Mike Brennan is currently Country Director of the Jamaica Competitiveness Project (COMMIT) and has twenty years of management experience and ten years of international and U.S.-based consulting experience. Prior to his work in Jamaica, Mike led country projects and cluster level activity in Afghanistan, Serbia, Macedonia, Bolivia, Ireland, and Bermuda. He was the primary author of the Council on Competitiveness’ Clusters of Innovation report for the city of Pittsburgh, which examined regional economic growth and was part of a five-city study, led by Professor Michael Porter of Harvard University. Mr. Brennan has also co-authored Economic Development in Post Conflict Society, published by the University of Minnesota, as part of the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs State and Local Policy Conference.

Prior to his work at OTF, Mike was a Vice President at The Lab, a New York-based consulting firm, and managed projects at Fortune 100 companies, such as The Prudential Financial Company and JPMorganChase.

Mike worked in Bulgaria for two years, running a business center, as part of the U.S. Peace Corps. He was also a guest lecturer for ACDI/VOCA, a private, nonprofit organization that promotes broad-based economic growth, and a keynote speaker for The Bulgarian American Trust Fund. Mike was also a featured lecturer for MASIT Open Days - a Balkan Region IT Conference; Competitiveness Summits held by the Commercial Competition Commission of Afghanistan; The Annual Small and Medium Enterprise Conference in Belgrade; and The European Students’ Conference on Industrial Engineering - chaired by the University of St. Cyril and Methodius in Skopje. Mike spent six years in the marketing group at the New York Regional Bell Operating Company, NYNEX, where the execution of his marketing idea won the Golden Appy Industry Award; and began his career in Young and Rubicam’s market research group.

He has taught market research at the university level, was a volunteer high school teacher in Kenya and has an M.B.A. from The University of Rochester’s William Simon School.