BrazilSparkOptimus promotes Wendy Rudder to partner
SparkOptimus has promoted Wendy Rudder to partner. She becomes the firm’s third female partner.
Rudder has been with the fast-growing digital consultancy for 2.5 years, having joined the firm from McKinsey & Company, where she worked for six years in Canada, Indonesia and most recently in the Netherlands. At the US-headquartered consulting firm, she advised clients in the oil & gas, energy, mining, logistics and industrials sectors, helping them with among others talent & leadership development, operations management, post-merger integration and large-scale transformations.
Earlier in her career, Rudder served engineering consultancy AECOM as an environmental engineer, worked as an independent contractor (affiliated with among others PA Consulting Group), and worked for an oil & gas company and government association in Barbados.
A Canadian citizen who was born in Trinidad and raised in Barbados, Rudder completed her studies in Canada (Bachelor in Environmental Engineering at the University of Guelph) and later on obtained an MBA at Saïd Business School, the business school of the University of Oxford.
At SparkOptimus, Rudder has now been elevated from Associate Partner to Partner, joining two other female partners Frieda van Belle and co-founder and managing partner Alexandra Jankovich, who similarly both also have a background at McKinsey & Company. “Not only does Wendy excel at client work, she is also a true ‘people person’. A wonderful contribution to our partner group,” said Jankovich.
The new role will see Rudder continue her client work in the area of strategy development and implementation projects, working on large organisational transformations in industrial and other sectors, and expanding SparkOptimus’ international growth focus.
The role of technology is the common denominator of her work, explained Rudder: “I am fascinated with how people interact with technology and how it shapes interactions between companies and their customers. The current wave of digital technologies is fundamentally reshaping these interactions and unlocking new potential. Helping clients get the most out of this shift is very exciting.”
Outside of her work as a consultant, Rudder is an aspiring writer of short story fiction and poetry and is currently working on her first novel. An eager reader since childhood, she gathers inspiration for her writing through her frequent travels and “avid people-watching on trains”.
With over 100 consultants, SparkOptimus is one of the Netherlands’ largest consultancies dedicated to digital strategy and execution. In the past 18 months, the firm has delivered more than 100 digital projects in some 15 markets including the Netherlands, the UK, Denmark, Germany, the US, South Africa and Australia.
