Roland Berger quietly builds up its senior leadership team in Australia
Global strategy consultancy Roland Berger has been quietly building up its Australian team since its launch in Sydney last year, with recent senior additions including Nawaz Isaji and Jonathan Chan.
Isaji has joined Roland Berger as a partner after previous time spent at L.E.K. Consulting and Strategy&, while Chan crossed as a principal from his most recent role as a director at Deloitte.
Headed Locally by Ronan Gilhawley (ex-Oliver Wyman, KPMG and Accenture), the 60-year-old German-origin strategy consultancy finally set up shop in Australia last year, and, like some of its other recent global arrivals, appears to be initially focusing on the M&A advisory market.
Nawaz Isaji
Isaji, a law and engineering graduate from the University of Technology Sydney with an MBA from INSEAD, brings close to a decade worth of M&A strategy experience spent as a partner between LE.K. Consulting and Strategy&, with earlier stints at Boston Consulting Group and Kearney and a focus on due diligence across several sectors such as retail, healthcare, agribusiness, and technology, media and telecom.
Jonathan Chan
Now leading its energy, infrastructure & industrials deal advisory division, Chan also brings a transactions strategy background to his new role as a principal at Roland Berger. Prior to serving as an M&A consulting director at Deloitte from 2022, Chan also spent four years at KPMG as an energy transition strategy lead, before which he kicked off his career with seven years at Jemena.
Senior leaders
Isaji and Chan join an experienced bench already featuring principal Kirill Ivanov, who switched from Strategy&’s deals team to Roland Berger as a principal last year, and of course Gilhawley, who, as well as being a former retail & consumer and deal strategy/private equity national lead partner at both Oliver Wyman and KPMG, was also once a vice president at Oracle.
Others to have joined the Roland Berger team in Australia so far further include Gaurav Sharma, as a project leader with previous time spent at Genesis Advisory, SPP, and EY-Parthenon in India among other companies; Christopher Seyrl, via Neoteric, Strategy& and EY; and Ingrid McCarroll. a senior consultant who has crossed from the consultancy’s home office in Düsseldorf.
Roland Berger
Roland Berger in its past financial year defied a tricky global management consulting market to join the $1 billion revenue club, described as the best in its 60-year history, with the Asia Pacific a primary growth-driver after being up by almost 20 percent. The firm said its growth was also derived from projects integrating AI solutions, digitising processes, and optimising supply chains.
“Trust and independence have become real differentiators in consulting,” said global managing partner Stefan Schaible, who has been continuously re-elected since 2014. “2025 was the most successful year in our history, but at the same time we see the market changing noticeably. As the only global strategy consultancy with European roots, this is a clear competitive advantage for us.”
