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Q&A with John Tobin: Executive President, EMEA & APAC


Slalom Executive President John Tobin

Summary of work style

My leadership style is to be a collaborative servant-leader. I believe in open, direct communication, and setting up effective teams who are empowered to drive our business. I strive to lead by example, and believe that one of the main functions of leadership is to establish general direction and strategy, but that the most important role is to set up your team to succeed.

What makes Slalom great?

At Slalom, we live our core values and celebrate our culture every day. This is really what makes us unique and has fueled the growth and success we’ve had. The personal relationships we strive to cultivate among our small teams have allowed us to grow our business while staying true to our core values. I love our local model, backed by a set of national teams and capabilities. We’ve created something unique in the consulting world: an ability to be intimate with our clients, consultants, and communities while still providing leading-edge offerings.

Experience

I worked as a programmer at the Board of Trade, and then moved on to consulting for several banks in Chicago. Later, I moved to Seattle and joined Ernst & Young’s management consulting practice. After consulting for a number of years, I moved over to my client’s company, AT&T Wireless, where I served as Director of Architecture and Shared Services. I had a short stint at a startup called Sanrise, which inspired me to start Slalom in 2001.

Slalom allowed me an opportunity to take my experiences as a consultant and a buyer of consulting to start a new breed of consulting in what I felt was a missing element to the traditional larger consulting models. The idea was simple, hire world-class consultants to do both management and technology consulting in the city they lived in and build teams that celebrated a more fun, open and intimate culture. We service our clients in a very nimble and flexible way, demonstrating our number one core value: we do the right thing, always.

Education

I earned a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Northern Illinois University.

Hobbies and Charities

Golf, coaching and playing soccer, Tour de Cure, Community for Youth, UW project management and UW mentorship programs


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