Danny Ertel Email & Phone Number

Greater Boston Area

The fluctuating marketplace, technology, and a drive to outperform the competition present extraordinary challenges to industry today.As a founding partner of Vantage Partners, I provide thought leadership and act as a trusted advisor to senior executives at the world’s leading companies and professional service firms on how to effectively negotiate and manage their top client or partner relationships.My insight and experience are based on 30+ years of advising companies and governments in matters of:⇨ Negotiating complex deals⇨ Getting new strategic relationships off on the right foot⇨ Remediating damaged partnerships⇨ Constructively engaging critical stakeholdersSpecifically, I have:► Advised on & facilitated remediation of dozens of $500M to $1B+ outsourcing relationships, resolving long-standing economic disputes, reengineering governance models and critical processes, and putting the working relationship back on track.►Assisted negotiation teams facing dramatic power imbalances and bet-the-company stakes to achieve:✔ Material risk reduction and diversification in a $5B sole source supplier relationship✔ Quadrupling a 9-digit revenue stream from a partnership with an Internet giant✔ Securing necessary rights from a private investor to facilitate strategic privatization of a national mining companyVantage provides consulting and training to a wide variety of global enterprises that include all top four audit and accounting firms; five of the world’s top law firms, and five of the top ten IT and BPO companies.It’s deeply satisfying to help clients find the non-intuitive solutions that take them from a zero-sum, adversarial problem with key clients, strategic suppliers and business partners to an artful balance of cooperation and competition that benefits everyone.My proudest accomplishment is helping build Vantage to what it is today. It’s a legacy that will outlast and outlive its founders.Please see the multimedia below to learn more.

Ann Arbor, Michigan

Following the merger of Vantage Technologies into Janeeva, I served on the board and provided oversight. As an expert in the field, I was the sounding board to management and provided insight into what outsourcing providers and clients both needed, and also pathways to the market. My time on the board provided me an opportunity to take a more birds-eye view of the business, recognize strategic leverage points without worrying as much about short-term KPIs, and provide guidance to management.Headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the company delivered a vendor management software platform, Janeeva Assurance. The technology offered functionality for managing outsourcing relationships and covered:⇨ Performance trends and financial management⇨ SLA and compliance management⇨ Change control management⇨ Issue management⇨ Analysis and reportingJaneeva’s greatest accomplishment was providing tools for governance, performance and change management, and to manage critical relationships, that many blue-chip companies and government entities were unable to find in the market or build themselves. The company wound down in 2018.

Greater Boston Area

As CEO of Vantage Technologies, I led an organization and set strategy and direction for teams managed by the CTO, VP -Innovation and VP - Engineering. Our purpose was to create software tools to support enterprise level strategic relationship management, which encompassed alliances, outsourcing and relationship building.We were a privately held start-up that capitalized on Vantage Partners IP to create more scalable tools for enterprise use. The two most significant challenges were:► Building a product business within a services organization► A need to partner with existing and new clients to define our market and productDeveloping the product required a strong technical and business vision, and confidence to push back when engineers said it couldn’t be done or client teams pushed too far. It also required the ability to abstract complex, “soft” tools and methods, and turn them into templates and processes so they could be automated and made data-driven and smarter.In 2006, Vantage Technologies sold off a number of software assets and then merged the remainder of the company into another small start-up, Janeeva, Inc

Greater Boston Area

Conflict Management, Inc. was a predecessor firm to Vantage Partners and an offshoot of the Harvard Negotiation Project. As a senior researcher at HNP, I brought our discipline and our insights to Conflict Management, Inc. and made them relevant to our commercial clients.As a Partner at Conflict Management Inc., I reported to the Managing Partner, developing and handling client relationships and leading engagements. I ran the Latin America practice with a divided responsibility between the private and public sectors. Given the close connections between public and private in the region, the lessons learned and the relationships developed in one sector were immediately relevant in the other. It was an exciting practice to manage. Working at the grassroots level with community organizers, at the top of private and state-owned companies, and with rebel leaders to resolve conflict in the region, we:► Helped state-owned companies modernize and find capital► Settled public and private disputes in Columbia and Peru► Assisted global multinational companies establish footprints in the country► Developed relationships with heads of state and cabinet ministers► Guided government teams through complex negotiations with private sector partnersMy team’s greatest accomplishment was our involvement in the Salvadorian peace accord, where we worked with the Cristiani government and the FMLN leadership to help end the deadly 12-year civil war. Operating in the background with both rebel leaders and government negotiators, we supported each group, helping them change the way they perceived one another and figuring out ways to bring them together.

Reporting to the Managing Partner, I provided legal advice and counsel to the firm’s clients.My time as an attorney laid the path to a very rewarding career in negotiating and conflict management. It is where learned what it meant to be a professional advisor and how to develop a counseling relationship with a client and guide them through a transaction.My legal background is also where I developed the rigorous thinking and analytic mindset that is critical to effective collaboration and problem-solving in public and private spaces, and how to approach new areas where the regulations aren’t clear.Even before my time at Debevoise, I had the opportunity to learn from the best the legal profession has to offer: Chief Judge Patricia M. Wald, of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, and Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the US Supreme Court, both of whom I worked for as a law clerk. From Judge Wald, I learned to bring passion and energy to rigorous legal analysis and to thinking about rules and systems and how they impact the development of law and policy. From Justice Blackmun, I learned how to blend empathy and caring for the real lives and perspectives of those on both sides of a dispute, with that same rigor and analysis of the Constitution and our legal system.Taking what I’d learned from the legal profession, combined with a passion for critical analysis and relationship building, I left the practice to explore other opportunities.

Juris Doctor, Law

Activities and Societies: Magna cum laude & Managing Editor of the Harvard Law Review

Bachelors Degree, A.B. Social Studies

Activities and Societies: Magna cum laude