Rising Stars of the Profession 2021: Nicole Overley

Nicole created what "Future of Work" means for Deloitte's Public Sector practice and has brought it to life for Deloitte's clients across federal, state, and local governments and higher education. She also led the evolution of the offering in the pre-and now post-COVID era.

Over the past several years, she has led multi-year, workforce-wide transformation programs focused on upskilling, capability building, workplace flexibility, and equity & inclusion for clients as diverse as the Virginia Department of Transportation, the US Postal Service, the US Navy, MIT, and the state government of Massachusetts.

Across her many public sector clients, the common denominator that drives her is a passion for making work better for people, and people better at work. She has positioned Deloitte as a thought leader in workforce development and transformation, repeatedly earns the trust of her most senior clients, and makes a real-life impact – both for clients and within Deloitte.

Described as an innovator and "intrapreneur" in the truest sense of the word, with an impressive following of hundreds of junior practitioners through the Future of Work Community of Practice she leads and the unique opportunities for exposure to business development, firm strategy, and future-focused trends it provides.

Nicole is known for building and empowering incredible teams. In Deloitte's Government practice of more than 20,000 people, Nicole was nominated for Leadership awards from not 1 but 7 different individual team members and was chosen as the recipient of a prestigious award for Senior Managers who exude excellence in their client work and build diverse, high-performing teams that exemplify inclusion, flexibility, and well-being.

" I must acknowledge two things that are, in my opinion, of equal importance when considering my success to date," Overly states. "First, the mentors and leaders at Deloitte who have believed in me and given me their time, advice, and sponsorship starting with my very first interview (as an impressionable student at Johns Hopkins who was convinced that consulting would be only a stopover on my path to a career in government I'd planned on since age 8!). I have been fortunate that my sponsors supported each step on my rather unique path ever since – I've spent time with clients in every sector of our Public Sector business, as well as a rotation with our Global Innovation practice and a few stints with commercial clients – without it slowing down my career.  In fact, the diverse experiences I have had, and particularly my time away from client service, really enriched my perspective and in particular, helped me understand consulting as an industry and Deloitte as a business.

My second 'success factor' is that I have (sometimes unintentionally) always looked for the 'next big thing,' the next thing that I was curious to learn about. As I continue to progress in my career, I value the breadth of experience as much as depth. I want to continue to push myself into situations where I may not know as much about the client or the team but have the chance to make connections to parallel experiences to help enrich their thinking."

" I absolutely love the pace and variety of opportunities that consulting affords me," says Nicole about what she enjoys most about the consulting industry. "One of my personal mottos is to "do something every day that scares me," and my career is often about how I accomplish that on a daily basis!"

What's the best advice you've ever been given?

When it comes to identifying the best advice Nicole has ever been given, she acknowledges two answers., "One, to always look on the bright side, and two, to trust my instincts. There are plenty of times in my career where I've second-guessed myself, both minor ('Did that client take my comment in the way I intended?') or major ('Do I really want to make X career move? Am I too junior to hold my own in front of Y client?'). What I've learned is that we're all smarter than we sometimes think we are – particularly in regards to understanding ourselves and others; if we listen to it, our gut instinct is right – and that there's always an upside to any situation if you look for it. I always tell my teams that even if they absolutely hate the type of work they're doing on a particular project, at least it's not permanent, and more importantly, at least they've learned from it – even if they just learned that they don't like it. You can learn from everything and always get better."