A Central Illinois native delivering value on a global scale, taking time to enjoy his opportunities
By Mathew DeFreitas
PEORIA — At CGN Global, we focus on the continued growth of our business and our clients, but how we get there starts with our team members and their growth in life and profession.
In a little over 3 years since joining CGN, Manager, Dan Koth has grown personally and professionally, delivered projects with solid execution, collaboratively assisted clients, and delivered on the innovative goals set in front of him. It looks like nothing can slow him down.
When you look at Koth’s track record, you can see an established growth path, all the way back to his days in college.
A native of Bloomington, Illinois, University of Illinois graduate, and one of three brothers, Dan stood out immediately following college graduation.
With a degree in Industrial & Systems Engineering, Koth made his way to ABP Induction, in the Greater Milwaukee, Wisconsin area, as a project manager. Koth started out on a contract basis and after a short time was brought on board full-time.
In 2008, the recession hit America. The company had to downsize, and it let go of about half of its engineering department. He was one of the employees retained. “They liked my work so they kept me,” Koth said. “It confirms that you’re delivering value.”
The value that Koth was providing led to a pretty exciting next step for his career.
“Part of the reason I was kept, was because I was selected to work on a project with an office that we had in Dortmund, Germany,” Koth explained.
Koth spent 3 months in Germany, a part of the world he had never seen in person.
“I went to a few of the bigger places, Hamburg, Berlin, in northern Germany, and then went to Copenhagen (Denmark), and Amsterdam,” said Koth. “My favorite city was Hamburg. It was a really cool city. Copenhagen was really nice as well. It was a very clean city.”
As Koth had never been to Europe, one would imagine a bit of a language barrier would come into play. However, Koth was made right at home with English speaking people assisting him along the way.
“The company gave me the German Rosetta Stone, so I was okay,” Koth jokes.
While Koth had a wonderful time overseas, the trip was not all fun and games. During his time there he was responsible for learning a product line developed in Germany, to replicate the production process in America.
Koth spent over 4 years at ABP, before moving on to business school.
Koth graduated in 2014 from DePaul University, with a Master’s degree in Business Administration, focusing in Leadership & Change Management; and Business Strategy.
As Koth’s vision of the overall business value chain grew, he began to look for ways to meld his knowledge and experience into another great job. This led him to consulting, more specifically CGN Global.
“Through the interview process, meeting people in the office, I liked everyone that I met, including the culture of the company,” Koth described. “Part of what sold me though was the type of work that the company does. Developing projects that are transformational for customers, not just working on incremental cost savings in a specific area, but taking the high-level view, and working with top executives of larger businesses that have high level challenges. That to me was the type of consulting work I was interested in.”
For Koth, one of those “real consulting work” moments came when a global Fortune 100 heavy manufacturer wanted to grow its business, by launching a new product line.
“(Our client) was already selling semi tractors, the type to be built out as dump trucks, or cement mixers,” Koth explained. “(Our client) had a contract manufacturing agreement with another truck manufacturer to create branded trucks, but they decided to bring it in-house. So our client was undergoing a massive project to identify what IP they were purchasing from the other company, importing the information into our client’s system and designing out the full manufacturing processes.”
Koth really enjoyed the project due to the large scale, complexity of company specifications, and starting the manufacturing process from scratch.
“We were tied pretty closely to top management,” Koth said. “So it was interesting to see how the top managers handled the planning and handled the structure of the acquisition to get everything done.”
While Koth is fascinated by his work, when it comes to time outside of the office, he brings an innovative touch to that as well.
Koth resides in downtown Chicago, Illinois, living just a five minute walk from the lake front. Calling downtown Chicago home gives a person many opportunities for creative experiences. One of Koth’s favorite experiences was learning to sail on Lake Michigan for a summer.
“We (friends and himself) got a timeshare on a sailboat on Lake Michigan. We’d take it out in the evenings and it was amazing to see the skyline lit up at sunset.”
Koth also enjoys trips to the golf course, playing soccer, and cheering on the multiple professional Chicago sports franchises.
One of his most recent creative experiences involved taking a helicopter tour with his girlfriend, over 1000 feet above the city, taking in all the sites of the city from a new angle.
“It was great,” Koth explained. “They flew up and down the lakefront. At one point, you could look down into Wrigley Field and see the cranes and earthmoving machines being used for the stadium renovations. Looking out over the city was beautiful. It was a really cool experience.”
While there are many ways to grow professionally and personally, Dan seems to have an innovative path established, leading to what is a pretty impressive future. The CGN Global team is certainly impressed.
