Accenture makes series of senior appointments in Australia

A number of seasoned professionals – both old and new faces – have taken up fresh senior leadership roles at Accenture’s Australian wing.

Professional services firm Accenture has made two key appointments in its Strategy & Consulting practice, as well as bringing in more senior recruits. Emma Neil takes over as A/NZ Strategy & Consulting lead, while Georgia Hewett will head up the division’s regional sales function.

The division has also been bolstered by former Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia CEO Martin Fahy and ex-Infosys vice president Gaurav Gopal.

Elsewhere, the firm has also recently recruited former Strategy& partner Suzie Blinman to lead the A/NZ market of Accenture’s new Private Equity practice, and welcomed back Nikki Tyrer-Kennelly as global clients lead based out of Sydney. Bronwyn van der Merwe has also returned to take a customer function lead role at Accenture Song, while Paolo Sidoti has been appointed to lead the firm’s A/NZ communications, media & technology (CMT) business.

To be based out of Sydney, Emma Neil takes on the regional Strategy & Consulting top role after spending the past two years as client group lead of Accenture’s CMT (Communication, Media & High-Tech) division, having been a member of the practice for more than two decades.

Also Sydney-based, Georgia Hewett meanwhile becomes Strategy & Consulting sales lead, stepping up from her most recent CEO chief of staff role. Joining the firm in 2012, she previously served as head of corporate communications.

Joining the pair in Sydney is new managing director Martin Fahy, who crosses after over six and a half years as the CEO of the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA), prior to which he was a partner at KPMG. His other senior roles have included Asia Pacific practice leader of the Hackett Group, and CEO and managing director of the Financial Services Institute of Australasia (FINSIA). Fahy was also an APAC director of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants.

Accenture has also managed to lure across former Infosys vice president Gaurav Gopal, after more than twenty years at the company. Joining in 2003 after starting out at Lucent Technologies in India, Gopal also served as Infosys’ A/NZ practice leader for enterprise solutions out of Melbourne, and oversaw and grew its local energy, utilities, communications & services business for more than a decade

Meanwhile, the firm has poached Suzie Blinman from Strategy&’s deals strategy & value creation team in Sydney to head up a newly-formed Private Equity practice for the A/NZ market. Blinman has been a partner at PwC since 2020, before which she worked in the media industry, including as chief customer officer at Foxtel and chief commercial and corporate officer at MNC. Earlier in her career she spent nine years at management consultancy Kearney, rising to principal.

Former Accenture Song design lead Bronwyn van der Merwe returns to the firm after a one-year spell at Culture Amp to head up its Customer Functions department, which assists clients in transforming their products, marketing, commerce and customer service. Van der Merwe first joined Accenture following its 2013 acquisition of Fjord, which she launched and led in Australia. Among other senior roles, she also previously served as head of design and UX at the BBC.

Accenture has also welcomed back Nikki Tyrer-Kennelly, who will be based out of the firm’s Sydney office as a financial services global client account lead. Previously a senior executive with Accenture in South Africa where she spent close to 20 years, Tyrer-Kennelly joined Ernst & Young’s partnership in Sydney in 2017, before later moving to IBM Consulting and most recently serving as strategy & growth senior executive partner for the A/NZ, Southeast Asia and Korea.

Lastly, Accenture veteran and Sydney-based managing director Paolo Sidoti has been appointed as the firm’s new CMT client group lead for A/NZ. Sidoti has spent more than two and a half decades with Accenture working in various parts of the world, including for the past three and a half years as communications and media industry lead for Australia, Southeast Asia, India, the Middle East and Africa. He was also previously Network Services lead for Europe and Latin America.