Key Management

Key Management

Ted Rybeck, Chair

Ted Rybeck has led Benchmarking Partners since founding the firm in 1994. Drawing from his value chain experience on five continents, Rybeck has become a leading innovator of demand and supply chain integration and collaboration systems. In addition to his managerial responsibilities, he consults and teaches on applying information systems for competitive advantage.

Rybeck is best known for spearheading Wal-Mart's successful Internet-based collaboration system with its trading partners--a system that evolved into the first major standard for business-to-business Internet commerce. In conjunction with the U.S. Departments of Homeland Security and Defense, he chairs the Security Best Practices Committee of international leaders from the public and private sector under the auspices of the National Defense Transportation Association.

Rybeck has annually taught a semester-long graduate course on Value Networks and Championship Mobilization at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. The course, which he co-created, is based on best practices developed and presented in conjunction with Benchmarking Partners clients and staff. Previously, Rybeck co-taught the Value Networks and Championship Mobilization course at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Chicago.

Rybeck's honors include a Kittredge Award for his analysis of the relationship between technology, company organization, and return-on-investment; a Thomas Watson Foundation Fellowship during which Rybeck, based at IBM-Düsseldorf, worked with leading European and Asian corporations to analyze their systems needs; and an appointment by the non-partisan U.S. Congressional Office of Technology Assessment to its review panel on electronic commerce and the Internet.

At Benchmarking Partners, Rybeck has supported supply and demand chain initiatives for more than 700 multinational manufacturers, distributors, retailers, government organizations, utilities, healthcare institutions, financial services firms, and technology providers. The results of these initiatives have been synthesized into Benchmarking Partners' Customer-Oriented Management System (COMS) knowledgebank of best practices and metrics, which Rybeck helped to establish in 1994.

Rybeck has a BA in economics from Haverford College. He lives with his wife and two children in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Jonathan Wu, China Practice Leader

Jonathan Wu has over 21 years in the IT industry and has held consulting, sales/marketing, technical, training and senior management positions in US and across Asia/Pacific. He has been responsible for sales and implementation of solutions in government, logistics, supply chain, health, media, financial, and energy sectors, focusing largely on Fortune 500 companies over the past 20 years.

Before joining Benchmarking Partners, Wu was most recently the General Manager for Aspnetcentre's China Operation where he started up the China based business to provide IT services with special focus in ERP. He was previously with Sybase, where he was the Senior Director of Corporate Development and Product Marketing for Asia Pacific. In these roles, he was responsible for venture interests in the region as well as the development and execution of product marketing strategies through the Asia Solution Center in Hong Kong.

Wu spent over 12 years with IBM Corp in both Singapore and US in technical, consulting and sales/marketing positions. There he helped service major accounts in Singapore (e.g. PSA) and helped IBM pioneer its Client/Server initiatives on the West Coast of the U.S. He also co-led a team that spurred IBM West Coast's successful transition to a services operation , and he sat on the IBM US End-User Advisory Council and the IBM ImagePlus Advisory Council.

Wu earned a BA from the National University in Singapore. A citizen of the U.S., Wu has lived for nearly ten years in China and resides with his family in Beijing.

Pat Zilvitis, Benchmark Practitioner

Pat Zilvitis serves as a "hands-on" senior coach to emerging market leaders among Benchmarking Partners clients. He first worked with Benchmarking Partners as a client himself during his eight year tenure as CIO and Corporate Vice President of The Gillette Company. In that role, he participated in the development by Wal-Mart and Benchmarking Partners of the Collaborative Forecasting And Replenishment standard among retailers and suppliers. He currently serves on a consulting basis as Chief Information Officer for Segway LLC, the Human Transporter Company in Manchester, New Hampshire.

Prior to Gillette, Zilvitis' career included a variety of high impact roles. In the 1980s, he served as President and General Manager of Martin Marietta Data Systems, a $450M subsidiary which provided internal information technology services to Martin Marietta as well as to the public and private sector. He also formed Digital Equipment's global Consulting Services organization, and served as Vice President of Marketing for Perkin-Elmer, an instrument and computer manufacturer. He began his career with IBM in a range of roles for both the private and public sector including Sales, Marketing, Product and General Management.

Zilvitis is a magna cum laude engineering graduate of the University of Notre Dame. He earned a master's degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan, attending on a National Science Foundation fellowship.

Lewis Zackin, Senior Director

Lew Zackin joins Benchmarking Partners after thirty years of distinguished leadership roles at the intersection of finance and supply chain. Zackin began his career as an engineer at United Technologies. He holds a B.S. in Engineering from Columbia University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. Zackin and his wife reside in Newton, Massachusetts.