Jessica Wagner

Jessica Wagner
Strategy consultant since 1989. At First River Consulting from 2006 based in Monza, Italy; Beddows & Company 1989-1992 in Pittsburgh, PA and 1997-2000 in London, Arthur D. Little 1994 to 1997 in London. Thirty years experience in management consulting working with clients in North America, South America, and Europe. B.A. in French and German with a concentration in Economics from Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA. MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management, Cambridge, MA with a specialization in International Strategy and Operations Management. Fluent in Italian and German, passable in French.

It all started when I was a teenager. After visiting the Three Mile Island nuclear facility in Pennsylvania I took a keen interest in the accident there. The event made me wonder how businesses work and how the company’s strategy, structure, management and operations might have contributed to the accident. This interest, combined with a fascination with languages and European history, led me to move to London and then to Italy. I now have dual US and Italian citizenship.

I work with First River on projects to improve business performance through the development and implementation of competitive strategy. As part of this work, I gather, organize and prepare company and industry information, including data on trade, production, pricing, capacity utilization, capital investments, and company profitability.

I follow the European steel industry, its suppliers, and its customers closely, and I bring that knowledge to our work in every region. It’s all used to support our client’s strategic decision-making. Our clients ask us to help them with strategy definition and positioning, organizational restructuring, partner searches, market research and forecasting, and many other evolving issues. Some of the recent strategic issues I’m following include the availability of steelmaking raw materials and the efforts to reduce steelmaking carbon emissions.

In addition, I manage the First River blogsite Nerds of Steel and our subscription-based steel industry information portal The Steel Data Room. I complete the monthly US steel long products reports as well as the monthly SBQ/engineering steel reports.