Dr. Carlisle is a senior advisor to CEOs, Boards and Private Equity investors, providing turnaround guidance and management, risk assessment, financial deconstruction, due diligence, M&A and investment advice. He brings to each relationship an exceptional ability for holistic, creative and goal-focused thinking – plus a wealth of problem solving experience in both global and start-up companies. 

Jim has conducted strategy and risk assessment projects for CEOs and division presidents of more than a dozen Fortune 500 companies. He has led over $20M in consulting engagements for the top management at Apple, Arbitron, Armco, Avon, Chase, Chrysler, Credit Suisse, CSX, Dun & Bradstreet, Ford Motor Company, GTE, Grid, Hearst, HEB, ITT, Johnson & Johnson, Schering, SkyChefs, Sprint, Unilever, US Army, US West, Westinghouse, and Xerox. 

A serial entrepreneur, Jim founded, grew and sold three high-tech startups. His most recent startup provided marketing analytics to Fortune 500 companies, such as Ford, Hearst, Sprint, and AC Nielsen. It merged with three other companies to form THINK New Ideas, one of the first and largest interactive marketing companies of the dotcom era. After a successful IPO, THINK grew over 100% annually for three years, before being acquired for $350 M. After selling his last shares in January 2000, Jim has devoted full time to Private Equity investing and CEO consulting.

Dr. Carlisle has worked for the RAND Corporation, The Wharton School, Lexis and a DARPA-funded think tank. Jim has taught at Yale and USC; developed and spoken at executive training seminars for IBM, DEC, and Xerox; published articles and a technical book; and spoken at more than a hundred executive retreats and conferences.

Jack is a recognized expert in the areas of telecommunications and corporate governance.  He is a results-driven, inspirational executive with a proven track record of financial and operational accomplishments encompassing Initial Public Offerings (IPOs), Strategic Spins, Sales, Marketing, Operations, IT, Strategic Planning, Finance, Business Development, Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) and Board of Directors leadership.

Jack is a member of the Apex CoVantage Board of Directors, a private global process outsourcing concern.  In addition to his role on the Board of Directors, Jack provides Strategic Mentoring and Executive Coaching Services to Apex owners and senior officers.  He is also a member of the Board of Directors and Chairman of the Compensation Committee of Centennial Communications Corporation (NASDAQ: CYCL), a provider of regional wireless and integrated communications services. Jack was formerly Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chairman of the Nominating and Governance Committee of Idearc Media (NYSE: IAR), home to Superpages.com and publisher of the Verizon Yellow Pages. He was also formerly a member of the Board of Directors of the United States Telecom Association.

Previously, he was interim Chief Executive Officer and a senior consultant to Connexion Technologies, a fiber-optic amenity company that builds and operates entertainment and communications networks coast to coast. Jack was also a senior consultant to Windstream Corporation (NYSE: WIN), a 3 million access line S&P 500 telecommunications company. Prior to these roles, He was Chief Executive Officer and President and a member of the Board of Directors of Valor Communications Group, Inc. (NYSE: VCG), a 500,000 access line telecommunications company he took public in 2005 and later merged with the wireline business of Alltel to form Windstream Corporation in an $11 billion dollar transaction. Prior to Valor, he spent 23 years at Cincinnati Bell Inc., serving in various positions including: President, Cincinnati Bell Telephone Company; General Manager – Consumer Markets; and President and Chief Executive Officer of CBD, Cincinnati Bell’s directory subsidiary.

Dr. Shah is a nationally-recognized leader in the high-technology sector, having served as CTO of Alcatel North America and as a CEO advisor providing corporate business strategy, strategic partnering and M&A due diligence. As co-founder of Timmaron Capital Advisors, he brings more than twenty years of experience in the telecommunications, computer, semiconductor and laser industries.  

He is highly regarded for his expertise in conceptualization, analysis and synthesis of business and technology issues for operations located in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.  He has a proven track record in leading technology and product development, product rollout, process and performance improvement, and implementation into manufacturing.

In 2005 Rajiv founded indusLotus Group, which provided high-level consulting to private equity firms and Wall Street bankers.   In 2007 he was engaged by Cerberus Capital Management, to perform the due diligence and advise them on a $50 B transaction involving the acquisition and privatization of Bell Canada. He advised the top management of Commscope Inc. on a strategy for the acquisition of $ 2.6 B Andrew Corp, which was executed in 2007. In 2006, Rajiv advised the top management of Ericsson on business and product strategy after their acquisition of Marconi. In 2005, he served as an external consultant to McKinsey & Co on three separate engagements.

Rajiv has been an external consultant to Goldman Sachs, Vantage Marketplace LLC, and is a Council Member on the Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG). He has also been an external consultant to several other private equity firms – for example, London-based Technology Private Equity arm of Nomura Securities, Silver Lake Partners, Columbus Hill Capital Management, and others.

Rajiv served as CTO for Alcatel North America, a $2B subsidiary of Paris-based, $15B Alcatel Inc, as VP of Research and Network Strategy and was the VP in charge of the Corporate Center for Research & Innovation in the US for four years. He held senior management positions at MCI Worldcom for five years, where he led Network Architecture and Design, Wireless Technology Strategy and was a key member on a team involved in half-a-dozen corporate-level M&A activities.

Dr. Shah was at Texas Instruments for seventeen years in various capacities and in various functional areas ranging from R&D to manufacturing to business start-up to business strategy and business development. He was also the General Chair for Globecom 2004 and chaired sessions at the Supercomm for the International Engineering Consortium (IEC) from 2001 through 2004.

Since 2005 Rajiv has also been a Mentor for STARTech, an Early Venture Funding firm, and an Evaluator and Mentor for the North Texas Regional Commercialization and Innovation Center (NTxRCIC) for the Texas Emerging Technologies Fund (TETF) through the last 12 rounds.   He has advised a number of start-ups and serves on the advisory boards of several early stage companies in emerging areas, such as Energy, Clean Water, Low-cost Housing, and Nano- and Bio- technology. He was an advisor to the Provost and VP of Research at SMU on technology commercialization issues, has chaired the Industrial Advisory Boards at UT Dallas and SMU, and was a member of the Engineering Executive Board at SMU for six years.

Since 2008 Dr. Shah is a Clinical Professor with the School of Management, at the University of Texas at Dallas, and a member of the Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (IIE), and teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurial Strategy, Corporate Venturing, Entrepreneurial Experience, and Product and Technology Management. He is also the Program Director for a new Executive Education Program being launched at UT Dallas, Systems Engineering and Management (SEM), offered jointly between the School of Management and the School of Engineering and Computer Science, and directed towards corporate employees, providing a synthesis of Business and Advanced Systems Engineering education. He is also a Faculty Advisor at UT Dallas for a global student organization called SIFE, Students in Free Enterprise, where students lend their business expertise to help non-profit community organizations, and has been engaged in working with about dozen service partner organizations in the Dallas area. He has also served as the Program Committee Chair for the 15-year anniversary celebration conference, co-hosted by UT Dallas, of the Society for Design and Process Science (SDPS) – a conference with the theme of Transformative Systems for Trans-disciplinary Synthesis of Business, Science and Engineering.

Rajiv has an MS and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, specializing in Applied Physics, from Rice University, was on the Faculty of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) as Dr. Chaim Weizmann Post Doctoral Research Fellow, has over 50 publications, and 25 issued patents, and also has an Executive MBA from SMU. He got his B.Sc. in physics, mathematics and statistics from the University of Pune in India.
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