GCP Advisory Board

GCP Advisory Board

Growth Catalyst Partners is supported by a world class Advisory Board who assist its partners in various capacities including firm strategy, team development, industry sector trends and dynamics, economic analysis. Advisory Board members also provide access to a vast network of industry executives and thought leaders.

Education

Dartmouth College
B.A., Economics

Columbia Business School
M.B.A., Economics

Activities & Affiliations

• Co-Founder - WCAS

• The Rockefeller University, Chairman Emeritus

• New York Genome Center, Co-Chairman

• Partnership Schools, Chairman

• Metropolitan Museum of Art, Trustee Emeritus

• New York-Presbyterian Hospital System, Chairman Community Mission and Health Justice Committee and Vice Chairman, Budget and Finance Committee

• 9/11 Memorial and Museum, Co-Chairman, Nominating & Governance Committee

• Chairman, The Carson Family Charitable Trust, New York

• Columbia Business School, Chairman Emeritus

Glenn Hubbard

Glenn Hubbard is dean and Russell L. Carson Professor of Finance and Economics at Columbia Business School.  He is a specialist in public finance, managerial information and incentive problems in corporate finance and financial markets and institutions.  Hubbard has applied his research interests in business (as a consultant on taxation and corporate finance to many corporations), in government (as chairman of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers, as deputy assistant of the U.S. Treasury Department and as a consultant to the Federal Reserve Board, Federal Reserve Bank of New York and many government agencies) and in academia (in faculty collaboration or visiting appointments at Columbia, University of Chicago and Harvard).

In addition to writing more than 100 scholarly articles in economics and finance, Mr. Hubbard is the author of three popular textbooks, as well as co-author of The Aid Trap: Hard Truths About Ending Poverty, Balance: The Economics of Great Powers From Ancient Rome to Modern America, and Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise: Five Steps to a Better Health Care System.  His commentaries appear in Business Week, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Washington Post, Nikkei, and the Daily Yomiuri, as well as on television and radio.

From 2001 until 2003, Mr. Hubbard was chairman of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers. From 1991 until 1993, Mr. Hubbard was deputy assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of the Treasury.  In the corporate sector, he serves on the boards of ADP, BlackRock Closed-End Funds, and MetLife.

Mr. Hubbard is co-chair of the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, he is a past chair of the Economic Club of New York and he is a past co-chair of the Study Group on Corporate Boards.

Mr. Hubbard received his BA and BS degrees summa cum laude from the University of Central Florida and also holds a PhD degree in economics from Harvard University.

Education

University Of Central Florida
B.A., B.S.

Harvard University
PH.D., Economics

Rishad Tobaccowala

Rishad is the author of “Restoring the Soul of Business: Staying Human in the Age of Data”, a speaker and an advisor. Rishad most recently was the Chief Growth Officer and member of the Management Committee of Publicis Groupe, the world’s third largest communication firm with 80,000 employees. He remains a Senior Advisor to Publicis Groupe. He was named by BusinessWeek as one of the top business leaders for his pioneering innovation and TIME magazine dubbed him one of five “Marketing Innovators.”

Prior to his current role, Rishad was the Chief Strategist and Member of the Directoire/+ of Publicis Groupe. Before his corporate role, Rishad was the Chairman of DigitasLBi and Razorfish, two global firms owned by the Publicis Groupe with over 10,000 employees around the world focused on marketing and business transformation.

Rishad has 39 years of experience around the world and helped grow, founded/co-founded or incubated a variety of companies including VivaKi, Leo Burnett, Starcom, SMG Next, Starcom IP, Giant Step, Play, and Denuo. Rishad is a current Board member of GCP’s portfolio company Trendline Interactive.

Rishad has a BS in Mathematics from the University of Bombay and an MBA in Marketing and Finance from the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago.

Mitch Barns

Mitch Barns is the CEO of Opus Agency which was GCP’s first platform investment. Mitch was the CEO of Nielsen from 2014 to 2018. Since joining Nielsen in 1997, Mitch has lived and worked on three continents and held leadership roles across all major parts of Nielsen’s business. Throughout 2013, he served as President, Global Client Service, leading the efforts of Nielsen’s client service organization worldwide. Before that, he was President of Nielsen’s U.S. Media business from 2011 – 2013, where he oversaw the development of its analytics practice, guided the integration of its TV and Digital groups and helped transform the unit’s client service model to focus on driving performance improvement and value for Nielsen’s clients. From 2008-2011, Mitch served as President of Nielsen’s Greater China business where he led its transition to a fast-growing, standalone region. In the early 2000s, he was President of Nielsen’s BASES and Analytic Consulting businesses, which have since become the core of the company’s growing analytics business. Mitch first joined the company as part of Nielsen BASES, where he held various senior positions in the U.S. and Europe. Mitch began his career at Procter & Gamble, where he spent 12 years in marketing research and brand management.