BDO adds trio of directors to leadership team in Canberra

BDO has added Aaron Hooper, Gemima Newcombe and Anna Doogan to its Canberra team, bringing the trio in as directors to support practice leaders Paul McDougall and Ridhish Arora.

The latter pair have now officially come on board as partners to lead the firm’s newest, federal government-focused office, with McDougall to oversee advisory and Arora heading up technology & digital services.

Joining them will be a number of fellow former Big Four recruits, including new directors Anna Doogan and Gemima Newcombe, respectively ex-Ernst & Young and Deloitte, and Aaron Hooper, who crosses from Scyne Advisory.

BDO announced its march on Canberra in August following a remarkable, market-defying growth streak which saw the accounting and consulting firm’s Australian branch crack the $500 million revenue mark last year, with two-decade PwC public sector veteran McDougall recruited from Scyne’s partnership to lead the charge alongside former Sayers and Deloitte partner Arora.

“I’m excited to have joined BDO as one of the founding partners to establish the Canberra office. It’s great to be teaming up with Paul, a friend and colleague I’ve known for over 20 years, and I’m really looking forward to working with some great new team members, including a few familiar faces from my past,” said Arora, with the pair since luring a number of former colleagues across.

Aaron Hooper
Among them is Aaron Hooper, who prior to serving as director at Scyne Advisory over the past year since its founding spent the previous decade and a half at PwC, and the best part of a decade at EY prior to that. An information tech graduate of the University of Canberra, Hooper brings a wealth of local experience in delivering project & program and ICT assurance to public sector clients.

Gemima Newcombe
Newcombe meanwhile comes on board after a previous two-and-a-half-year stint as a principal at local consultancy ConceptSix, before which she served as a director of Deloitte Consulting during a three-year period at the Big Four firm. In addition to the government and public sector, she is noted for her expertise in technology advisory and serving start-ups, boutiques, and multinational clients.

Anna Doogan
Having kicked off her career at Coopers & Lybrand in 1996, Doogan comes to the firm as an audit & assurance director via Ernst & Young, where she previously spent eight years across two stints. In between, she was a senior director with the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO), where she spent more than a decade, while most recently serving as a director at AssuranceLab.

BDO in Canberra

BDO previously said it intends to build up its Canberra office to potentially ten partners and more than 100 employees within the next couple of years, with the hope of generating a further $50 million in Australian revenues by 2028. Chairman David Fagan revealed that as it stands, public sector consulting already accounts for around a fifth of the firm’s $540 million local take.