Why GROWTHBRIDGE?
GROWTHBRIDGE Helps Convert
Strategic Growth Ambitions into Achievements
In tailoring our
tested approach and unique ‘toolkit’,
GROWTHBRIDGE’s client advisory and support functions are led by Managing Principal Bill Hawkins
For over 25 years Bill has led the successful planning and execution of top-priority growth and development initiatives in the private- and public sectors, in the process acquiring a unique corporate advisory perspective, strategic growth-oriented knowledge-base and operational capability-set.
Over the course of Bill’s experience, the same constraint on development was repeatedly observed: companies had the strategic ambition, need and potential to grow and develop, but internally lacked the planning and execution capability to make it happen while simultaneously maintaining their current business operations.
The executive team members of these companies were smart and highly-capable, but their capacities were necessarily focused on successfully operating the business in its ‘present-day’ form. Strategic growth and development of the enterprise was, at best, managed ‘off the side of the desk’ of the owner or one of the executive team members, with results that inevitably were falling far short of actual potential.
GROWTHBRIDGE was founded to address this constraint and help client firms achieve their growth ambitions by efficiently supplying the specialized capabilities – strategic corporate development planning and origination skills, experience-backed knowledge, and network with global reach and relationship-building capacity – that are in such short-supply.
GROWTHBRIDGE’S service capabilities include much more than strategic growth planning and ongoing advisory. Our services enable clients to cost-effectively launch and implement strategic growth initiatives with the support of a unique suite of strategic corporate development planning and execution capabilities, all while helping current executive team members maintain a primary focus on serving existing local demand.
About Bill Hawkins
Managing Principal of Growthbridge
About Bill Hawkins
Managing Principal of Growthbridge
Prior to founding GROWTHBRIDGE Bill led, first as Chief Operating Officer and then as President, growth planning across a Canada-based group enterprise comprised of a regulated Property & Casualty insurer and brokerage, and unregulated provider of risk-management and human capital services.
As Managing Director and member of the Investment and Senior Management committees of a private investment company with varied agri-food holdings, global sales operations and manufacturing in North America and Europe, Bill led the planning, start-up and initial-stage development of a division targeting growth markets in southeast Asia.
Via senior public sector roles including Principal Secretary (Deputy Chief of Staff) to Canada’s Prime Minister and Chief of Staff to Canada’s Minister of International Trade and Asia-Pacific Gateway, Bill was deeply involved for more than 5 years (2010-2015) in the planning, management and related diplomacy of Government of Canada’s record-setting conclusion of free-trade agreements with 45 nations – including with the European Union, Korea and the 11-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership bloc (including Japan, Australia, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, New Zealand, Brunei, Chile, Peru and Mexico) – and deepening of ties with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN, which includes Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, etc.…).
Bill also advised private-sector clients through the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (2017-18) and the preparations and commencement of the ongoing Canada-ASEAN and Canada-Indonesia FTA negotiations.
Based with his family in Toronto, Canada, Bill actively maintains a focus on trade and investment opportunities, and a wide-ranging international network.