about
We help companies add innovation to their mindsets and their operations to create discernible competitive advantage. We augment their methods, mitigate their risks, create more opportunities, and capitalize on them with a variety of business-improving services. Those services enable collaborative creativity and ensure sustainable innovation.
We help our clients contend with uncertainty — and minimize reactive postures — enabling them to create the futures they imagine. We enable our clients to anticipate trends and customer needs, to develop and qualify new products, services, and business models — and to get them to market efficiently. We also help our clients become resilient, resourceful, and self-sufficient with effective knowledge and process transfer.
We’ve been around the block a few times. From innovation to operations, from aerospace and manufacturing to insurance and IT networking, from creating businesses to selling them, from brand management and positioning to marketing communications and advertising, we’ve been there, done that, and lived to share our experiences.
Our respective successes notwithstanding, our experiences have made us humble, open-minded, forward-thinking, abidingly eager to learn, and always willing to help. We put actionable substance into the often-overused term, innovation. And we combine our commitment to our clients with responsibility and accountability.
The Principals
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Don Judson
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer
don@einsource.com
Ripi Singh
Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer
ripi@einsource.com
Mark O’Brien
Co-Founder and President
mark@einsource.com
Don Judson
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer
don@einsource.com
Don is an accomplished executive with more than 30 years of experience in information technology (IT), finance, operations, and consulting. He has considerable expertise in IT operations, information security, financial reporting systems, profit and loss reporting (P&L), and business strategy. Because of his extensive experience in system, product, and service development, he’s adept at building innovation processes and frameworks.
Don co-founded OpenSky Corporation, an IT professional services firm in 2007. He and his partners grew OpenSky to a $30 million business in five years, earning several Inc. 500 Fast Growth awards. While providing advisory services to OpenSky clients, he built and managed the finance, human resources, and IT operations for OpenSky. After managing the successful sale of OpenSky to TUV Rheinland in 2014, Don accepted a seat on the board of Nerac Corporation, a global research and advisory firm. He also holds a Board seat with TBNG Consulting/Vancord, an IT managed services provider and IT Security consultancy and is an active advisor to XcellR8, an advisory group that provides entrepreneurs with business guidance and connections to growth capital.
Prior to OpenSky, Don managed significant IT and business operations for CIGNA and UnitedHealth Group. At times, he managed the IT and business organizations responsible for participant eligibility, group billing, and banking. The service organizations he directed maintained responsibility for IT systems operations and enhancement. He also led efforts to acquire new systems and to develop a fully automated B2B eligibility platform.
Earlier in his career Don led consulting organizations for Deloitte & Touche, Lucent Technologies/International Network Services, and Resources Global Professionals. These experiences were the bases on which he built and oversaw the phenomenal growth of OpenSky.
Don holds a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Economics and Management with a minor in Computer Science from Ithaca College. He and his wife, Tracey, have two children, Samantha and Zachary.
Ripi Singh
Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer
ripi@einsource.com
Ripi has more than 30 years of learning in product, process, and leadership in aerospace and defense, renewable energy and power, advanced manufacturing, healthcare and medical devices, information technology (IT), and consistent innovation. He helps organizations to cultivate more resourceful, resilient mindsets. From mentoring young minds to coaching business owners, from startups to growth companies, from commodities to futuristic technologies, he’s engaged in projects in Germany, India, Singapore, China, and the United States.
Prior to EinSource, Ripi was Director of R&D at Alstom Power (now General Electric), Advanced Technology Manager for United Technologies, and Chief Engineer at Karta Technologies, delivering advanced technologies on high-impact and leading-edge aviation and energy programs. He also researched aviation system-sustainment and life-extensions with industry and universities.
Before that, Ripi was a member of the Aerospace Engineering faculty at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India, researching materials fatigue and fracture mechanics for flight safety and contributing to projects for the US Navy and the EU. He was making working models of earthmoving machinery in middle school for science fairs and exhibitions in India before he was exposed to a calculator during his sophomore engineering studies.
Ripi has been won numerous national and corporate honors, authored nine books and more than 75 academic publications, given more than 250 lectures, earned two patents, and received other accolades. He won the President of India Cash Prize for outstanding research, the Calcutta Convention Award for excellence in Technical Education, a Tata Fellowship for research, and qualified for naturalized US citizenship as Outstanding Researcher with Extraordinary Ability.
He’s a US delegate to ISO 56000 on Innovation Management Guidance, Chair of NDE 4.0 for the American Society for Non-Destructive Testing, a member of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering, guest editor for Springer on NDE 4.0, and a member of industrial advisory boards for at the University of New Haven, the University of Hartford, Tsinghua University, and the International Association of Innovation Professionals. He holds BS, MS, and Ph.D. degrees in Aerospace Engineering, a post-doc from Georgia Tech, and an Executive MS in Business Strategy from RPI.
He and his wife, Anu Kaur, have one son, Amanjot, a practicing mechanical engineer, and a daughter-in-law, Jeevat Chhatwal, a Health and Benefits Consultant at Aon.
Mark O’Brien
Co-Founder and President
mark@einsource.com
An accomplished late-bloomer — and after a miserably failed attempt to be a rock superstar (you never heard him on the radio, did you?) — Mark finally got himself to college at age 28. After working part-time at The Hartford Insurance Group during his first year of school, The Hartford declined to put him on full-time for the summer. With the recommendation of one of his professors, he landed a freelance writing gig at what was then the Aetna Institute for Corporate Education, developing the manuscript for what became The Aetna Manual of Style.
On graduating from Trinity College in Hartford with a degree in English Literature, Mark took a position in the Personal Financial Security Division at Aetna. He parlayed that into a position in Field Operations & Sales at what was then The Travelers Employee Benefits Department.
When that department blew up, Mark went to work for a small public relations agency in Avon, Connecticut. From there, he earned a spot with a larger advertising and public relations agency in the same town. Finally, on March 1, 2004, Mark launched O’Brien Communications Group (OCG), a B2B brand-management and marketing communications firm with the intentions of doing good work and establishing trusting, long-term client relationships. At the time of EinSource’s founding, OCG had positioned nine of its client brands successfully enough to be acquired by other brands.
OCG’s work earned Mark three Telly Awards, three U.S. International Film & Video Awards, and a Harvey’s Outstanding Advertiser Award for a print campaign in Best’s Review. In addition, he’s a columnist for BIZCATALYST 360˚, co-founder of BizComics, a former Board member and interim Executive Director for Literacy Volunteer Valley Shore in Westbrook, Connecticut, and a fairly prolific author of other stuff.
Mark and his wife, Anne, have two sons, Sean and Quinn; two daughters-in-law, Lauren and Katie; four grandchildren — Evan, Maia, Nora, and Rory — one cat, Sammy; one dog, Eddie; and one chipmunk, Steve, who lives in the condo he made in the fountain on their front porch.