Transforming Organizations. Improving Results.

Jude Rake

Founder & Principal

Jude Rake launched JDR Growth Partners in 2014 to help leaders, boards of directors, and family business owners achieve improved results and sustainable growth. Before founding JDR, Jude served in multiple C-level roles including CEO for fifteen years. In each of these roles he built and led successful leadership teams that fueled significant improvements in workforce engagement, collaboration, accountability, and results. He has been recognized for leadership, creativity and marketing excellence including Clio, Mobius, and Effie awards, and he received the Burnham award for innovation. He also was named a Top 100 Marketer twice by Advertising Age.

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Jude has a 38-year track record of building businesses to create economic value, from well known companies such as Clorox, PepsiCo, and SC Johnson, to smaller family owned and private equity-backed businesses such as Fellowes and Recycled Paper Greetings. Jude is an independent board director at The Wall Family Enterprise where he serves as Chair of the Compensation & Human Capital Management Committee. He also serves on the Board of Directors of A Safe Place, a center for the prevention of domestic violence. Jude was recognized by Purdue University with an Alumni Achievement Award. He holds a Bachelors degree in Civil Engineering from Purdue, and he received an MBA from The Booth School of Business at The University of Chicago.

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STRATEGY, EXECUTION & GOVERNANCE

Jude partners with business leaders and their teams to help them articulate and align on a collective vision of success, build a strategic plan to make it reality, and operationalize the plan. He uses a collaborative planning process that fuels heightened levels of teamwork, workforce engagement, and accountability. Jude also works with family owners and boards to clarify the owners' dreams for the future, provide direction to the CEO and leadership team, and ensure effective governance structures and processes.

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LEADERSHIP & CULTURE

Jude is the author of The Bridge to Growth, How Servant Leaders Achieve Better Results, And Why It Matters Now More Than Ever, in which he provides a blueprint of nine proven leadership principles he used to improve the financial performance of several businesses by moving workforces from disengaged to enthusiastically committed to winning. It's packed with useful tools and tips, and each leadership principle is articulated using real-world success models that bring each principle to life. He is a highly rated keynote speaker on the topics of leadership, strategy, high performance teams, and culture.

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PERSPECTIVE

Jude connects with leaders at all levels of any organization, leveraging his blue-collar roots, his sports and coaching background, and his breadth of experience across a wide range of industries and corporate functions from factory line worker, engineer, and marketer to CEO and Board Director. His approach, his workshops, and his speeches are dynamic, engaging and actionable.

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OFF DUTY

Jude treasures time with his family, and he loves sports, especially triathlons. Since discovering the sport in 1983, he has consistently ranked in the top 10% of his age group. In his community, Jude is committed to paying forward the mentoring he received earlier in his life by coaching youth athletics and helping kids navigate and recover from domestic violence - he is a certified domestic violence professional.