Dallas McGuire Hindle and Geoff Howell join Synergy partnership

Synergy Group has welcomed two new partner recruits: Dallas McGuire Hindle and Geoff Howell.

Professional services firm Synergy Group has recruited Dallas McGuire Hindle as its new cybersecurity practice leader out of Melbourne, the former Scyne Advisory director crossing as a partner after just three months at the public sector breakaway.

Hindle follows Geoff Howell as the latest among the consultancy’s growing list of partners, the latter having been a partner in Deloitte’s technology strategy & transformation team since 2021.

Amid a wider ongoing ‘CISO’ merry-go-round, Dallas McGuire Hindle is the second ex-PwC cyber practice leader to take on the top role at a large consultancy in a week, alongside DXC Technology’s newly-appointed national security leader Kylie Watson. Like Watson, Hindle joined the Big Four firm from IBM Consulting only last year, before crossing with approximately 1,400 colleagues to Scyne Advisory in the wake of the PwC government tax policy scandal.

Prior to his two years at IBM, where he was an associate partner focused on federal government, financial services and energy sector engagements, Hindle spent time in enterprise architect roles at NTT Data, Dimension Data, and Vmtech, amassing altogether 25 years of industry experience. Now he has been tasked with leading Synergy’s Federal Government cybersecurity capability as well as building up the consultancy’s Victorian practice.

Headquartered in Canberra, Synergy at the start of the year unveiled its plans to become a truly national firm over the next two to five years – recently launching its Melbourne and Brisbane outlets – with the further ambition of being the nation’s leading consultancy within the next decade. To further those ambitions, the firm recently added premier strategy, innovation, and design consultancy ThinkPlace, bumping its headcount up to around the 600-mark.

Also joining Synergy’s partnership this month is Geoff Howell, who will be based out of Canberra. Previous to Deloitte, Howell spent four years between Boston Consulting Group and DXC Technology, the latter where he was general manager for the consultancy’s federal government practice. Earlier, he spent time as a senior government advisor, before which he served for over a decade as a managing director at Barclays and Bank of Scotland in London.

In other Synergy news, the consulting firm’s former chief executive Antonia Marzulli, appointed at the start of 2022, has popped up again after quietly departing her role less than eighteen months on to undertake AI tech and policy studies at Harvard Kennedy School, recently announcing her new job as Vice President of Operations for Lockheed Martin in Australia. Judging by the congratulations and interactions on LinkedIn, her departure from Synergy Group was amicable.