Scott Milligan appointed chair of student-led Global Consulting Group
Student-led pro-bono advisory The Global Consulting Group (GCG) has appointed climate tech investor and former EY-Parthenon associate director Scott Milligan as its new board chair.
GCG is a platform for aspiring business and community leaders studying at Monash, Melbourne Uni, and the University of NSW to connect with experienced professionals and apply their talents by offering pro bono consulting services to charities and other not-for-profits.
The organisation, which has completed more than 200 projects since its founding and counts over 200 active volunteers, is currently supported by L.E.K Consulting, OC&C Strategy Consultants, Corporate Value Associates, and Monitor Deloitte, while previous sponsors have included Bain & Company and Capgemini.
Picked to continue driving that impact is newly-appointed chair Scott Milligan, who is presently an investment director with Mike Cannon-Brookes’ climate-focused tech vehicle Grok Ventures and earlier co-founded Energise Partners (which has since been absorbed by Arthur D. Little) after spending over six years between Ernst & Young and its strategy arm EY-Parthenon.
“Scott brings a strong track record as an investor in early-stage climate technologies and projects, with a career spanning finance, energy and impact,” the organisation stated in a post to LinkedIn. “His experience across investment management, corporate advisory, and strategy consulting brings a deeply mission-driven lens to the GCG community.”
A board member since mid-2024, Milligan has been involved with GCC for more than a decade in various capacities dating back to his student days at Monash, where he studied a business degree in accounting, banking, and finance. He takes over from another climate tech advisor and Big Four alum in Shishir Pandit, who founded SP Consulting in 2015 after working at Deloitte.
“It’s incredibly special to hand over the role to someone who so deeply understands GCG’s purpose and people,” Pandit said. “Scott has grown alongside the organisation for years, and his integrity, strategic mindset and genuine commitment to impact and helping students become confident problem-solvers makes him the ideal person to lead GCG into its next phase of growth.”
In its last published online annual report, from 2022, GCG volunteers in that year contributed over 20,000 hours of consulting services across more than two dozen projects at an estimated worth of around $300,000, with three quarters of its not-for-profit clients stating that they would likely implement a material organisational change based on the recommendations provided.
In one testimonial, the founder and former CEO of Climate for Change, Katerina Gaita, said; “I’ve worked with many people on both a paid and voluntary basis and the students assigned to our case were exceptional. They were thoughtful, intelligent, capable and diligent, and their reports are now informing our strategic development and allowing us to demonstrate the impact of our work.”
