The 2021 Top 25 Consultants: Mark G. Livingston

As CEO, Mark Livingston guides Infosys Consulting's overall strategy and direction leads a global network of 6,000 highly-talented consultants and works hands-on with clients that are some of the biggest and most well-known brands in the world. He drives the organization's growth agenda and transformation into an innovative, digital services leader.

In his 3 years, Mark has hired hundreds of new senior staff, globalized its business and operating model and steered the firm across the $1 billion revenue plateau. He has overseen the organization's highest ever revenues and while delivering industry-leading profitability – a testament to the turn-around story he's delivered.

Mark is a lifelong consulting leader who spent much of his career at Deloitte, AT Kearny and Cognizant.  He has worked with top-tier clients across a number of industry sectors on large-scale transformations, board-level strategy and turn-around programs, and was the chief architect in building a global consulting organization into a $1 billion business for Cognizant.

Mark started his career in the United States Air Force where he was a nuclear missile launch officer. After the military, he commenced his consulting journey with Deloitte, where he was a director in the national manufacturing practice for 9 years. Mark then spent 13 years at AT Kearney where he was the global leader of the strategic IT and business transformation practices.  He also served as the Dallas office managing partner and eventually became the CEO for their Latin America business, based out of Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Starting in 2008, Mark served as EVP at Cognizant Technology Solutions where he built and managed their global business and tech consulting practice for nearly a decade.  He grew the organization to over 7,000 consultants at an annual growth rate of 30%.

Today Mark is a distinguished member of the Forbes Tech Council where he regularly shares top industry insights with other executives and business leaders.

What does winning this award mean to you?

"I am extremely honored to receive such a distinguished award. I have been fortunate to work with so many great talented people during my career and have witnessed so much positive change in our industry. I feel like I have been a small part of it all, and such an award would be an amazing authentication not just to me, but to the many great consultants and leaders I have worked with during my career. Also, our industry has been so special to me opening so many opportunities and life-long relationships. Truthfully, it is a profound crowning achievement for me in my life!"

What's been the biggest factor in your success?

"Being open-minded, being open to change, and being open to life-long learning. Especially over the last say 20 years after I became a partner, learning how to embrace new ideas, especially from our younger generation, has been key for me. Also finally, not being afraid to push big changes in the organizations I have joined has been a critical success factor. Driving organizations to evolve and change with the times has opened so many new doors for me and in fact been a key recipe to my 35 years of success at an executive level. Finally, I would say over the last 10 years or so, really pushing 'old school' type organizations to embrace a heavy diversity and inclusion agenda has really helped me build winning teams and cultures. Again, challenging conventional ways and pushing organizations to drive meaningful change has been really important to me, and always very enriching in looking back at what I achieved."

What has motivated you to excel over the course of your career?

"I love empowering others to succeed and seeing them learn, grow and feel inspired. As the CEO my job more than anything is to create an atmosphere of energy and inspiration. I love this and the challenge of constantly adapting to help others and to watch their own growth and career arch. In the end for me, if I can help others achieve great things there is nothing more that makes me happy and excited for my job each and every day! Finally, the client work and the never-ending challenges to help them pioneer a large-scale change agenda in today's digital age has been beyond enriching. Seeing the front-line work come to life and watching the positive impact it has continues to fuel my drive for success!"