The 31-year-old programmer emigrated to the U.S., with plans to link American clients to a 25-employee consultancy he had started in Minsk in 1991. Today, Dobkin’s consultancy boasts more than 1,600 employees and is recognized as the largest provider of software engineering and consulting services in Central and Eastern Europe.

Gary Neilson is probably best known for his widely cited book, called: Keep What’s Good, Fix What’s Wrong, and Unlock Great Performance, published in 2005. A senior vice president of Booz Allen Hamilton, he is regarded within the firm as the originator of the Org DNA concept and the leader of the service practice based on Org DNA.

Born in Scotland, Walsh gravitated to consulting in general and the aviation industry in particular because he was driven by a love for international travel, the intellectual challenge of trying to solve complex consulting problems.“I wanted to be part of finding a solution to the problem of making this industry profitable,” he says.

After seven years of active U.S. Navy duty spent aboard a ballistic-missile submarine, Ronald Nicol returned to the surface and soon plunged into the consulting profession. He hasn’t come up for air since.

Singh, a Bain & Company partner, is opening the firm’s first full-fledged consulting office in India; although the doors to the new Gurgaon office don’t officially open until July, Singh’s team began serving multinationals and India-based clients from the office earlier this year.

In the consulting profession, there has been a (gradually) growing sense that diversity is an important issue. Rather than waiting for that notion to be fleshed out, Tonie Leatherberry began guiding Deloitte Consulting toward a better understanding of diversity — and its value in the marketplace — three years ago.

As a senior vice president with Cardinal Health in the mid-1990s, Atul Vashistha came up with a distinctly consultant-esque realization.

Phil Parr spent the bulk of his 20+-year consulting career at top-tier consulting firms, mainly the Andersen/Accenture combination. So, it isn’t surprising that when he arrived at Hitachi Consulting, then considered a middle-market player, he was determined to drive it into the top ranks.

When Kaz Uchida was being recruited by McKinsey & Company’s Tokyo office in the mid-’80s, a friend tried to dissuade him from pursuing a career in consulting and encouraged him to first speak to a consultant he knew at the Boston Consulting Group.

In the consulting profession, there has been a (gradually) growing sense that diversity is an important issue. Rather than waiting for that notion to be fleshed out, Tonie Leatherberry began guiding Deloitte Consulting toward a better understanding of diversity — and its value in the marketplace — three years ago.