Jeff Berman

Big Tree Co-Founder

Jeff works with companies and management teams that share a passion for growth and value creation. In addition to co-founding Big Tree, Jeff is also founder of ValueCurve Partners which helps new ventures develop differentiated products and services, accelerate digital workflows, and implement new operating models to disrupt markets and industries. 

Previously, Jeff was Managing Partner of Grant Thornton and National Leader of the Digital & Business Transformation practice across Healthcare, Life Sciences, Consumer & Industrial Products industries. Prior to that was Vice President & Partner of IBM leading multiple service lines across Business Transformation & Strategy.  He also held executive roles at PwC and was an Entrepreneur and Founder of a SaaS cloud platform that exited through M&A.

Over his 35-year career, Jeff has focused on building leading businesses and organizations from the ground up and advising C-level clients on creating revenue uplift, profit unlock and return on investments which has realized over $1.5B in cost efficiency savings.  Jeff specializes in building and deploying strategic platforms that accelerate workflows and transform businesses and markets. He has expertise in due diligence and a multitude of technology platforms as well as operational improvements for processes within Supply Chain, Finance, Human Capital and Customer/ Patient front ends. This lends itself well to helping Industry Disruptors, New Ventures, and PE Operating companies achieve investment goals, market launch roadmaps, and EBITDA unlock. 

He is a strong hands-on business operator that has managed P&Ls of $250M and global staff over 275. Jeff has served on executive leadership teams at division and global levels and has led large-scale global, complex and strategic business transformation programs for Fortune 500 companies. He currently serves as start up mentor and Board member for several new ventures.
 
He is a published author of Maximizing Project Value available on Amazon and thought leader with works on reading lists for NASA, UC Davis, Project Management Institute, American Management Association. Jeff is best known for being a collaborative cross-functional leader, having strong communication skills and developing strategies that influence and elevate teams to drive results.

Education: B.S. Industrial Engineering, Northeastern University; M.B.A., D'Amore-McKim School of Business at Northeastern University; Strategy & Transformation Certificate, Harvard Business School; Advanced Leadership Program Certificate, Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management

In addition to co-founding Big Tree, Russ is founder & President of Mansfield Bio-Incubator responsible for strategic direction and overall supervision of operations. He is a scientist and successful biotech entrepreneur.  Russ is also CEO and co-founder of Precision Biosystems, a manufacturing company developing small-scale automation. He also serves as an advisory board member at several bioinformatics companies and scientific journals. 

Prior to starting his entrepreneurial career he was a faculty at Harvard Medical School and director of Laboratory of Neurogenomics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Before that he was a director of Laboratory of Molecular Neuroscience at University Wisconsin-Madison. 

He has multiple US and international patents for device design and pharmaceuticals. Russ is an author and co-author of more than 50 peer review publications.  

Education: He earned his medical degree at the Second Pirogov’s Institute in Moscow and his PhD at the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences (Moscow, Russia) and and his MBA at UMass Boston.