The 2021 Top 25 Consultants: Yang Shim

As a principal within the EY Technology Consulting practice, Yang serves as Americas Technology Consulting Leader across the US, Canada, Israel and Latin America. His professional goal is to be an ambitious leader, innovating how we approach selling and delivering EY technology consulting capabilities across sectors and uniting our technology teams across regions.

Yang also has the critical role of working across EY Technology Consulting teams to manage strategic alliance partnerships from planning to delivery, working with industry leaders such as Microsoft and SAP and enabling bold thinking and ideation to drive EY technology consulting ambitions.

As a trusted leader and advisor, he values working directly with clients to support and guide them through end-to-end technology transformations, leveraging not only EY tools, methods, and differentiators but also leading-edge technologies in the market. Yang is also an avid supporter of the Pan-Asian community and was recently recognized for his contributions to the community as a leader and innovator building support for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives across the EY network. Beyond these endeavors, his key focus area pervasive in his numerous roles within the US firm includes digital enterprise transformation, architecture, platform, data and advanced analytics, intelligent automation, cloud transformation and FinTech.

What does winning this award mean to you?

"My team and I work closely with clients to solve their toughest business challenges and seize opportunities to grow in transformative times. In order to be that trusted consulting partner that looks ahead at where the market is going, we must also be adaptive and agile ourselves and transform our own organization. Technology has become an increasingly important element – both for EY and our clients. It's no surprise that this acceleration of digital transformation requires talent. Assembling the right team of people is the single most important step in helping our clients contemplate their own transformation. I think of my team as an orchestra–various different instruments coming together to perform a complex piece of music and I am the conductor. I have always understood that delivering a great outcome for clients takes a complete team effort, with a variety of experts bringing their own unique talents to the stage while understanding how their role fits into the bigger picture. Winning this award is confirmation that this approach of creating leaders, cultivating intersections, respecting each person's perspective and expertise, even if it's different from my own, helps us create great client experiences."

What's been the biggest factor in your success?

"I am passionate about mentorship and developing people's technical skills and strategic insight to build successful fulfilling careers while delivering the best possible outcomes for our clients. This completely aligns with EY's values in that our people are key to navigating disruption and we work diligently to train and motivate them to embrace a global and digital mindset. It's also why EY has made major investments in technology, learning and development."

"Staying ahead of the curve is a challenge that every business must address. I believe when my team is empowered to collaborate, learn new skills and succeed in a changing world, they can drive the organization's success no matter what challenges come next. The consulting industry is a pay-it-forward model – I had wise leaders teaching me to look ahead of where the market is going and define where I could add value and now I'm mentoring future leaders on my team. I am also passionate about how academia is integrating the study of technology into its curriculum. As an alumnus of the University of Virginia, I sit on the board and advise and mentor on this important topic."

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

"Technology is an industry that is never stagnant. An ever-changing market outlook and the development of new technologies to solve client issues is both invigorating and motivating. It's also inspiring to see that technology and consulting within this space is an area that next generations are keen to be part of. This industry will continue to grow and thrive with new leaders offering new perspectives. Technology has moved past solving mainly business challenges and now has a much larger impact on society. Alleviating societal issues is neither a simple nor a quick process, but new technologies do offer alternate paths forward which is exciting to be part of."