A further group of Australian partnership appointments have been revealed in McKinsey & Company’s end-of-the-year promotions round, joining the three recent elevations previously reported.
Six of the seven newly admitted partners are based in Sydney, with Sophie Underwood of the management consultancy’s Brisbane office the sole exception. The promotions take effect from the beginning of next year.
The leadership promotion round takes McKinsey’s Australian & New Zealand partnership to close to six dozen members. McKinsey has been active in Australia since 1962 and is estimated to have over 600 partners, consultants and staff nationally, operating from offices in Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney.
A qualified lawyer, Sophie Underwood joined McKinsey in Sydney in 2017 after serving as an associate to the now Australian High Court chief justice Susan Kiefel. She then spent two and a half years with the firm in London before returning as an associate partner in 2021. Underwood is currently a member of McKinsey’s Sustainability leadership team, advising clients on issues around climate risk and transitioning to net zero.
As the leader of McKinsey’s Consumer & Retail practice across Australia and New Zealand, Abe Levaviis a familiar figure in the national media, often quoted in the likes of the Age and AFR on consumer research and trends. Levavi first joined McKinsey in 2014, before taking two years out to co-found a venture capital start-up, and originally came to the firm following several years in finance and investment analysis in New York.
Gareth Jones is a leader in McKinsey’s Strategic Transformations and Fast Growth Tech practices, supporting CEOs and entrepreneurs with strategies for break-out growth. An associate partner since 2018, Jones joined McKinsey in 2014, originally in London, before which he served as Europe head of Institutional Services for investment research and advisory group Edison. He also previously spent time at Citi.
A new partner in Sydney, Jonathan Christy has been with McKinsey for closing in on a decade, first joining the consultancy at the beginning of 2013 after completing a financial economics masters through Oxford’s Saïd Business School. He presently works in the areas of private equity, institutional investment, transactions, and growth strategy, and earlier in his career spent three years between Accenture and PwC.
Jean-Charles Cizel has served at McKinsey for over a decade, first joining the firm in Paris following an engineering masters with the prestigious École nationale des ponts et chaussées (since complemented by an INSEAD MBA), before crossing to McKinsey’s Sydney office in 2012. Cizel also spent a period with the firm in New York before returning to Sydney, and was made a local associate partner in 2019.
Evan Williams has been with McKinsey for the most part since 2009, taking two years out to study an MBA with the University of California’s Haas School of Business. Starting out as a research clerk with Baker & McKenzie, Williams has also served as a guest lecturer at UNSW during his time at McKinsey, and has been an associate in the firm’s Sydney office since 2019. He works in the area of digital transformation.
Deva Grant has been with McKinsey for more than three decades in various people function roles across the firm, including as a director of professional development for over ten years. Currently, she leads the firm’s People Function for Asia and China out of Sydney, a role she has held since 2016, with expertise in the areas of talent management, leadership development, recruitment and other aspects of people development.
Sourced from Consultancy.com.au