PA Consulting adds upskilling expert Vidhyu Rao

PA Consulting, a global innovation and transformation consulting firm, has hired Vidhyu Rao as a partner in its health and life sciences practice.

Based in Austin, Rao will work with the firm’s US health and life sciences clients on engagements related to digital learning and upskilling.

Rao is an experienced workforce transformation and change management leader who has advised on and led numerous large-scale global digital learning transformations. She has deep expertise in developing upskilling and reskilling strategies, managing overall change initiatives, overseeing global learning teams, and building digital products.

Rao joins PA from HR consultancy Korn Ferry, where she spent the last two years as a client partner in the workforce transformation practice. Before that, she spent 14 years at IT consultancy Cognizant, where she was latterly global learning leader overseeing large learning consulting engagements. At Cognizant, Rao also served as practice head of learning and content, and as head of Cognizant Academy for North America and Europe.

Earlier in her career, Rao was a manager in the learning services division of IBM.

She holds a master of public management degree in organizational leadership from Carnegie Mellon University and a bachelor’s degree in physics, chemistry, and mathematics from Bangalore University in India.

“We are very excited that Vidhyu has joined the team,” George Botsakos, global lead for health and life sciences at PA Consulting, said. “Her proven leadership track record combined with her workforce transformation and change management expertise will be extremely useful for our US health and life sciences clients as they focus on upskilling their workforce and rolling out return to work plans.”

Rao added, “I look forward to helping our clients develop digital learning offerings and helping the US workforce meet their upskilling needs.”

PA Consulting is headquartered in London and has 3,300 professionals in the US and Europe. The firm provides services in strategy, product development and innovation, and digital transformation, among other areas.

PA earlier this month welcomed John Edson as US head of design and engineering, and last month added product development experts Graham Myatt and Melanie Turieo to its US health and life sciences practice.