Moments of impact from Brandon Curry's career
Lodestone People Consulting · Executive Advisor · December 2026I joined as an HR executive advisor to the investor group acquiring six family-owned entities tied together through joint-venture partnerships and supply agreements for branded automotive service products and equipment. The deal was complicated by the fact that all six sellers had operated independently before close, each running its own payroll and benefits, and ranging in size from about 20 to 200 employees. The post-close leadership team was made up of representatives from the former owners. I reviewed and oversaw the HR and Organization diligence completed by outside counsel and the M&A team from the HR benefits broker, then stayed on through close as the interim HR and integration management lead. The deal closed in December 2025 bringing together roughly 400 employees. Over the following months we recruited and hired a permanent HR director and reorganized the combined enterprise into a regional commercial business model, aligning the HR and finance functions to the new structure. All six entities moved to a single integrated benefits design, expanding coverage to a market-competitive level across regions and bringing everyone into a shared 401(k), short-term and long-term disability, and life insurance plans. I also led the selection and rollout of a single payroll and HR system of record across all entities, harmonizing pay cycles for exempt, non-exempt, and commission-based employees. We used the new system to run open enrollment into the integrated national benefits plan, effective July 1, 2026, extending coverage to every employee across the country with less than a 1% increase in run-rate cost from Q2 into Q3. Revenue growth has followed the vertical integration of the six businesses, validating the deal thesis. As of December 2026, roughly a year after close, we are still building the operating rhythms, shared processes, and technology the combined company needs to run as one team at scale.
Tenneco · Vice President, Human Resources DRiV Motorparts · March 2020When COVID-19 hit in early 2020, the Motorparts Business Unit continued operating as an essential business across 9 global markets while protecting employees and dealing with a wave of shifting government and health authority requirements in every country. As HR VP for the business unit, I was responsible for the workforce side of that response: figuring out how to flex labor costs as demand dropped, keep sites safe and compliant, and move people to remote work wherever the job allowed it. I worked across Functional, Business Unit, Country, and Site management teams to stand up safe working procedures and health management practices across the global footprint, and to shift roles to remote work where possible. A big part of the work was building an analytical approach to furlough and pay-reduction decisions, one that balanced the company's need to protect margins against employees' need for income and job security, so we could make consistent, defensible calls site by site and role by role rather than reacting ad hoc. All 19,000 employees in the business were affected by these decisions. The furlough and pay-reduction measures cut payroll expense by more than 20% from May through August 2020, and the broader restructuring actions that came out of this work drove sustained net run-rate cost reductions of over $20M going forward.
Tenneco · Vice President, Human Resources DRiV Motorparts · April 2018On October 1, 2018, Tenneco completed its acquisition of Federal-Mogul, creating a Fortune 200 company with pro forma 2018 revenues of roughly $17 billion and 87,000 employees worldwide. As the HR, EHS and Facilities leader and Business Partner to the CEO of Federal-Mogul Motorparts, I was asked to lead Integration Management for combining Federal-Mogul Motorparts with Tenneco's global aftermarket Exhaust, Ride Control and NVH product lines into a new business unit called DRiV. I also co-led the HR functional design workstream, which carried responsibility for integrating the HR function itself and for providing functional leadership across every other integration workstream. The work started in April 2018 with understanding both businesses in detail: their employee bases, manufacturing footprints, ways of working, and the real strengths and weaknesses of each culture. From there I worked with many design teams to propose organization designs for the combined business and worked with leaders across every function and regional go-to-market team to staff and stand up the new structure. I then coordinated the global implementation of the changes, which included a significant restructuring of the business, a shared brand and operating model, and margin-enhancing synergy programs. Alongside the DRiV build, I oversaw the divestiture of the Wipers business unit to First Brands as part of the broader portfolio reshaping. The integration delivered more than $80 million in run-rate synergies realized across the combined DRiV business.
Federal-Mogul Powertrain · Director of Global Talent Management and Global Talent Acquisition · May 2014In 2012, I became Director of Talent Management at Federal-Mogul just as the company split into two business segments, Powertrain and Motorparts, each with its own CEO and leadership team. My job was to build a talent management function from the ground up for 11,000 salaried employees across the $7 billion enterprise, covering performance management, succession planning, talent development, and talent acquisition across every region we operated in. I started as a team of three and built it up to 8 people by 2017, with talent leads across five continents. We designed the talent practices together, then worked with our vendors and the broader HR function to roll them out globally, tying everything together in an integrated Talent Management System built on Cornerstone OnDemand's SaaS Talent Suite. By 2017, over 70% of our Director-level and above leaders were selected from within Federal-Mogul, a direct result of the succession planning and development pipelines we put in place. In 2014, Cornerstone gave the program its Client RAVE award for Most Transformational HR & Talent Strategy, recognizing the impact the approach had on the business.
Federal-Mogul Powertrain · Director of Global Talent Management and Global Talent Acquisition · June 2013I joined Federal-Mogul to build a global talent management function from the ground up, right after a new CEO and CHRO took over and set the company on a path to split into two operating companies, Federal-Mogul Powertrain and Federal-Mogul Motorparts, sharing scaled capability teams like Talent Management. There was no existing enterprise-wide academy or learning infrastructure to support that transition, and leadership needed a consistent way to build talent and leadership bench strength across both new organizations. I designed and stood up the Federal-Mogul Academy as a full suite of programs spanning entry-level through executive talent. This included internship and rotational development programs in the US, Mexico, EMEA, India, and China, a global core curriculum covering leadership, communication, finance for non-financial managers, problem solving, and selecting talent, and assessment centers used for both selection and development. I also led the team that built out a global eLearning curriculum and LMS so business units could deploy consistent training against company standards, and delivered open-enrollment live training on five continents. At the executive level, I designed and co-facilitated the Leading from Core Values program with Jan Emerton, hosting session in the US, Mexico, Poland, Hungary, France, and Germany from 2014 to 2017 with more than 100 participants drawn from across every function, region, and business unit. The program became the common leadership development experience that tied Federal-Mogul's culture together as the company operated as two segments, and gave the organization a repeatable way to develop and connect its leadership network globally.
Work Arts LLC · Founder | Managing Advisor · October 2021After selling one of its four business units, a multi-billion dollar automotive supplier was left with an oversized, centralized corporate management structure and stranded SG&A. Its three remaining business units needed their own functional resources so they could own their performance and operate with speed closer to their customers. I ran an organization diagnostic that included interviews with the full executive team, a review of performance trends from the prior two years, current-state org charts, and operations review decks. From there I worked through several rounds of design options with the CEO and CHRO before moving into detailed design of a business unit structure. I then worked directly with each BU's GM and functional leaders to finalize their designs, and with their HR Directors to build change activation plans specific to each region. The initial design took six weeks. In the Americas and Asia, we activated and implemented the new structure in under 30 days once decisions were finalized. Europe moved on a slower timeline because of statutory notice periods, works council consultation requirements, and differences in employment law, so we adjusted the activation plan there to stay fully compliant while still respecting those processes. The redesign improved SG&A by 2% of revenue and gave each business unit the functional ownership to build its own growth strategy, setting up the three BUs to move on organic expansion and acquisition opportunities on their own.
Work Arts LLC · Founder | Managing Advisor · May 2026DSG had roughly doubled in size to around 1,000 employees across ten states through a run of acquisitions, and the executive team knew that kind of growth had left inconsistent product lines, supplier relationships, and commercial policies from one region to the next. As they set out to keep growing, they needed a structure and a strategy that could support an omnichannel model, stronger digital capabilities, and a consistent customer experience across the whole footprint. I was brought in first to lead the organization design and operating model work with the management team, a phase that ran about seven months. I worked mostly solo, pulling in one consultant to help with the initial diagnostic, and coordinated with the other advisors around the CEO as the work progressed. That phase led the organization to invest in a Chief Supply Chain Officer and a Chief Digital Officer, and to restructure its Demand organization into East and West Districts, each with four market teams supported by scaled functions. Recruiting those two executives and standing up the new structure took the organization about seven more months. Based on that work, DSG invited me back between May 2025 and May 2026 to facilitate their strategy development and deployment. I worked with the executive team to sharpen where they had a real competitive edge, landing on a model built around distinct trade segments that played to their multi-trade reach and their employee-ownership culture, then helped translate that into a phased execution plan sequenced around capability dependencies rather than an arbitrary timeline. I can't share specific figures since the results are confidential, but the organization saw meaningful improvement in sales growth, inventory (DOH), and gross margin return on inventory (GMROI) over the course of this engagement. Just as important, DSG strengthened their leadership team, structure, and managing processes to accelerate strategic decision making and execution at scale going forward.
CGS Advisors, LLC · Fellow · June 2021Advised a client's CXO in the development of their functional strategy and then the multi-phased org design to Improve accountability, consistency, and speed of their 500+ employee functional organization distributed across a decentralized global automotive supplier. Advised the organization through the period of multiple multi-billion dollar acquisitions and a multi-billion dollar business segmentation and public offering to carve out and independently operate one-third of their global business. We delivered a sustained functional strategy and translated their strategy into a new organization design and operating model during a period of acquisitions, portfolio restructuring, and business separation. We developed iterations of the leadership structure to deliver improved capabilities and improve cost performance while improving internal collaboration and talent development. Then, we formed and led a representative global design team through a structured organization design process, redesigning the function around service towers, service delivery teams, and business unit teams with clearer roles, decision rights, performance ownership, governance, and managing processes. We then supported functional leadership and HR through gaining design approval, talent redeployment, and activation. We coached implementation teams responsible for selection processes, transitions, and communications to deploy the model across the global organization. The new model significantly reduced variation in roles and reporting structures while preserving local accountability. Clearer decision rights moved appropriate authority closer to plants and business units, enabling faster decision-making, stronger performance accountability, more consistent governance, and more effective execution at scale. The work became part of a multi-year strategic advisory relationship. Throughout the multi-year engagement with the client's functional leadership team, we were involved as strategic advisors and facilitators of global functional summits and workshops to support their strategy execution efforts.
Work Arts LLC · Founder | Managing Advisor · May 2022As lead advisor, I directed an organization design engagement for a client wrestling with how to structure itself for maximum mission impact. I recruited a colleague with deep OD expertise to join me, then personally led diagnostic interviews with the CEO, board members, and a cross-section of 15 department heads and subject matter experts to surface the real decision rights, data, and cultural dynamics shaping the organization. I synthesized these findings into a set of structural options and facilitated design workshops with the client's chosen design team, while my team member developed workshop activities and drafted deliverables covering decision rights, data analysis, and change management planning. The core challenge was a set of high-stakes trade-offs: the design team evaluated four structural models—aligning around funding sources, geography, program type, or constituent/market segment—ranging from a centralized hub to a fully federated structure. Though many assumed funding-source alignment would win out, the design team quickly rejected it because it commoditized the organization's value proposition and undercut differentiated impact. Facing tension between operational efficiency and mission fidelity, I mapped each option against the client's design criteria and strategic goals, guiding leadership to choose an organizational structure aligned to the constituent groups they exist to serve—strengthening market differentiation and positioning the organization as a uniquely efficacious, high-impact partner for funders. Activation was staged in waves: first identifying where the new operating model could be implemented and where new leadership needed to be recruited, then supporting each workstream leader with coaching and planning on a bi-weekly and later monthly cadence as teams migrated into new structures and ways of working. I facilitated cross-workstream sessions to clarify new decision rights, ran full implementation sessions with the leadership team, and personally advised the CPO, Chief of Staff, and CEO through regular implementation conversations. Monthly pulse-check sessions with department heads allowed us to catch culture-fit issues early and adjust the change management plan in real time. The engagement culminated in successful communication of the new organization design to the board of directors and an all-staff convening, where the design's strong alignment to the organization's purpose and strategy was clearly showcased. The result was a fully activated, constituent-aligned structure that sharpened the organization's value proposition, strengthened its efficacy narrative for funders, and was rolled out with minimal disruption thanks to embedded coaching and continuous culture monitoring throughout implementation.
Paddle · Interim Chief People Officer | Integration Management Advisor · March 2022When Paddle signed a Letter of Intent to acquire Profitwell, an international firm with offices spanning the US and Argentina, the company needed specialized expertise to conduct People & Organization Diligence and manage the ensuing integration. I joined initially as an advisor and then stepped in post-close as Interim Chief People Officer, filling a critical capability gap during a 12-month period tasked with merging two distinct cultures and operating systems. My mandate was threefold: retain and organize key talent from both Paddle and Profitwell through the transition, harmonize HR systems and policies across the UK, Europe, US, and Argentina offices, and build and operate an integrated roadmap for the year following close. To achieve this, I established a tailored employment strategy for each employee across entities, ensuring competitive and compliant pay and benefits while leveraging the newly combined scale to improve benefit quality and lower costs. I brought on a fractional Talent Acquisition leader through the close period dedicated to the Americas to ensure revenue-generating roles stayed staffed in this key growth market, and I partnered with the strategy team to implement the organization's integrated product-driven business model, aligning organizational structure and incentive compensation design to support it. The results were substantial: we successfully retained key talent from both organizations throughout the full 12-month integration, reduced combined benefits costs by 15% while simultaneously improving coverage, and rolled out the new incentive compensation design on schedule. This work earned recognition from the Executive Committee and Commercial Leadership for effective stewardship of the cultural integration. Notably, despite significant market headwinds throughout 2023, the company sustained growth through the entirety of the integration period — a testament to the stability the people and systems work provided during a high-stakes organizational transition.
Lodestone People Consulting · Executive Advisor · March 2026A founder came to us with an ambitious vision: a venture studio designed to launch an ecosystem of integrated companies tackling major global problems, beginning with healthcare. When I began working with the founding team in March 2026, they had the vision but little of the HR infrastructure needed to hire, pay, or manage people. As Executive Advisor and fractional HR executive to the founder and founding team, I worked with the team to implement employment and contractor agreements for each person, then partnered with Sequoia's Peopleloop PEO to employ staff compliantly across 8 states while offering benefits and retirement programs competitive enough to attract talent used to the financial services industry. We designed roles, policies, and practices for assessment, selection, and hiring, and put in place onboarding, goal setting, performance management, and employee relations support — the fundamentals a fast-growing startup needs but rarely has time to build. Alongside Lodestone colleagues, we led the founding leadership through executive assessments and Executive Team Effectiveness facilitation using our Knowing Me Knowing You Human Capital Science framework, aligning them around a shared purpose, objectives, operating rhythms, and ways of working. Six months into the engagement, the company has a functioning executive team operating from that shared framework, a PEO partnership employing people compliantly and competitively across 8 states, and HR fundamentals running end to end, from assessment-driven selection through onboarding and performance management. The company now has the people foundation to scale into the multi-company studio its founder envisioned.
Work Arts LLC · Founder | Managing Advisor · July 2023Faced with significant shifts in market competition, a $3B global materials supplier made several bold strategic choices to strengthen its position following shifts in demand for the technical differentiation of their product and to support sustainable profitability. Realizing that strategy required new capabilities, a more competitive cost structure, and meaningful changes across the global organization, so the company set out to redesign cost competitiveness into each aspect of the business. I was hired as the organization design advisor to guide a comprehensive organization design of the global business unit. I partnered with the company's global management team and extended design teams through the process, translating the company's strategic aspiration into a clear understanding of the capabilities and organizational changes required to achieve it. From there, the teams developed and evaluated multiple design options before making the choices necessary to align the organization with the new strategy and extend the company's market leadership. We engaged management and the leads of each functional workstream to align on those choices and worked through how everything from daily operations to long-term goals should adapt. This included aligning functions, go-to-market, and operations to the new capability requirements, integrating product management, strategic customer segmentation by market, and production assets, and strengthening the management processes and decision-making practices that coordinate the supply and demand sides of the business. The transformation hit its total cost of manufacturing targets on time, improving by more than $100M in combined fixed and variable costs while building the capabilities the new strategy required. Earnings improved as a result, and the business unit was recognized internally as the benchmark for how to run a successful transformation. Getting there took real work to bring skeptical stakeholders along — the collaborative approach we used to engage and support leaders at every step was what made the implementation stick rather than stall.