Ankura names Kevin Cowherd as head of strategy & performance
Ankura, a global management consulting firm, has appointed Kevin Cowherd as head of the firm’s strategy & performance practice. He remains based in Nashville.
Cowherd will lead a practice that has offerings across growth advisory, performance optimization, program and change leadership, labor strategy, and technology advisory. He replaces Beth Chase, who retired from Ankura last month after 35 years in professional services. Chase joined Ankura in 2018 as a senior managing director when it acquired c3/consulting, a Nashville-based management consultancy she founded and led for more than 12 years.
Cowherd has more than 20 years of experience in organizational and IT transformation, human resources, and management consulting. He has deep expertise advising on business optimization, M&A integration, and transformational change delivery, working with C-suite teams in a range of industries.
He joined Ankura in 2018 when the firm acquired c3/consulting, where he had spent the previous four years as a vice president. Before c3, he spent 20 years at IBM, where he primarily worked at the intersection of internal HR and information technology.
He was latterly a senior manager of HR service delivery transformation, where he helped guide the internal implementation of SAP’s human resource management system in more than 50 countries. Before that, he was chief information officer for IBM Learning, where he planned and executed the replacement of legacy learning systems with more modern solutions for 425,000 global workers.
Cowherd started his career at IBM as an education consultant, working with clients on learning and technology design. He holds an MBA from Vanderbilt University and a BS in business management from Georgia Institute of Technology.
"Kevin has spent his career delivering solutions to clients, leading large engagements and coaching teams to achieve organizational effectiveness and build enterprise value. At Ankura, Kevin has demonstrated strong leadership, driven business opportunities across the company and applied his subject matter expertise to improve our operations. We look forward to working with Kevin to continue to build our capabilities and our people," said Philip Daddona, president of Ankura.
Added Cowherd, “I look forward to this next stage in my career and am honored to help lead our high performing professionals into the marketplace where demand for transformation strategies and solutions has never been greater. We will continue our industry leading offerings to address challenges and enhance opportunities for our existing clientele."
