McKinsey & Company names Jason Inacio as ‘distinguished’ partner

Global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company has established a new class of senior leader – distinguished partner – with Australia-based Jason Inacio elected among the first cohort.

A member of the firm’s transformation practice, Inacio first joined McKinsey & Company as a partner in Sydney in 2016 after serving in senior roles for large telcos in Portugal and Brazil, including as chief transformation officer of Oi.

McKinsey said its new partner class aims to recognise colleagues whose expertise has shaped client work, firm capabilities, and external practice in their fields, and represented the firm’s evolution in meeting client’s increasingly complex technical challenges.

“Our firm has always been built on exceptional people,” said McKinsey’s global people leader Ozgur Tanrikulu, a senior partner based out of Dubai. “The distinguished partner designation gives us a clear way to recognise partners who are defining their fields and creating lasting impact, and to show the next generation of firm leaders what that pathway can look like.”

While no official information was provided as to what the new partner class means in practical terms (voting rights, equity, etc.), it effectively provides a distinction between long-term generalist consultants and relationship-builders and those with deep technical expertise in a specific domain. Rivals Boston Consulting Group and Bain & Company have similarly introduced ‘expert’ partners.

As per the firm; “McKinsey has long expected consultants to develop mastery in a domain. Over time, many grow breadth and leadership that can lead to senior partner. Distinguished partner recognises a different, equally important path: colleagues who become reference points in their fields, build assets and capabilities used across the firm, and help shape external debate.”

Inacio is one of 21 new distinguished partners to have been elected globally. Since joining the firm, he has led numerous digital and agile projects for cross-industry clients around the world, including those in the financial services, aviation, and telecommunications sectors, designing and delivering operating model transformations to enable new ways of working and boost performance.

“I’m proud to have been elected a distinguished partner as part of the first cohort,” Inacio said of his senior promotion. “One of the things I’ve always loved about my ten years with the firm is that there’s no single way to create impact. Some people become the connective tissue across a client, while others go deep in one field to transform the possible and impossible.”