Tauber Set the Course for a Full-Circle Career

Geoffrey Phillips, MBA, ’98, serves with Anuj Gupta as co-chairman of the Tauber Scholarship Committee. Phillips leads Product Development for NSTAR, an electric and gas utility company in Boston, Massachusetts. As such, he is focused on energy efficiency for commercial and industrial customers. “My job is to develop new products for targeted customer segments that will enable our customers to reduce their energy consumption. As a utility, we do not actually create the technology, but we have to package it intelligently to meet the needs of the target customers and offer the appropriate incentive to increase the adoption rates of our programs,” Phillips said.

Left to Right: Joel Tauber, Geoffrey Phillips, Andrew Burgess, Roman Kapuscinski, Larry Sieford, Alan Woodliff

He credits Tauber as excellent preparation for his current role, and for his success throughout a varied career that has centered on product development and management. “While at Michigan I took Professor Bill Lovejoy's Integrated Product Development course where I learned to look at all the factors around a product that help make it successful. My course work in the MBA program also prepared to me to have a more interdisciplinary viewpoint when developing products,” he said.

After leaving Michigan, Phillips went into management consulting and corporate strategy work during the first dot com boom. He then moved to the corporate strategy group at General Motors, which actually had “nothing to do with product strategy,” -- in his words.

“I worked on some great strategic projects for the company around health care costs and exploring implementation strategies for fuel-cell vehicles. I eventually made my way to the accessories group where I ran a business for GM. I had finally come back to product development and it was extremely rewarding. It took me several years to get back to the product development process I had studied while at Tauber. I believe it was that seed planted at Tauber that grew into my passion for developing new products in an integrated fashion. It took many years for me to realize this, but Tauber really set me on the path I am on right now,” said Phillips.

Geoffrey with parents in Germany

By serving as co-chair of the scholarship committee, Phillips is doing what he can to pay it forward for future students in the Tauber program. “I hope that Tauber continues to provide opportunities. Each one of us has to take these opportunities and make the most of them for ourselves.” He added that under the leadership of Mike Petersen, outgoing Tauber Advisory Board President, the new alumni scholarship provides incentive to emerging leaders while emphasizing community involvement and the importance of giving back. “That is a legacy to build on and a legacy to be proud of,” said Phillips.

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Written by Nancy Davis

Independent Writer

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