Joseph Burns
Sr. Business Consultant

In the more than 30 years of Joe's business career, he has held a variety of positions in several diverse industries. He created and was responsible for running the international trade department of a consulting company whose clients included McDonnell-Douglas, Lockheed and Halliburton, among others. He facilitated their success by developing and managing international trade seminars, hosting foreign delegations, and overseeing the translation of clients’ sales materials, technical manuals and films into foreign languages.

As the Industrial Marketing Officer of a multi-billion dollar commodities trading company, he set up and maintained profitable distributor networks, helped customers with their hedging, trading and financing needs, and ran the asset-based lending program.

Joe's career took a different direction when he founded and for 10 years operated a manufacturing and export company whose major customers were in Japan, Europe and the United States. Leading this small business, he negotiated major intellectual property manufacturing contracts with Disney and other high profile companies

Based on his strong theoretical and practical experience in finance and management, and on an unusual combination of industry expertise, Joe's consulting career has taken him to some 29 US states and Canadian provinces for assignments in a broad range of businesses, including manufacturing, construction trades, agriculture, processed foods, cosmetics, petroleum and other commodities, wholesale distribution, and defense contractors, among others.

His work has focused on strategy creation and deployment, corporate organization and development, operational effectiveness and enhancement, financial reporting systems, and corporate performance management systems. Joe’s reputation is based on the ability to see the current and future value of businesses, and working closely with them in multiple approaches to unlock their potential for sustainable growth and profit amid changing conditions.

Joe speaks conversational Chinese, and has a working knowledge of Japanese. His undergraduate degree is in Asian Studies, and he holds an MBA in International Management from the Thunderbird School of Global Management. He is a Certified Management Consultant (CMC) , which is a certification awarded by the Institute of Management Consultants USA and represents evidence of the highest standards of consulting and adherence to the ethical canons of the profession. Less than one percent of all consultants have achieved this level of performance.

Joe has written articles for the Los Angeles Business Journal among other business publications.