Julie Mercer joins education practice of Cairneagle as Partner

Management consultancy Cairneagle Associates has appointed a new Partner to its London office. Julie Mercer arrives at the firm having spent more than 20 years with Big Four firm Deloitte, where she was also a Partner.

Cairneagle Associates is a consulting firm specialising in education, media and technology. The firm deploys small teams of professionals to help clients develop and implement their strategies. The firm subsequently delivers high impact work without unnecessary disruption. The firm’s partners’ backgrounds and length of service – both in consulting and industry – help Cairneagle to engage as principals directly with the leaders of client organisations.

As the firm looks to prepare for heightened demand in 2019, as a number of pressures come to bear for businesses across the UK, Cairneagle has announced the appointment of Julie Mercer as Partner. She will lead the development of Cairneagle’s higher education and operational consulting practices. Mercer brings more than two decades of experience to that role, having worked with clients to help design and deliver new operating models to improve service design and quality, reduce cost, improve productivity, open up new markets and grow revenues.

Mercer spent the last 22 years of her career at Big Four firm Deloitte, where she was latterly the Global Education Lead, responsible for setting up and growing their education practice in the UK. For the last nine years, Mercer was a Partner at Deloitte, before leaving for a new challenge this year.

Over the course of her time with Deloitte, Mercer worked at all levels within the UK education system, supporting organisations spanning early years’ provision to higher education. She has advised public, private and international education providers as well as governments, and she has worked on education systems in the UK, India, Australia, Japan, the Middle East and the USA.

Rupert Barclay, Managing Partner of Cairneagle commented, “Julie represents a huge addition to our team. She will enable Cairneagle to offer our clients a much wider range of services and help address the increasing need to support them beyond strategy, for example, helping them transform their business operations. Julie’s deep experience and networks in the Higher Education market strengthens our ability to support this critical part of the sector through significant uncertainty and change in the coming months and years. We are very pleased to have Julie on board.”

Julie Mercer herself added, “I am delighted to be joining the Cairneagle team and bringing something truly distinctive to our clients right across the education sector. Together with my new colleagues at Cairneagle, I believe that we have a tremendous platform on which to develop a world-class consulting offer in higher education strategy and operational consulting, serving clients across the world.”