About

Kate Wade
Managing Director
Wade Strategy, LLC

Kate Wade is an accomplished thought leader in strategy and market analysis with over 20 years of experience across various industries, including financial services, consumer packaged goods, retail, manufacturing, and health care. She has successfully coordinated between
different areas within client organizations to effect change. She formed her independent consultancy, Wade Strategy, LLC, in 2017, through which she has successfully executed projects for clients ranging from start-ups to top 5 Property and Casualty insurance firms, to global Fortune 200 Food and Beverage companies, to one of the largest retailers in the world.

Prior to founding Wade Strategy, Kate held senior management roles at Allstate and Arthur J.
Gallagher, where she led teams to identify opportunities, develop, and implement strategies to
unlock significant revenue and cost savings improvement projects. At Allstate, she also led
research initiatives to analyze markets, evaluate acquisitions and identify best practices to
streamline operations. Before joining Allstate, Kate was a strategy consultant at The Boston
Consulting Group (BCG) and The Cambridge Group. At BCG, she succeeded in market analysis,
change management, and supply chain restructuring projects. She then moved to The
Cambridge Group, managing teams specializing in industry analysis and market segmentation.

Kate received an MBA with honors from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business in
Strategy, Marketing Management, and Operations and a bachelor’s from the University of
Chicago in “Law, Letters, and Society” and American History.

Specialties include:

• Identifying and defining strategic initiatives
• Commercial due diligence
• Marketing and sales strategy
• Competitive and landscape analysis
• Industry trend analysis
• Customer value proposition
• Voice of the customer
• New process and product innovation
• AI/Machine learning
• Design thinking
• Data and analytics modeling
• Strategy execution
• Change management and organizational design
• Pilot design
• Board of Directors presentations
• Case studies and benchmarking
• Survey development
• Quantitative and qualitative research

Recent Project Work:

Retail/Consumer Goods

• Developed a competitive landscape and go-to-market strategy for the launch of a top 5 global retailer’s grocery home delivery program. Work included recommendations on brand position, trend response, analyzing build/buy/partnership opportunities, product/price evolution, and positioning w/ current offerings. US grocery e-commerce sales grew over $32B from 2019 to 2023.
• Led a team to develop a demand-based segmentation for a top North American Group Purchasing Organization for independent retailers in consumer electronics, major appliances, and furniture, identifying and sizing target segments. Work included: qualitative interviews, survey design, and fielding, AI/ML data analytics (k-means clustering).
• Created a benchmark analysis of how leading companies define and accomplish goals and objectives across organizations for a global Fortune 200 food and beverage company; analysis included: qualitative interviews with senior leaders, secondary research, and detailed writing/presenting.

Financial Services/Insurance

• Analyzed customer psychology for a major consumer, industrial, and technology investment firm. Identified key purchase criteria and decision drivers influencing buyer decisions and preferences. Developed comprehensive surveys, financial models, and insights into customers’ decision-making, resulting in targeted strategies for investment decisions.
• Developed strategies for a top 5 US P&C (Property and Casualty) personal line insurance carrier; work included leading workshops; creating an actionable data-driven segmentation strategy; quantitative survey data analytics; developing insights related to emerging technology and competitor trends; estimating market sizes; and writing Board of Director presentations.
• Provided due diligence market strategy recommendations and insight to a private equity firm evaluating an acquisition of more than $200M in the fabricated steel industry, analysis of market structure, competitive landscape, market sizing, and identifying environmental issues and trends.

Technology

• Designed multiple change management projects/plans for a Fortune 200 technology reseller’s 3-year strategic planning transformation initiative, which included setting priorities, building consensus across leadership levels, identifying training gaps, encouraging employee participation, establishing metrics and goals, and training teams.

Manufacturing/Industrial

• Provided strategic recommendations for category expansions for a leading automotive aftermarket equipment provider. Using deep exploratory primary and secondary research, the review was based on innovation potential, customer journey, brand fit, market potential, case studies, and competitive gaps. The project identified three categories for near-term expansion (expanding current market size by $1.2B) and 2 for longer-term (additional $1.8B).
• Led the research and market sizing initiative for an industrial firm exploration into ten potential new adjacent market areas (e.g., smart home devices, fiber optic installation, wireless mesh networks). Work included stakeholder interviews, subject matter expert qualitative interviews, secondary research, financial modeling, and total available market estimations.

Health/Life Sciences

• Managed a team that developed actional growth strategies for a global life science company. Initiatives identified and with roadmaps will grow a key division’s revenue by 50-100% within five years; work included designing workshops to build off innovation and gain consensus with key stakeholders, estimating costs and resource requirements, identifying competitive landscape, and designing integrated roadmaps.

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