McKinsey & Company adds to senior leadership team in Australia
Amanda Winchester and Elizabeth Murray have been admitted as partners in the Australian practice of McKinsey & Company, while Doug Begg also comes on board as a senior advisor.
Currently based out of Sydney as a member of McKinsey’s QuantumBlack AI team, Winchester joined the management consulting giant in Boston in 2012, while Murray has been with the firm out of Melbourne for just shy of a decade.
Begg has meanwhile joined McKinsey & Company as a senior advisor in Sydney after previously spending close to a decade and a half at Google, including as executive office director and Asia Pacific head of human resources for Google Cloud.
While generally a bit hush about its business affairs, McKinsey’s overall number of end-of-year partnership promotions numbered just 224 globally according to an internal memo seen by the Wall Street Journal, a slight uptick on the year prior but well down on its post-pandemic heyday. According to the paper’s figures, McKinsey still has more than 2,500 partners worldwide.
The “bar for distinctiveness this year, and every year, is unapologetically high,” McKinsey’s global managing partner Bob Sternfels – who previously faced internal leadership pressure over his handling of widespread staff reductions – was reported to have written in the memo, adding, “Looking at this group of leaders, I couldn’t be more confident about what’s next.”
The WSJ also noted that McKinsey’s latest partnership class included 66 women, said to be the highest proportion in the firm’s history, as well as several specialists within McKinsey’s artificial intelligence-focused QuantumBlack wing, now which was acquired a decade ago. As Australia’s latest McKinsey partners, Winchester and Murray fall into both these categories.
Amanda Winchester
An energy & environmental analysis masters-holder from Boston University, Winchester joined the local branch of McKinsey as an intern before arriving downunder in 2017, and then being promoted to expert associate partner within QuantumBlack five years on. She primarily supports consumer & retail clients on data & advanced analytics strategy and transformations.
Elizabeth Murray
Originally from Launceston, Murray is meanwhile a Rhodes Scholar who studied a neuroscience PhD at the University of Oxford. She then joined McKinsey & Company in Melbourne in 2016 and was previously promoted to associate partner in 2021, and is nowadays focused on the areas of leadership, the public sector, and organisational health and transformation.
Doug Begg
Elsewhere, Doug Begg has also joined the firm’s people & organisational performance practice as a senior advisor – typically a deep industry expert and often former senior partner engaged for specific projects. Indeed, Begg brings ample tech-related people and HR experience. In addition to his time at Google, including at its Mountain View complex, Begg also spent four years at Amazon.
