BCG names Kelly Newton as New Zealand co-managing partner
Strategy consulting giant BCG has welcomed former US west coast industrial goods leader Kelly Newton as its new co-managing partner in Auckland, with Kelly to serve alongside Phillip Benedetti.
Having relaunched in New Zealand in 2022, Boston Consulting Group’s Auckland office has now officially welcomed Kelly Newton from the strategy firm’s US branch as co-managing partner.
An industrial goods expert, Newton will lead BCG’s local business alongside inaugural boss Phillip Benedetti, bringing close to two decades of company experience including further international stints in Chicago, Seattle, Amsterdam, and Sydney.
“Taking a leadership role in New Zealand is one of the many opportunities of personal growth that BCG has offered me and I’m excited to ‘get stuck in’ (as the kiwis say),” Newton stated in a post to LinkedIn. “BCG has been intertwined with nearly all of my adult life milestones. Alongside my co-managing director Phillip Benedetti, we look forward to expanding one of the youngest BCG offices and to continue the great work we are already doing.”
Prior to transferring to New Zealand, Newton served as head of BCG’s industrial goods practice for its Western US geography advising clients on transformation, distribution and productivity, with further expertise in operations, business model, and digital strategy in the agriculture, infrastructure, and aerospace & defense sectors among others. In addition, she is global lead of the firm’s internal cross disciplinary development function, Teaming@BCG.
Newton’s areas of professional expertise will complement Benedetti’s, a financial services and healthcare senior leader who relocated from Melbourne in 2022 to help reestablish BCG in the local market via a permanent office after more than a decade’s absence. Having previously operated in the country for more than 20 years before exiting in 2009, the local team has since grown to more than a dozen professionals, according to LinkedIn data.
Newton’s Antipodean migration also marks a personal return to the region. In a modern-day consulting industry love story, she first met her Kiwi husband Jesse Newton – then a manager at Ernst & Young – while working as an associate on assignment in Sydney. Jesse later worked for EY and as a senior manager at Strategy& in Chicago before founding his own strategy consultancy, but has now returned to his homeland after 20 years abroad to rejoin EY as a director.
