Dennis Andrade, Principal
Places lived: Milford, CT, Boston and Plymouth, MA.
Education: Harvard Business School and MIT Sloan, course work and executive education sessions; Boston College, BA in political science and history
Experience: At ICIC, an economic research and strategy organization founded and led by Harvard Professor Michael Porter. I started my career as a data coordinator and over nearly five years moved up to become a senior analyst and then an associate and program manager. I led ICIC's research efforts on small businesses, including surveying hundreds of growing companies and interviewing about 200 entrepreneurs, and managed the Inner City 100 program in partnership with Inc. magazine.After ICIC, I was a consultant with Alliance Consulting Group, a strategy consulting firm in Boston working for clients in financial services, consumer goods, and private equity.
Focus: How do we balance free markets, entrepreneurship, and innovation with regulation and government intervention? What is the best way to increase wealth and economic growth and improve wealth distribution, without impinging on individual rights or discouraging individual ambition? What are the obligations of private corporations and individuals to society?
Intellectual influences: Generally, people who focus on real objectives and how to accomplish them, even if it means challenging the status quo. Michael Porter; George Gendron, former editor-in-chief of Inc. magazine; Andrew Sullivan, writer, blogger, political activist; Christopher Hitchens, writer and polemicist; Bjorn Lomborg, "the skeptical environmentalist."
Turning points: I had to figure out what to do after a unique experience at ICIC which combined my interest in policy with economics and a newfound appreciation for business. I wanted to get some more business experience and pursue my interest in supporting and advising growing businesses, so I left ICIC to join Alliance Consulting Group. It was an interesting experience, but business dried up and I found myself with another decision to make. I had hoped consulting experience would steer me in one of two directions, either back to policy or an MBA. After some advice from friends and colleagues, I began looking for new career opportunities – something different. That led me to Tapestry.
Dennis says what he likes about Tapestry is that it is different from any other firm or job. “We are a small firm and we don't have an overly ‘corporate’ culture. Yet we get to be in the middle of important discussions about major global issues, with senior leaders from leading corporations, national and international regulators, and policymakers.”
“On recent trips around the world, I have seen the power that we can have simply by being so connected.In Australia and Brazil, I could, for example, share with senior bankers what the regulators in the United States, UK, and Europe were thinking about key issues in regulation and supervision of financial institutions, and describe what large banks around the world were doing and thinking about managing risk and the future of their industry,” he says.
Dennis says the more Tapestry can be in those discussions, the more we'll be able to leverage them in new ways with new constituents. “We are developing relationships and insights with influential people and a broad, global perspective of issues that even the people we interact with lack.Tapestry can play a lead role in any industry or issue area where there is significant change or stakeholders with different interests in helping to shape the direction of change.”
“I personally get to be in the middle of those discussions,” Dennis says. “I like living in New England but through Tapestry I get to see the world – how it works and how it doesn’t.”
Download Dennis Andrade's Formal Biography
