LEE ALVAREZ
Nexera
Senior Consultant
Age: 25

“I always knew I wanted to be in healthcare,” says Lee Alvarez, a senior consultant at Nexera, a New York-based consultancy specializing in healthcare supply chain management. In his three years, he has certainly demonstrated that passion. Starting as an intern, “I really grew with right along with the firm.” Alvarez now is helping to grow medical facilities and reduce their costs. “In many cases we’re able to lower cost and increase patient care,” says Alvarez, and that ability is demonstrated by a recent project where his team reduced costs by $200,000 and made patient-focused recommendations in the facility’s operating room suite.

Alvarez recently was promoted to senior consultant at the firm, and according to his nominator, Diane Mongiello, vice president, administrative services, “Lee has demonstrated flexibility, honesty and an intense drive for success and is a shining example to the junior staff of all that is possible.” When he’s not making the world a healthier place, Alvarez, who recently completed his master’s in health services management and finance from New York University, spends time on the golf course or at his Hudson County, N.J., home. Alvarez says he sees himself continuing on his current path. “I’m just passionate about healthcare, and I’m passionate about consulting,” he says. “I go home every day, and feel like I’m seeing the fruits of my labor on a daily basis.”

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JASON QUARRY
Oliver Wyman
Partner
Age: 29

Oliver Wyman prides itself on being a firm that develops its employees quickly by giving them as much responsibility as they can handle early in their careers. So it’s no surprise then that Jason Quarry, at age 29, has already made partner. In fact, Quarry became a partner when he was just 26 years old. “I think Oliver Wyman allows consultants to take on more responsibility earlier than other firms,” he says. “As a result, there have been lots of opportunities here for everyone.” And Quarry certainly has made the most of them. Based in London, he is part of the Corporate & Institutional Banking division within Oliver Wyman’s financial services practice. In that role, he works with several top-tier investment banks. “When I graduated I was interested in both banking and consulting; Oliver Wyman was a good balance of the two due to its financial services focus,” Quarry says. The culture of Oliver Wyman also appealed to Quarry: a flat hierarchy, early responsibility, a commitment to valuing the quality of output over the number of hours input.

For now, Quarry says he is most focused on helping his clients navigate “through the current market turbulence.” And what are his long-term plans? “It must be a part of my being British,” he says, “but I honestly don’t have any.” Of course, his clients and his co-workers probably don’t really believe that. Do you?

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MICHAEL HATFIELD
North Highland
Manager
Age: 28

Michael Hatfield is invested in human capital—both professionally and personally. The North Highland manager is the human capital lead in the firm’s Houston office and is thrilled to be in a position where he might be advising his next-door neighbor. “It’s that ability to get in and work with those people side by side whom I live with and I live around—I think that’s what makes North Highland great,” Hatfield says.

Hatfield himself is also part of what makes North Highland great, says nominator and North Highland principal Mike Rosenbaum. “It is very rare that we introduce any consultant under 30 years of age, much less someone to lead a service offering in one of the nation’s fastest growing markets,” Rosenbaum says.

Hatfield, who came to North Highland from Accenture, advises financial services firms, and as the market continues to stumble, he’s working on demonstrating the analytics that support investing in employees despite the convention wisdom to conduct layoffs or cut back on personnel. “It’s a way to measure; it’s a way to actually increase your bottom line, which is something I don’t think twenty or thirty years ago people were saying. Of course, thirty years ago I wasn’t alive!”

When Hatfield isn’t championing the need for employee development, he’s championing the needs of children. As the current patient chair of the World Craniofacial Foundation, Hatfield speaks to groups about the rights of children with facial deformities to get surgery. “It’s a personal mission of mine. I was born with an extreme situation in terms of the structure of my own face,” he says. Hatfield explains that he had the necessary work done, and now is working to make sure others have the same chance. “There are a lot of kids out there who need that opportunity as well.”