resolution and Negotiation Skills, Implementing Change, Managers as Coaches and Skills for Working Effectively in Teams.  Shara uses her understanding of group dynamics and her facilitation skills to guide teams in work process continuous improvement, with the focus on customer service excellence.

Susanne Wilson

Susanne specializes in change management, acquisition integration, leadership development, program and course development, and process improvement. With a wide scope of Human Resources and development background, she held HR positions in a GE field service business with a focus on leadership development. Susanne has served on the GE Corporate Diversity Council, GE Corporate CAP Advisory Team to revamp the training for their Change Acceleration Process, and a core team to develop two GE Business Acquisition Programs. Clients include a number of GE businesses, GE Energy’s Acquisitions, Hydro Quebec, Peabody Energy, Florida Power & Light, DuPont, Kiewit Mining, and Phelps Dodge.

John DeVito

In his 34-year career with GE, primarily in sales & marketing, John developed, maintained and trained others in strong customer focus. As a manager he drove new corporate initiatives in Customer Productivity and Value Delivery through the Six Sigma process.  He was a guest speaker and consultant at the National Science Foundation and the GE Corporate Training Center in Crotonville NY, delivering the Change Acceleration Process (CAP) to GE Corporate Clients. His involvement in all aspects of sales and marketing has enabled him to be an expert in the interface between supplier and client.

He has developed and delivered key courses including Value Selling, Key Account Management, Customer Centricity, Principled Negotiations, Territory Planning for Success, Understanding Financial Measurements, and Customer Focus. John’s clients include many divisions of GE (too numerous to list), Raytheon, Marley Cooling, Dielectric, SPX Corporate, Process Equipment, Contech, Applied Robotics, LDS, Process Tools and Solutions, Jenbacher and many more, in Europe and the Pacific Rim as well as across the US.

Deb Dixon

Deb Dixon focuses on leadership and professional development with special expertise in Six Sigma. She began her 10-year career with GE as a Power Systems field engineer and went on to become one of the first Six Sigma Black Belts in the company. She also served as a consultant to The Six Sigma Academy, where she worked with upper-level management to create and implement effective Six Sigma organizations within their businesses. She has aided senior executives in setting strategic goals, led cross-functional teams and provided skills training to production workers and executives alike. Companies she has consulted with include Ford, ConocoPhillips, Lear, Praxair and Tyco.