For Kearney partner Hieu Pham, every work day starts with a simple question: Are you still learning? As long as he can answer in the affirmative, then he knows consulting is the right career for him.

“I’ve been learning since the first day of my consulting career,” explains Hieu, who joined Kearney in 2012. “I have done a lot of work in high tech, working on complex semiconductor supply chains, helping telecom equipment and service providers optimize their portfolio and transform their cost structure, but I don’t come from a tech background. I studied economics and analytic finance in school, and worked in sales and strategy during my industry days. My curiosity, colleagues, and experience have helped me to learn tech.”

Hieu’s ability to learn quickly served the client very well on one of his first high-tech industry engagements back in 2013. “Our client, a telecom equipment provider, needed a new portfolio strategy to support its goal of capturing 20 percent of the IP routing market, a fourfold increase over where they were back then,” he recalls. “We helped them form a perspective on virtualization and how it would affect the routing market in the future. Virtualization has become a huge thing since then, and many of our projections and predictions came true. We drove a lot of lasting change there.”

Another thing Hieu has learned is the importance of client relationships, which become more and more critical as one advances in the consulting ranks. “We win through the personal connections we make with the client and our ability to enable their success. At Kearney, it’s one of our differentiators,” he says. “All leading firms have good approaches, toolkits, and methodologies. But our clients have to trust in us as people and come to us to get things done.”

Born and raised in Vietnam, Hieu is very fond of working on international projects and with people from multicultural backgrounds, and he has work experience in the United States, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, and Southeast Asia. True to his people-centric nature, he also serves as the CMT practice’s people care and development lead.

Hieu and his wife have two children. The family loves the many outdoor activities they can participate in near their Denver home, including skiing. Since moving to Denver in 2020 and building his new home, Hieu has enjoyed learning how to take on all sorts of DIY projects, including woodworking, furniture making, tilework, and painting.