Allen Sockwell — Senior Partner

Allen Sockwell is a Senior Partner with Brimstone Consulting Group. His 25+ year background in Human Resources and consulting lends a sophisticated and strategic approach to executive talent development and building high performance management teams, particularly in companies undergoing complex change. His understanding of client strategy, business objectives and operating plans serves as the basis for consulting on the leadership capability and human capital required for enterprise success.

As the Founder of Sockwell Performance Advisors, an enterprise performance consulting firm, Allen has worked with leadership teams at technology companies across the Semiconductor, PC Systems, Software, Networking and Storage sectors, building the human capital needed to execute critical business strategies. His work has centered on assessing organization capability and developing strategies to improve leadership effectiveness and financial performance.

As an executive coach and advisor, Allen has worked with CEOs and executive teams from start-up through rapid growth and restructuring. He has counseled global companies through the critical executive transitions of the CEO, CFO, geography president, business unit head, founder/CTO and other key executive roles. Allen has worked with senior management and boards advising them on high-risk executive departures, new leader recruitment and effective on boarding.

Prior to founding his own firm, Allen was Senior Vice President and Chief Talent Officer at Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE:AMD), a public Fortune 400 Company with revenues exceeding $6B. At AMD he led the worldwide Human Resource function including global business unit support, talent management, learning and organization development, compensation and benefits, employee relations and HR service delivery.

At AMD Allen was a key member of the strategy and operating committees that implemented plans resulting in the longest period of sustained profitability in the company’s history. A key element of this success was the improvement of AMD leadership capability by replacing over 50% of the global executive population. Allen led a restructuring of the compensation and benefits programs simplifying design, improving linkage to business performance and eliminating over $20 million in inefficient annual spend. Throughout these restructuring efforts AMD employee retention exceeded industry benchmarks and employee engagement scores improved dramatically. Allen also guided AMD through the divestiture of the Digital TV and Handheld units, the spin out of wafer manufacturing operations and integration of computer graphics leader ATI.

Before joining AMD Allen served as Vice President of HR for a start-up that became a public company, Crossroads Systems (NASDAQ:CRDS), and Vice President of HR for the global supply chain and manufacturing operations of Compaq Computer where he led integration projects for DEC and Tandem Computers. He started his career at the IBM Corporation.

Allen has a BS in General Management from Purdue University and has continued his professional development at the Harvard Business School, London Business School and Columbia University. He resides in Austin, Texas with his wife and five children.