EY adds to partnership in Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra

Professional services firm Ernst & Young has added Leonie Costello, Lisa Bouari and Grant Samuels to its partnership teams in Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra.

Leonie Costello returns to EY after five and a half years with Deloitte, where she was a partner in the Deloitte Digital division and leader of the digital team in Canberra. Previously she served for three and half years as a director with EY, and earlier in her career as a manager at Deloitte Consulting, with a decade also spent as an independent consultant advising federal government and private sector clients.

“I’m excited to commence the next chapter of my career journey as a partner with EY,” Costello commented in a post to LinkedIn. “I’ll be working with the People Advisory Services team, with a focus on digital government and the interaction of design, tech and people to help our government clients progress their transformation agenda.”

Also crossing from Deloitte, Grant Samuels joins EY in Melbourne as a digital and emerging technology partner. Samuels has been with Deloitte as an Azure platform engineer since late 2018, joining on its acquisition of Azure specialist Mexia Consulting, where he served as a practice lead for almost five years. He was also a practice leader at SMS Management & Technology, later acquired by ASG Group.

According to Kurt Solarte, EY Consulting lead partner for Digital & Emerging Tech, Samuels will be focused on increasing and broadening EY’s Microsoft Azure cloud capability, working with the firm’s existing cloud engineering team to deepen its cloud competency as an Azure market leader.

Lisa Bouari joins EY as a Data & Analytics partner in Sydney after four and a half years as an executive director at OutThought, a tech start-up she co-founded developing virtual assistants and AI solutions for a range of sectors. Prior, Bouari spent seven years in data & analytic and cognitive technology at IBM, joining the tech giant following its acquisition of Cognos. She also spent four years at Oracle.

“Lisa has an impressive career journey, spanning two decades of leadership in data, analytics and artificial intelligence helping organisations unlock opportunities and implement meaningful and sustainable change,” said Melbourne-based EY Oceania Data & Analytics Lead Partner Steve Psichalos, welcoming Bouari on LinkedIn.