John Parker
Client Advisor
John Parker is a seasoned, highly successful executive who brings 35+ years of global marketing and consulting expertise to Empactful Advisors.
In 2020 John retired as Clinical Assistant Professor of Executive Education and Senior Academic Director at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University where he continues to lead the Advanced Marketing Management program. He also led many of Kellogg’s relationships in Latin America as well as co-launching distance learning capabilities beginning in 2018.
As CMO of Zurich Insurance, John built and led the “best-in-class” team within the $10B North American middle market division that increased profitability through an economic downturn, driving growth even as premiums declined. Much of the challenge involved building an effective Marketing organization in a legacy sales-driven culture. The division grew annual premiums in key industry verticals from $600 million to $1.2 billion in three years; increased retention rates for key customers by 5% through a digital customer contact program; nearly doubled new business win rate from 11% to 21% with over 100,000 new registrants; increased advertising impact despite a 50% spending cut by quantifying ROI by media channel and shifting mix accordingly; and accelerated new business production by realigning underwriter structure. John also directly led a Marketing function culture change, raising employee engagement scores to the highest levels in the corporation.
As Principal at Katzenbach Partners, John founded, built, and led KPL’s Chicago office, where he developed and led the third-largest client relationship in the firm. He also supported extensive product innovation initiatives and developed innovative product launch capabilities that contributed to two products exceeding $1 billion in sales within two years, with a third reaching $500 million.
As Principal at McKinsey & Company, John co-founded the Chicago Healthcare practice and co-led a high profile, large Property & Casualty insurance company relationship with reengineering efforts that contributed to increasing the client’s Operating Income 160%, from $1.0 billion to $2.6 billion, in 5 years. John also managed key restructuring projects for U.S. retail banks and developed a successful product management organization, driving increases in net income from $57 million to $312 million in just 2 years.
John received a MS from the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology with concentrations in Corporate Strategy, and Management & Control Systems, He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard College with a BA in Economics.