The team behind Avance Global Advisors is built for the moments when growth starts to strain the business.
Our team brings together experienced operators across operations, finance, organizational change, data, technology, compliance, and execution. We are not here to impress you with titles alone. We are here to help leadership teams solve the problems that show up when growth outpaces structure.
What kind of team this is
Operator-led, not slide-led
Cross-functional by design
Built for executive-level problems
Hands-on enough to move from diagnosis to follow-through
This is not a team of narrow specialists working in isolation.
The hardest business problems do not stay neatly inside one function. They show up across operations, finance, people, systems, reporting, and leadership cadence at the same time. That is why Avance Global Advisors is built as an integrated team of senior operators who can see across the business, not just inside one silo.
What buyers usually want to know about the team
Meet the team through the problems they help solve.
Each team member brings deep experience, but the real value is how that experience maps to the moments when a business needs clarity, structure, better decisions, and stronger execution.
Juan Brea
Juan helps leadership teams make sense of the business when growth, finance, operations, and decision-making all start pulling against each other at once.
- The business is growing, but the wheels feel wobbly
- Leadership needs stronger financial and operational discipline
- A founder or CEO needs executive-level support without a full-time build-out
- The company needs clearer board, investor, or executive reporting
Juan brings more than two decades of experience across financial management, operational strategy, and organizational leadership, including leadership roles at American Express, six years as COO of HealthCorps, and COO/CFO experience at Gulliver's Gate.
Lisbeth Dereaux
Lisbeth helps founders and leadership teams turn strategy into execution when the real issue is not ambition, it is the infrastructure behind growth.
- Roles are blurry and accountability is inconsistent
- The team is working hard, but execution still feels messy
- Leadership needs better operational design and follow-through
- The business needs scalable systems behind growth
Lisbeth works closely with founders and leadership teams on operational design, financial visibility, team alignment, and scalable systems. Her background spans legal, media, fashion, consumer goods, and cross-functional transformation work.
Moin Haque
Moin helps leadership teams bring more order to data, analytics, AI, and enterprise technology when the business needs better visibility and a smarter modernization path.
- Data is fragmented and hard to trust
- Leadership wants better analytics and AI progress
- The business needs more clarity around enterprise data and systems
- Technology needs to support decisions, not just exist in the background
Moin is a technology and data leader who serves as Head of Enterprise Data, Analytics, and AI at IFF and brings deep experience in data, analytics, and enterprise modernization.
Bob Franco
Bob helps organizations when the real problem is not just process, but the structural and leadership conflicts underneath the process.
- Strategy is clear, but the organization is not aligned to deliver it
- Leaders are working from conflicting assumptions
- Change is stalling because structure, process, and people are out of sync
- Accountability and capability need to be rebuilt together
Bob brings global HR leadership experience from organizations including American Express, Novartis, and ADP, and contributes to Avance as a change architect focused on translating strategy into aligned organizational capabilities, processes, competencies, and change plans.
Karen Buonocore
Karen helps organizations strengthen leadership, communication, programs, and operating discipline in environments where mission, people, and execution all need to work together.
- Leadership communication is inconsistent
- Programs or teams need stronger structure
- Growth requires better planning and execution discipline
- Mission-driven work needs operational maturity behind it
Karen brings executive experience across nonprofit, education, health, wellness, and for-profit organizations, with a background that includes work with the Clinton Foundation, HealthCorps, Girls, Inc., Deloitte, and Gulliver's Gate.
Rodolfo Machuca, PhD
Rodolfo helps organizations modernize technology responsibly when security, governance, cybersecurity, and digital transformation all need to move together.
- Security concerns are slowing modernization
- The business needs stronger digital governance
- Technology change needs to happen without increasing exposure
- Cybersecurity and transformation need to be addressed together
Rodolfo brings deep expertise in cybersecurity, digital transformation, information governance, AI, cloud migration, and nonprofit digital modernization.
Yameen Sarwar
Yameen helps organizations bring more discipline to finance operations, system modernization, and cross-functional execution where global complexity and process clarity both matter.
- Finance operations need to scale more cleanly
- Systems and processes need modernization
- Risk and performance need tighter operational control
- Global finance execution is creating drag
Yameen brings expertise in global finance operations, system modernization, financial planning, and risk management, and also played a key role in rapidly converting the firm's legacy web presence into the current Avance site.
Why this team structure matters for clients
Most business issues do not stay neatly in one lane. A workflow problem can turn into a reporting problem. A reporting problem can expose an accountability problem. A technology problem can reveal a leadership or process problem. The value of Avance Global Advisors is that the team can look across those lines without losing sight of what the business needs most right now.
Cross-functional pattern recognition
Senior-level judgment across multiple business functions
Stronger fit for issues that span operations, finance, people, and technology
Ability to start with one problem and see the system around it
How clients experience the team
Clients do not need a parade of titles. They need the right people brought into the right conversation at the right time.
A senior team that understands executive pressure
The ability to work across business and technical language
Thoughtful collaboration with internal teams
More depth than a solo advisor, with less bloat than a traditional consulting firm
What this team is built to help leadership do.
- See the real issue more clearly
- Move faster without forcing a giant commitment
- Strengthen systems without undermining internal leaders
- Improve execution, reporting, accountability, and decision-making
- Build more operating leverage into the business
Frequently asked before reaching out
Is Avance Global Advisors led by operators or consultants?
Avance Global Advisors is operator-led. The team brings senior experience across finance, operations, organizational leadership, data, technology, and execution, and is built to bridge strategy to action.
Will we work with one person or a broader team?
That depends on the problem. Some engagements center around one senior lead. Others benefit from bringing in additional expertise across operations, finance, people, technology, or change, depending on what the business actually needs.
Will bringing in Avance undermine our internal team?
No. The team’s posture is to build on what is already working, surface gaps clearly, and help internal leaders look stronger by improving the system around them.
Why does the team matter so much in this kind of work?
Because many of the issues Avance solves are cross-functional. Having the right mix of operating, financial, organizational, and technical judgment helps leadership teams move faster and with more confidence.
If you are deciding whether these are the people you want in the room, that is the right question.
Avance Global Advisors is built for leadership teams that need real experience, practical judgment, and follow-through when the business is under strain.