Why getting ahead of the game pays dividends as a management consultant

Zarina Naqvi CMC ChMC FIC knows how to spot a trend. She was one of the first Chartered Management Consultants in the UK, had shares in an AI company years before ChatGPT made headlines, and has built and sold two successful businesses from scratch by identifying the right opportunities at the right time. 

Zarina has spent most of her career helping businesses overcome particular challenges and become more profitable in various sectors, including finance, investment banking and tech. 

“I knew I would never be able to just sit and do the same job over and over again,” she says. “Every company I ever went to was undergoing significant business or technological transformation. And I was always brought in to make the transformation.”

Seeing the pattern

But it wasn’t until Zarina became Chartered, and later an assessor for CMI, that she realised she had been carrying out the role of a management consultant in every walk of life. 

“It was by listening to so many management consultants that I realised there is a pattern and a profile. Many of them have taken the same journey. I would never have called myself that when I was a finance director, or even when I built the business I sold, but that’s actually who I was and am,” she says.

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It was a major revelation, she says. Zarina realised she is a person who really enjoys making change happen and leaving a legacy. That, she says, is the business of management consulting.

At just 29, she was the EMEA financial controller for the newspaper USA Today, which she left to move into a successful stint in investment banking. When an opportunity arose to start her own corporate business, she jumped at it. 

“It’s been very clear in my entire career that I can see trends and opportunities emerging,” Zarina says. She has proven this repeatedly – in particular, by understanding how the internet would change the face of business when it first emerged commercially, so much so that she got involved in the companies building its infrastructure. 

“I was taking these multimillion-pound businesses and strengthening them, putting in the processes they needed and making them investable,” she says.  

Sector agnostic

After huge exposure and experience in the tech world as a consultant, Zarina took a year out and gained an MSc in technology entrepreneurship from University College London, combining traditional business skills with everything required to commercially leverage and scale any new tech, IP or diversification. This skill set allows her to be sector agnostic.

She discovered a market of owner-led businesses in need of her services, which kick-started her consulting career. 

It’s been very clear in my entire career that I can see trends and opportunities emerging

“These businesses were turning over significant sums that they weren’t leveraging. They weren't creating great opportunities,” she says. “Cash was falling through the gaps.” She helped to turn everything around from the inside. 

Now, having been one of the first people – and the first woman – to become a Chartered Management Consultant, Zarina uses her expertise to help other management consultants get ahead in their careers, while advocating for the benefits of professional body membership.