About Us: Advisory Board

We are proud to have created a stellar Advisory Board that regularly provides expert vision, commentary and advice to both Outward Insights consultants and our clients.

Highly communicative and collaborative, each Advisory Board member is a leader in his/her respective field and helps keep us current on industry developments and best-practices. For more insight on their backgrounds, click on the names below.

Bill Fiora

Bill Fiora founded Outward Insights in 2001 and served as a partner in the firm until 2007.  He has worked with leading companies to improve early warning and decision-making, and is a recognized expert in competitive intelligence and scenario planning.  Bill has more than 14 years of experience as a competitive intelligence practitioner and consultant, having worked at Deloitte Consulting, Zefer, and The Futures Group.  Bill currently leads the competitive intelligence function at Nixon Peabody LLP, one of the largest multipractice law firms in the United States, with offices in sixteen cities and approximately seven hundred attorneys collaborating across twenty-five major practice areas.

Bill has devoted considerable time to developing and delivering courses and seminars that advance the study of intelligence and strategy.  He co-developed two courses for the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals' (SCIP)  Competitive Intelligence Institute, and regularly lectures at SCIP national, European, and local chapter conferences.  He is also a former adjunct professor at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, where he taught at the Masters degree level.

Prior to launching his consulting career, Bill spent six years as an analyst at the US Central Intelligence Agency.  He holds a Master of Arts degree in International Affairs from Columbia University, and a Bachelor or Arts degree from Connecticut College.  He is a member of the Association for Strategic Planning, and the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals, where he serves as a member of the Executive Board of Directors.

Liam Fahey

Liam Fahey is a partner in Leadership Forum Inc., and Adjunct Professor of Strategic Management at Babson College.  Previously, he taught at Northwestern University's J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management and at Boston University. He holds a Ph.D. degree from the University of Pittsburgh and M.B.S. and B. Comm. degrees from University College Dublin, Ireland.

Professor Fahey's area of specialization is Strategic Management.  His research and teaching center on competitive strategy, macro environmental and competitor analysis, with a special emphasis on linking strategy, scenarios, and knowledge.  His research has appeared in such publications as Strategic Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Business Strategy, Long Range Planning, California Management Review, Journal of Management, Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, American Journal of Small Business, and Harvard Business Review.

He is the author or editor of eight books and over forty articles or book chapters.  His most recent books include: Learning from the Future: Competitive Foresight Scenarios (1988), Competitors: Outwitting, Outmaneuvering and Outperforming (1999), and The Portable MBA in Strategy(2nd ed, 2001).  He served as editor of Planning Review from January 1987 to June 1995. For ten years, he served as Co-Chairperson of The Strategic Leadership Forum's annual strategic management conference.

Professor Fahey has received awards for his research, teaching, and professional activity.  His Ph.D. dissertation was awarded the A.T. Kearney "Certification of Distinction" by the Academy of Management.  A (co-authored) Journal of Marketing article received that publication's 1998 awards for best contribution to marketing theory and for the best contribution to marketing practice.  He was voted "Outstanding Teacher of the Year" by the Kellogg School's students.  He received the Meritorious Award for Distinguished Service from the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals in 1990.

Professor Fahey consulted with various organizations including AstraZeneca, AT&T, Baxter, Emerson Electric, GE, General Motors, Hartmarx, Honeywell, IBM, Lucent, 3M, Marriott Hotels, Motorola, Nortel, P&G, Pfizer, Schering-Plough, Texas Instruments, USG, US West and Whirlpool.  He has also made presentations in many executive education and development programs sponsored by industry and trade associations, consulting firms, universities, and management education institutions in the U.S., Asia, Australia, and Europe, including Ernst and Young, Information Data Search, the University of Pittsburgh, University of Michigan, Penn State University, Wharton, University of Texas at Austin, Management Center Europe, and the Irish Management Institute.

Martha Culver

Martha has over ten years of experience in competitive intelligence, scenario-based early warning, competitive strategy, and project management.  She has worked as both a consultant and a practitioner of competitor and market intelligence.  In her role as a CI and strategy consultant, she worked with Fortune 500 corporations across a variety of industries, including pharmaceuticals, financial services, manufacturing, consumer products, and information technology.  She has also worked on several strategy projects for agencies of the federal government.  Martha was formerly a Director of Consulting Services at Fuld & Company, a project manager at Case Strategy LLC (a strategy consulting start-up), a senior consultant for Deloitte Consulting and The Futures Group, and a project manager in higher education and international development.  She is currently a Senior Manager in Deloitte's Market and Competitive Intelligence Group.

Bill Weber

Bill is immediate past Executive Director of the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals, a global professional society headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia USA.  Mr. Weber has had a progressive and varied career as an attorney, management consultant and association chief executive. Prior to SCIP, he served as President and CEO of the Farm Credit Council, the trade organization of the $75 billion Farm Credit System, providing credit and related services to U.S. agribusiness.  Bill is a former partner in Furash & Company, a national, Washington-based consulting firm specializing in strategic planning and management consulting for the financial services industry.  Previously, he was a partner in the Washington office of the Boston-based law firm of Sullivan & Worcester. He is a former counsel of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee and served as Special Assistant to the Undersecretary for Monetary Affairs of the U.S. Treasury.  He holds an undergraduate degree in economics and a law degree from the University of Michigan.

Robin Kirkby

Robin has fifteen years experience as a practitioner and consultant in competitive intelligence and is one of the founders of the profession in Europe.  During this time, he has worked as a consultant to create over 20 companies' insight capabilities by focusing on the people, process, technology, and content that add value to intelligence and knowledge in an organization.  He is the Director of Strategic Intelligence at Altana Pharma, the German mid-market pharmaceutical company.  He established the intelligence capability within Altana and provides the strategic insight to grow the firm against direct and indirect competition.  He raised the awareness of competition within Altana and embedded the processes to use insight for decision-making in the firm.