Brian Kushner

Brian Kushner is Leader of the Private Capital Advisory Services practice and co-leads the Activism, Aerospace & Defense (A&D) and the Technology industry practices. He has over 35 years of Board and C-level experience that include serving as Director, CEO and CRO of over 35 public and private telecom, media and technology (“TMT”) companies, including serving as the CEO of four telecom companies, two software companies and a defense contractor.

At FTI, Dr. Kushner has led over 50 engagements involving TMT, Defense, BPOs and manufacturing. These projects involved every aspect of corporate and C-suite performance and board  governance, from strategy and GTM planning, pricing and revenue enhancement, cost cutting, perpetual license to SaaS migration, ERP remediation, digital strategy and complex restructuring. He has bought or sold more than 25 companies and conducted diligence on more than 50 companies for private equity and hedge funds in financial, commercial, IT and operational diligence, revenue enhancement, cybersecurity, outsourcing, governance and SG&A reduction.

Previously he served as a Chair of the Audit Committee of Thryv, Inc. (NASDAQ: THRY), a small business-focused SaaS company; Audit Committee member of Zodiac Systems, LLC, a video software engineering portfolio company of One Equity Partners (sold in June 2020); and as Chair of the Audit Committee, Mudrick Capital Acquisition Corp, a SPAC formed in February 2018, which de-SPACed with Hycroft Mining in May 2020 (NASDAQ: HYMC). Prior board roles include Chair of the Remuneration Committee and Audit Committee member of Luxfer Holdings PLC (NYSE: LXFR); Chair of the Audit Committee of the re-organized EveryWare Global (now The Oneida Group, formerly NASDAQ:EVRY); as Lead Director of Damovo, PLC, an ultra-high reliability systems and software company (sold to Oakley, PLC); as Managing Member/Director and interim CEO of DLN Holdings, LLC, a defense contractor; Chair of the Innovative Companies in the Caribbean, a multi-island cable, telecom ILEC and mobile services provider (sold to ATNI); and as a Director of Headway Solutions, an IT staffing and training firm.

During the 2020 COVID lockdown, Dr. Kushner led/co-led the board oversight of the SG&A and other cost reductions and cash generation initiatives for the sidebar boards, achieving savings of 3 – 10% of revenues.  He was the Chief Restructuring Officer of Relativity Media, (two 363 asset sale transactions and additional sale). He served as interim CEO of DLN Holdings, an IT (cyber and cloud) and naval (ship and aerospace) engineering services contractor providing services to forward echelon US troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and military bases. He was the CEO/acting Chairman of Sage Telecom, a Texas CLEC which was sold to a strategic buyer in 2012. He led the turnaround of Sage from a loss to EBITDA of 18% of revenues in 9 months, reducing bad debt from over 11% to about two percent and monthly churn from over 7.5% to under 4% in the same time frame, reduced contact center costs by 33% while improving quality and first call resolution. At wine.com, he led the company by settling contentious litigation, resolving regulatory issues, mitigating credit card fraud and chargeback challenges, growing revenues, leading an IT systems modernization, cutting costs by 20% and resolving supplier problems. As CRO and CEO at Intira, a managed software and applications data center company, he brought the company to cash flow neutral in 60 days and closed a 363 sale to a strategic buyer.  Other engagements have included numerous company and secured lender assignments such as Sequa/Chromalloy, Blackbox, SolAero, Firefly, Vector Launch, Sotera Defense, Hunter Defense, Schafer Defense, Qualcomm, Nortel, Spansion, Isola, Outfront Media. He has been a testifying expert in over a dozen large matters, including for Northrop-Grumman in 2019.

Dr. Kushner co-founded CXO, L.L.C., which FTI acquired in 2008. He began his career at BDM International, a defense consulting firm, where after 10 years, he was Chief Scientist leading Advanced Technology, IT, turnarounds and all DARPA business. Dr. Kushner was the December 2014 Commencement Speaker for the University of Texas at Austin’s College of Natural Sciences and in 2018 he was inducted into the University of Texas at Austin Hall of Honor. He was the 1997 recipient of KPMG’s Information, Communications and Entertainment “Entrepreneur of the Year” award in Austin for Industry Leadership in Entrepreneurial Companies of Less Than 200 Employees.