Transparent Talk with Elgar Peerschke, Advisory Board Member

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Q: Elgar, welcome to the Transparent Energy Advisory Board. By our count, you worked at “Big 5” Consulting firms for 25 years. Can you tell us a bit about what you did there?

A: I began my career in investment banking, but after a couple of years I realized that focusing solely on finance wasn’t right for me. I joined McKinsey & Company and was fortunate enough to be there at a time when everything wasn’t structured as a “practice” yet. We were a bunch of generalists, and that’s a great way to get your start in management consulting. It gave me the opportunity to work across verticals, everything from oil & gas to insurance, banking, and healthcare. Soon enough, I had the chance to be part of opening our Buenos Aries, Argentina and Bogota, Colombia offices.

These positive experiences across the business and around the world led to my election as Partner, and I returned to the U.S. to join the New Jersey office, where we had established our Healthcare practice. I had a great seven-year run there as part of the Pharma-Medical Products Practice.

I then made the leap to Bain & Company, which was relatively small in healthcare at the time, and along the way did a lot of work on behalf of Bain’s Private Equity clients, doing due diligence, 100-day plans, post-merger integration work, you name it. Needless to say, I got deep exposure to the workings of PE while at Bain and, by the time I exited, had also deepened my senior leadership in healthcare, rising to the lead our Global Healthcare practice.

After 12 years, I left Bain to join Quintiles, a Clinical Research Organization that eventually completed a $16.7 billion merger with IMS Health and rebranded as IQVIA. While at Quintiles, I served as President of their Advisory Services business and, post-merger, I reported directly to the CEO as SVP of Customer Relations. I then went on to serve as the Chief Transformation Officer for global biotech company Sobi before giving up the C-Suite for my work on company Boards.

Q: Wow, that’s a lot! How did your experiences shape the way you think, and how will you bring that thinking to Transparent Energy?

A: Over the course of a career in management consulting, there is definitely an evolutionary arc. In the beginning, it’s all about the numbers – doing solid analytical work, putting decks together that tell a tight story, and making sure the numbers are right and that they work. Layered on top of this, you need to be driven by curiosity, always asking why do we do things a certain way, what are the causes and meanings of problems the business faces, and, ultimately what’s the solution?

In short, you need to get good at cutting to the chase of what’s important.

As you gain more experience and become more senior, you begin to realize it’s really all about people. You may come up with a great answer to a problem, but if you can’t get it implemented, the solution goes nowhere.

So I bring a curious, questioning mindset to Transparent Energy and a track record of turning a fine-tuned inquisitiveness into successful transformation.

Q: Can we double-click on your PE insights for a minute? What value do you see Transparent Energy bringing to this space?

A: Private equity these days is less about finding distressed or underperforming assets – those have been pretty much picked over by this point – and more about growth, either organic, rolling up a vertical or acquiring a series of bolt-ons to drive scale and efficiency. And PE is always under the gun: they have a finite time window to drive returns for their investors.

That’s where Transparent Energy fits perfectly. We come in with a very compelling value proposition: we’ll reduce operating cost without impacting the organization. That’s a winning value proposition for any company, let alone a PE-sponsored one. If you can reduce cost without impacting existing organization structures or workflows, most managers and CFOs would jump on that opportunity.

Q: With your background, you could find a home on so many boards. Why did you choose Transparent Energy?

A: There are a number of reasons. I wasn’t looking for an opportunity where I would just be participating in quarterly board meetings and sitting on Board Committees. I wanted to be with a company that is in a growth phase and actively looking to get contributions from the Board to shape and accelerate that growth. So, for me, Transparent Energy is the perfect fit.

In addition, Dustin and Paul, the company’s founders and Managing Partners, are great to work with: They are open to new ideas and eager to learn. They see my experience as an asset that can shape and improve the company. I love that.

Last but not least, I liked the idea of returning to my roots in energy. It’s fun and interesting. I’m learning a lot and, in return, am able to share what I know – an ideal give and take.

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