Rob Hillard leads Deloitte's $2 billion APAC consulting division

Deloitte has named Rob Hillard as the new leader of its Deloitte Consulting division in Asia Pacific.

The consulting veteran has taken up the reins immediately, following the appointment of Adam Powick as CEO of Deloitte Australia. Powick had been at the helm of Deloitte Consulting in Asia Pacific since 2018, having previously served as Managing Partner of Deloitte Consulting in Australia for five years. 

Internally, Hillard was regarded as the most likely candidate to land the top regional consulting role. The appointment continues the tradition of installing a leader from the largest practice in the region (Australia, Hillard is based in Melbourne), and Hillard brings a proven track record to the role – earlier in his career he successfully succeeded Powick as leader of Deloitte Consulting’s division in Australia.

Hillard held the national role for nearly four years between 2015 and late 2018, in this time more than doubling the size of the business to over 3,000 consultants. He has since held two other leadership roles: Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer of Deloitte Australia, and most recently, Chief Transformation Officer of Deloitte Asia Pacific. 

He now leads one of the largest consulting firms in Asia Pacific, overseeing over 18,000 professionals working from 20+ offices. Across the region, Deloitte Consulting and its subsidiaries Monitor Deloitte (the firm’s strategy consulting outfit) and Deloitte Digital (the digital transformation and technology unit) generate more than US$2 billion in revenues. 

A consulting leader

Hillard brings over two decades of consulting experience to the role, leading consulting teams at Deloitte for over ten years, and working as a consultant himself for another decade at KPMG Consulting (which spun-off to become BearingPoint at the turn of the century). 

“Like many, I didn’t start out intending to be a professional consultant and yet it has become my vocation and passion,” he said two years ago in an op-ed for Aussie site The Mandarin, referring to his early career experience in technology roles at software houses.

Fast forward twenty years, and Hillard sees “consultants as a critical part of the business ecosystem” that can be proud “of the transformation they bring to their clients and society.” Separating the chaff from the wheat, Hillard defines a top consultant as someone that “does not talk in absolutes, but rather lays out the options, supporting facts and explains the trade-offs in such a way that their client can easily make the most appropriate decision for their circumstances.”

Ultimately, consulting is all about delivering results and making sure that knowledge is transferred and embedded, Hillard added in his op-ed. “Consultants should enable change, provide practical results and leave their clients behind with a new capability which they can run on their own.”

In Asia Pacific, Deloitte has around 55,000 professionals and is led by Cindy Hook, the former CEO of Deloitte Australia.