Keith R. McFarland

As a technology CEO, business school dean, consultant and writer, Keith McFarland has provided management insight to organizations for more than twenty years. He writes a monthly online column for 'BusinessWeek', and is founder of McFarland Strategy Partners, which provides strategic advisory services to companies such as Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, The Los Alamos National Laboratory, Vans, House of Blues, Motorola, and scores of middle market growth firms.

Prior to establishing his consultancy, he served as CEO of two technology firms — most recently Nivo International, the exclusive provider of certification services for Microsoft Office products through 2,000 testing centers in 56 countries worldwide.

McFarland previously served as chairman and as CEO of Collectech Systems, a two-time Inc. 500 company in Westlake Village, CA. He led the transformation of Collectech into the leading customer contact and accounts receivable management service provider for the telecommunications industry. As a result of his efforts, Collectech’s revenues grew from $10 million to $100 million in four years as it secured multi-year contracts with Verizon, AT&T, Direct TV and many other leading telecommunications firms. He successfully sold the Company to buy-out firm Harvest Partners and GE Capital.

While running Collectech, McFarland pursued the life-long dream to study with management theorist Peter Drucker — he has completed his coursework and qualifying exams for a doctorate from the Drucker School of Business at Claremont University.

At the age of 26, Mr. McFarland became one of the youngest business school deans in the nation. As a dean for the Pepperdine University School of Business and Management (once named by 'BusinessWeek' as the 11th best executive program in the world) he developed joint-venture executive education programs in the US, Europe, and Asia and founded the quarterly business journal 'Management Insight'. He ranked consistently as one of Pepperdine's top professors in executive student evaluations.

McFarland's latest book, 'The Breakthrough Company' — which is being heralded as the Good to Great for growth companies — represents the most exhaustive study of successful growth companies in history. He and his research team spent five years assembling and analyzing a database of more than 7,000 companies — every company to ever be named to Inc. magazine's annual list of 500 fastest growing companies. In addition to debuting as #1 on the 'Wall Street Journal' list, the book was also listed on the National Best Seller lists of the 'New York Times', 'BusinessWeek', the 'Los Angeles Times', and 'USA Today'.

McFarland is a frequent speaker to executive groups and business organizations.