Daryl Gunnarson Speaker Bio
Daryl Gunnarson, PMP, CSSBB
Co-Founder & Senior Partner
New Oaks Consulting
Mobile: (513)544-4213
Email: Dgunnarson@newoaksconsulting.com
Website: www.newoaksconsulting.com
A Little About Me
As Partner and Founder of New Oaks Consulting, Daryl brings decades of experience in Project Management, Strategic Management, and Black Belt experience to serve his clients. He launched New Oaks Consulting after a 33-year career with Procter & Gamble where he became known as one of the leading experts in Project Management. After leaving P&G, Daryl was contacted by numerous former colleagues, now CEO’s and senior leaders at other companies, who wanted his help in their organizations within the Project Management space. These frequent requests became the basis for forming New Oaks Consulting.
Daryl has also been a PMP for over twenty years and has trained hundreds of people across the country to earn their PMP designation.
Daryl recently released his first book on project management with one of his partners at New Oaks Consulting. The book “Strategic Project Management in the Consumer Goods Industry” incorporates their 25 years of experience into one easy-to-read book on how to use and integrate all aspects of project management.
Daryl has partnered with companies ranging from mid-sized manufacturers to Fortune 500 enterprises to build PMO systems that stick – transforming how organizations prioritize, execute, and sustain their most critical initiatives.
A lifelong learner, Daryl earned his two Bachelor of Science Degrees in Civil Engineering and Geology from Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana.
Beyond his professional accomplishments, Daryl is a devoted husband, father, grandfather, and avid Skier and Hiker. He believes deeply in the power of faith and family and lives by the motto: “We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.” These values shape his leadership style and his commitment to helping others achieve excellence. Daryl, along with his wife, also had a compassionate heart for vulnerable children leading a non-profit for 12 years dealing with fostering and adopting children as well as fostering and adopting children themselves. He also led the development of pastoral care in Russia for 10 years and taught people how to start businesses to help fund the churches. He is now the president of the board for Love INC, a non-profit focused on keeping people from becoming homeless by assisting them at their point of need.
Today, Daryl continues to partner with executives and project leaders who seek greater clarity, predictability, and performance in their organizations. Through his consulting work and writing, he remains dedicated to equipping professionals with the tools and strategies they need to deliver results with confidence.
Possible Topics We Could Discuss
Topic
Executive Summary
Leadership
A true thought leader in the project management space. Where do stakeholders get involved and where do they let the teams’ run things. What key metrics should be looked at to ensure the organization is moving in the right direction. What should the PMO structure look like to drive the best solutions. How to integrate commercial, technical and business thinking into one aligned set of work.
Strategic Innovation
Great at coaching organizations on how to align and leverage a common strategic plan to drive your innovation, linking to your overall business strategies.
Portfolio Optimization
Can help an organization design a Portfolio System that helps drive strategic decisions. This would include how often to review your portfolio and how to leverage your decisions to drive what projects should be worked on to meet your business needs.
PMO Assessment
Can lead and guide the PMO assessment for your organization helping the organization to design the assessment and use it to help define a roadmap on what things to work on to make your innovation systems more effective in getting consistent results.
Resource Optimization
Help your organization develop a resource optimization process that helps manage your work based on the skills you have available.
Leading Large-Scale Transformation
Strategies for leading enterprise transformation initiatives by integrating people, processes, technology, and culture.
Design Optimum Supply Chains
Building resilient, adaptive supply chains while balancing cost, productivity, responsiveness, and risk management.
Balance Waterfall and Agile Processes
Applying the right delivery model to improve agility, governance, flexibility, and strategic execution.
Publications & Thought Leadership
A curated collection of executive insights, publications, blogs, and white papers recently authored by me, focused on strategic execution, project and program leadership, PMO excellence, supply chain strategy, commercial and technical integration, accelerating speed-to-market, and driving enterprise value and business performance in rapidly changing markets.
Topic
Executive Summary
Visual
Hyperlink
Co-author of the bestselling book, “Strategic Project Management in the Consumer Goods Industry” published December, 2025.
✦ Battle-tested playbook from two P&G veterans who’ve successfully launched hundreds of products across global markets.
✦ Practical project management guide featuring real-world case studies that strengthen understanding, reinforce key concepts, and drive effective application in today’s business environment.
Blog: How market leaders build execution advantage
The 4 Pillars of Execution Infrastructure
✦ Strategic Alignment Engine
✦ Design acceleration System
✦ Capability Development Platform
✦ Performance Optimization Framework
Blog: Making your execution engine future ready
What Future-Ready Execution Looks Like
✦ Adaptive Planning
✦ Intelligent Automation
✦ Ecosystem Integration
✦ Continuous Learning
Blog: Leading execution transformation
The Four Execution Leadership Capabilities
✦ Building Systems that Sustain Success
✦ Maintaining Process Discipline under Pressure
✦ Focusing on Outcomes not just Activities
✦ Capturing Lessons to Prevent Future Problems
White Paper: Project Leadership Maturity Assessment
✦ Innovation Diamond Management (IDM) is a strategic framework designed to manage both sustainable and breakthrough innovation in a clear and structured manner. This approach enables organizations to systematically transform ideas into scalable business value.
Other Talking Points
I’ve found it’s often helpful to have some fun and unusual facts and talking points to spark the conversation in a new direction or to give listeners a better, more well-rounded idea of who I am. Any of these are fair game and I’m happy to provide more details and background if needed.
✦ In my 33 years with Procter & Gamble I got to spend the first 16 years in the Product Supply Organizations working in Paper (Green Bay, WI), Food & Beverage (Sherman, TX), Fabric Care (Russia) and Supply Chain work (Cincinnati, OH). The last 17 years I got to work in the Innovation Management Space. I was fortunate to get involved in this work in the early stages of P&G choosing to add this skill set to their structure. This allowed me to help develop the many Project Management systems such as Stage Gates, Portfolio and Resource Management and Project Manager training and system development. I also led the development of a PMO assessment process that was used by P&G all over the world to drive standardization and more consistent innovation results.
✦ I am co-author of the bestselling book, “Strategic Project Management In The Consumer Products Goods Industry” – published in 2025, This is a book talking through the key project management systems with examples of how to bring them alive in your business. I also wrote a book in honor of my first wife called “The Journey – How God uses the ordinary to do the extraordinary”.
✦ I have visited 38 countries and 6 continents around the world. This has brought a diversity of thinking and an appreciation for the different cultures around the world.
✦ I am deaf in my left ear – I have learned to work around challenges and most people would never know I have this deficiency.
✦ I have led and or been on the board of 3 non-profits:
1. Russia – led work to train Russian pastors and church leaders for 12 years. This grew the churches in the Tula region from 7 to 45. This was all while working full time for Procter & Gamble both in Russia and then in the States.
2. The Father’s House – a ministry to help vulnerable children (foster and adopted children) and their families deal with Trauma and life issues due to separation from the base family unit.
3. Love INC – President of Board – a ministry to help people so they don’t slip into homelessness by meeting their basic needs and helping them get their lives back in order with tough situations happen to them.
✦ I have been a foster parent and adopted a child – we have had the opportunity to love and support over 25 foster children in our home and ended up adopting one young girl and raised her to be successful in life.
✦ I have a love for music and have traveled with a small Christian Rock Band – writing songs and performing. I also got a chance to play trombone in a Dixieland band with the pianist having traveled with the Hermans Hermits. In High School I played trombone in both the All-State Orchestra and Symphonic Bands.
✦ I also love sports but was a late developer in terms of size. I did get 3rd place in the Montana State diving competition in High School as our Havre swim team won the state championship all 4 years I was in high school.
✦ My wife and I have led small groups in many churches we have been involved with our latest focus being on marriages
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