Jemma Goldstein was highly commended at this year’s Management Consultancies Association (MCA) Awards in London.
Jemma received the accolade in the highly contested category of Young Consultant of the Year and she was joined by her fellow Young Consultant finalist, Saher Naumaan.
Congratulations to Jemma and Saher, as well as our Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office team who were a finalist in the category of Exceptional Support and Delivery to a Client during Covid-19.
The MCA awards have been an important event in the UK consulting calendar for the last 24 years and have long been seen as the benchmark for excellence across the UK’s £10 billion consulting industry. Recognising outstanding contributions to society and the consulting profession, this year’s awards were hosted by the journalist and broadcaster Sandi Toksvig and took place at the Park Plaza Hotel in the heart of Westminster.
Highly Commended, Young Consultant of the Year: Jemma Goldstein
Nearly five years into her career at BAE Systems Applied Intelligence, Jemma has operated across Defence and Financial Services, stayed aligned to her values and used her bespoke blend of security savvy and consulting excellence to make a real difference. She demonstrates an unparalleled work ethic and her passion for using cyber security to protect and empower individuals and organisations is woven into her consulting DNA.
“I’m passionate about supporting our clients, adding value and helping them solve their most complex problems” said Jemma. “In such a competitive year, I was both blown away and extremely happy to be a finalist, and am absolutely thrilled to be highly commended by the judges at this year’s MCA Awards.”
Charles Newhouse, Global Consulting Director, was delighted with Jemma’s success and keen to pay tribute to all our finalists.
“This year saw a 50 per cent increase in submissions and so to get through to be a finalist is a huge achievement for all our nominees,” he said.
“As a company, we continually strive for excellence by constantly innovating to provide our clients with a competitive edge. Over the course of a year which was turned upside down by the cascading ramifications of the pandemic, our three nominees all demonstrated our commitment to putting our clients at the very centre of what we do. Congratulations to Jemma, Saher and our FCDO team!”
Congratulations to our finalists
Exceptional Support and Delivery to a Client During COVID-19: Foreign, Commonwealth Development Office
Starting shortly before the first national lockdown, we were tasked with helping deliver a ten-fold increase in capacity for the department’s remote working capability, moving from 2,000 to 20,000 users. We also were asked to lead efforts to enable its suite of IT suppliers to work remotely – something not previously possible due to security concerns.
Operating under the most challenging of circumstances, our team succeeded in delivering this critically important project. In just six weeks:
- 20,000 departmental staff were able to work from home
- 550 IT supplier staff moved to work remotely, some with a new privileged remote access system
- A new internet data centre connection was established in record time
- No business disruption occurred with critical services maintained throughout.
These upgraded IT systems and the FCDO’s biggest ever crisis response enabled the government to fulfil its key pledge to ensure that hundreds of thousands of British nationals were able to safely return home.
Young Consultant of the Year – Saher Naumaan
Not for her the old ways of communication. Using a blend of storytelling prowess and journalistic flair honed during her time working in foreign policy and international development in Washington, DC, Saher has helped transform how we tell our clients about the latest threat intelligence affecting their organisation. But that’s not all.
As a rising woman leader in cyber security, Saher was not content to merely register the lack of speaker and attendee diversity at events. Instead, she took action by creating and hosting two conferences in London, the first in Europe to feature an all-female speaker line up, and which attracted hundreds of attendees, gender-balanced across every level of industry.
Aged just 29, Saher’s story has already taken her across the Atlantic and has seen her straddle two very different sectors, inspiring colleagues and clients at every level.
