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Wesley Walden

Managing Partner, Australia and New Zealand

Leads our Australia and New Zealand office

Wes helps leading organisations across Asia and around the world design and deliver holistic and sustainable transformation and reinvention.

He has for over 20 years helped organisations respond to industry disruption by reinventing business models and performance through bold strategic moves, improving execution, as well as digital, cultural, and operational transformation.

His work spans the telecommunications, banking, industrial, airlines, consumer/ retail and resource sectors. Recent examples include:

  • Working over six years with an Asia-based telecommunications/ technology provider to help reinvent its strategy, operating model and performance through multiple waves of transformation
  • Helping a global resources business architect and launch a renewable energy growth business to reinvent its value creation strategy
  • Leading the growth and digital transformation for an Asia-based bank, including its retail, business, and wholesale units, as well as building a new digital bank in an emerging market
  • Leading the transformation and reinvention of a global logistics business through performance and digital transformation
  • Supporting an Asia-based Bank to transform its performance, create and execute a sustainability growth strategy and business build

Wes has shaped and evolved McKinsey’s thinking on transformation, publishing research and perspectives, and counselling multiple CEOs, Executive Teams and Boards on connecting strategy to transformation, and the realisation of enterprise-wide value outcomes.

He is passionate about helping organisations put sustainable outcomes at the core of their transformation and growth strategies. This stems from Wes’ belief that we are within a unique window of the most important energy and sustainability transition for generations to come – a perspective founded is his 10 years in environmental management and sustainability economics prior to McKinsey.

Wes holds a degree in Engineering (Civil), a Master’s Degree in Environmental Management and a Master’s Degree in Business Administration. He is a Rupert Murdoch Fellow, a member of Grattan Public Policy Committee and Mecca Foundation Advisory Board.

Wes is also a passionate musician, and spends much of his weekends with his four children.

Video

The elements of success: A conversation with Jon Garcia and Wesley Walden”, McKinsey & Company, July 2019

Published work

Rewiring for the era of gen AI,” McKinsey & Company, October 2024

You can’t move too fast: A conversation with Andy Penn,” McKinsey & Company, September 2022

How Australian companies can reinvent themselves in 2021,” McKinsey & Company, May 2021

Why 2021 will define the next decade for Australian companies”, McKinsey & Company, March 2021

Why your next transformation should be ‘all in,’McKinsey Quarterly, October 2019

The wisdom of transformations: How successful CEOs think about change,” McKinsey & Company, July 2019

The elements of success: A conversation with Jon Garcia and Wesley Walden,” McKinsey & Company, July 2019

"Act like a local: How to sell in emerging markets," Sales Growth: Insights from leading sales executives, September 2012

Past experience

WBM Oceanics Australia
Partner and state manager (Victoria)
Senior environmental consultant

Sinclair Knight Mertz
Water resources engineer

Education

University of Melbourne and Chicago Graduate School of Business
MBA (Rupert Murdoch Fellow)

University of Queensland
MA, environmental engineering

University of Southern Queensland
BEng, engineering