The City-County Observer Introduces Guest Columnist, Jesse Kauffman  The Lead Consultant, “Everyday Business Resilience Group”
In February of 2020, Jess Kauffman founded “Everyday Business Resilience Group” (EBRG) in partnership with his wife, Josi, with the mission to empower small businesses to be prepared, self-sufficient, and to thrive in the face of the unexpected.Â
His goal with the upcoming columns is to share learnings, tools, and processes with City-County Observer readers that will hopefully be helpful to your own businesses and organizations so that he can all make the Tri-State a more resilient community.
As EBRG kicked off at the beginning of 2020, Jess had an inkling that the spreading COVID-19 virus would have some level of impact on businesses around the world, but after having worked through the pandemic’s spread, He wishes he had started his businesses years ago to have been able to help more businesses be prepared for just such an event. Having seen how the pandemic, and the regulatory and economic responses to the pandemic, have impacted businesses in the Tri-State, there’s no better time than the present to help local businesses and organizations recover and grow in the wake of the changes COVID has affected on our community.
While Jess is a mechanical engineer by degree, he had the good fortune in his 17+ year career to work across a wide range of industries and business areas. It’s this comprehensive experience across all aspects of business that “Everyday Business Resilience Group” will strive to bring your business or organization useful information that will be helpful to their development. Examples of previous career successes that he will draw from to share in this column are:
- Business Continuity and Crisis Management Planning: He’s developed and executed highly effective global corporate business continuity processes and crisis management training for executive leadership teams and large-scale nutrition and pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities with Mead Johnson Nutrition and AstraZeneca.
- Project Management: He’s been the project manager for many global large-scale new product innovations, on schedule and on budget, for Mead Johnson Nutrition.
- Capital Strategic Planning and Execution: Jess owned the $35 million capital planning process and leading-edge innovative systems management development for Mead Johnson’s North American manufacturing supply chain network.
- Product Development: He executed R&D new product design for leading companies in the appliance and plastics industries, including Whirlpool, Gladiator, Amana, Sub Zero, GE, and more.
- Manufacturing and Maintenance Operations: Mr. Kauffman led a high-performing pharmaceutical manufacturing maintenance group management for 24×7 manufacturing operations with AstraZeneca.
Additionally, Jess is a car and motorcycle enthusiast, an amateur photographer, and a small-scale hay farmer. As a proud father, he volunteers as a youth basketball coach and Cub Scout leader. He also actively support Tri-State businesses, as an E-REP Ambassador and an active member in multiple area networking groups.
Finally, Jess’s initial focus for this column will be a 3 part series on turn-around management for businesses, to look at how to make big changes to an existing business to be prepared for growth. He will be published twice each month.  He looks forward to helping the Tri-State become more resilient, and if you have any questions or suggestions for topics to cover in the future, he encourages you to reach out to him and share your thoughts.
Footnote: If you have any questions please contact Jesse at 812-568-0515 or jesse.kauffman@everydaybusinessresilience.com
