Mary Barlow

Senior Advisor

Mary has over 10 years experience as a counselling psychologist followed by 20 years as a Partner and Director of the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). Mary’s deep expertise and knowledge of the people side of business, combined with her psychology background, have enabled her work with senior executives to deliver change, drive performance and achieve a competitive advantage through people.

Mary Barlow is a former Partner and Director of the Boston Consulting Group. During her time with BCG, she supported clients in the areas of leadership, executive teamwork, change management, culture change and strategic human resources. She was also BCGs global topic expert on leadership and culture and the Asia Pacific regional leader of BCG’s Women’s Initiative aimed at attracting and retaining high performing females.

Mary’s experience includes:

  • Working with a broad range of top executive teams to improve their ability to lead organisational change and to transform their workforce for high performance
  • Working with senior leadership teams to help them improve their leadership and team effectiveness
  • Designing and supporting the rollout of the infrastructure needed to develop a high performance workforce culture
  • Designing and supporting culture change programs for a broad range of companies
  • Conducting Board and senior executive leadership reviews
  • Coaching CEOs and members of senior leadership teams on leadership, culture and change challenges

Mary completed over 100 significant assignments for major clients around the world in financial services, consumer goods, pharmaceutical, energy, mining, utilities, transport and distribution businesses and within Government and the public sector. She is a trusted confidante of a number of Australian Chairman, Directors, CEOs and Government leaders and advised the senior leaders of two Top 20 Fortune companies domiciled in UK and Europe over an eight year period.

Since her retirement from BCG, Mary has supported former clients locally and internationally on leadership and change issues and has conducted Board and executive leadership reviews for ASX companies, Partnerships and Not for Profit organisations. She acts as a coach to a number of CEOs and senior leaders and is also a member of the Australian Ballet Foundation Board.

Mary has a Bachelor of Science from Melbourne University where she majored in Pure and Applied Mathematics and Psychology and a Diploma of Education. She commenced her career teaching Mathematics to Applied Science and Engineering students and worked for twelve years as a counselling psychologist before entering consulting in 1988.

Mary is passionate about helping individuals realise their full potential as leaders and supporting them to discover how to bring out the best in others. She is an advocate of Ben Zander’s ‘Art of Possibility’ approach to leadership, and believes anyone who wants to enhance their leadership effectiveness can do so with a little thought and practice.

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