about

For two decades, I’ve been stepping into companies at their most vulnerable moments. In the contexts of growth, transformation, crisis, and exit readiness; when the numbers are challenged and – sometimes – stop making sense. When leadership is overwhelmed, or when the clock is simply running out. These are the moments I refer to as Situations of Rapid Change: when transformation is no longer a strategy, but a necessity for survival.

Trusted in the boardroom, effective in the trenches.

My journey has taken me through boardrooms and shop floors, across Europe and the Middle East, and into sectors as diverse as digital health, industrials, real estate, special economic zones, entertainment, finance, and others.

I’ve worked with family businesses and private equity funds, in roles that demanded not just plans, but action, appointed to interim leadership, hard pivots, emergency financing, exits under pressure.

One cannot learn how to navigate crisis from a book.

I learned it by being inside the storm. First as a paratrooper officer, later as an investment professional and restructuring advisor, and eventually as the founder of Leverage Experts. My INSEAD executive education gave me the language. My engagements gave me the edge of urgency.

The scale of disruption we’re facing – technological, financial, and social – means that no business can afford strategic inertia. Cash, people, reputation – everything, moves faster than most leaders are prepared for.

I help organizations move forward when staying still is no longer an option. Short term, high impact.

I write on www.koljarafferty.com to reflect on the cases, questions, and conversations that come with doing this work. Not theory, but the lived reality of navigating change when the outcome isn’t guaranteed. Yet, few challenges are entirely unprecedented. Patterns resurface, only the context evolves. Sound management theory helps to address patterns and bring structure to uncertainty.

As a lecturer in Foreign Direct Investment, academia gives me space to slow down, dive deeper, and connect the dots. It’s also where I explore how rigorous, theory-based thinking can inform data-driven decision-making as an essential bridge for deploying AI systems increasingly shape strategic choices into the corporate reality.

„Through digitization, the economy is facing its greatest challenge since the age of industrialization. Existing business models are disrupted, established markets are compromised.

If you are not a start-up, you are a turnaround!“

„Performance and executed solutions in situations of rapid change.

Short term, high impact!“

„Strategic options for management teams, boards and investors.“