Who we are

A search firm built on one conviction:
talent defines consulting.

Summary

Founded 2021 · LondonIncorporated in London in 2021 and consulting-only from day one.
Management Consulting focussedWe focus exclusively on the management consulting space — Partner, Principal, Director and Manager hiring, and whole teams. One market, covered properly.
Backed by Ngāi TahuSeed investment from Ngāi Tahu, our founder’s Māori tribe in Aotearoa (New Zealand).

Where we operate

GermanyEurope’s largest economy and, on BDU’s measure, its largest consulting market: €49.0bn in 2025, of which BDU classifies €12.6bn as strategy consulting — a wider definition than the strategy houses alone. Manufacturing, automotive and the Mittelstand anchor demand; restructuring, AI and sustainability are the fastest-growing lines. Home-grown global names: Roland Berger, Simon-Kucher, Horváth, Porsche Consulting.
AustriaVienna is the hub for Central and Eastern Europe: the major firms run CEE mandates from here. The focus is industrials, energy and infrastructure, financial services and the public sector. A small market, but tightly linked to Germany – moves between Munich, Vienna and Zurich are routine.
SwitzerlandA compact, high-value market: management consulting of roughly CHF 2.4bn (WGMB, 2022) within an economy of some CHF 870bn. Pharma in Basel, banking and insurance in Zurich and Geneva, commodities in Zug — and some of the highest partner day rates in Europe. Every global firm runs a dedicated Swiss practice.
United KingdomThe world’s fifth-largest economy and a £21.8bn consulting industry in 2025 (MCA Annual Industry Report 2026). Financial services is among the largest buyers of consulting work, with public sector, energy and TMT behind it — and 31% of UK consulting fee income is now earned overseas. Home-grown firms gone global: L.E.K., OC&C, PA Consulting, Baringa.
Wider EuropeA large and fragmented market, clustered in France, the Netherlands and the Nordics. At Partner level, mandates are increasingly cross-border by default — which is why we run Europe as one market map rather than many.
United StatesThe world’s largest economy and largest consulting market — management consulting estimated at over US$125bn in 2025. The modern industry was invented here: McKinsey, BCG, Bain, Kearney and AlixPartners are all US-founded. We work the US corridor mainly for European firms building American practices — and the reverse.

Appointments we make

TeamsPractice-level appointments — a Partner and the colleagues their commercial engine depends on, each recruited as a separate search. Viability, cohesion and covenants are tested discreetly before anyone is approached.
PartnersEquity and fixed-share appointments: origination, client following and practice leadership. Our centre of gravity, and the level where the economics of a move are least well understood.
DirectorsPrincipal and Director appointments — delivery leadership with early origination, and the level from which a firm’s next partner cohort is built. Often the hire that decides whether a practice scales.
ManagersEngagement leadership, including strong Senior Consultants. We work selectively at this level — usually behind a Partner anchor or as part of a practice build, where the delivery tier has to arrive with the leader.
Partner with us on a searchTalk to us about a move

The people

You brief us. We do the work.

+Hover the “ask me about” labels — each one is a real conversation we enjoy having

Ben Appleton

Founder & Partner

Ben founded Strat-Bridge and runs every client mandate personally. A London-based New Zealander, he has specialised in professional-services recruitment across Europe for more than ten years, focused on the management consulting space — particularly operations strategy and the AI economy.

Outside the firm, Ben shares his Māori culture across Europe through haka and waiata — he is proud of his heritage and hails from the Te Whānau-ā-Apanui, Whakatōhea and Ngāi Tahu iwi of Aotearoa New Zealand.

LinkedInEmailWhatsApp+44 20 8629 3639
Ask me about team movesLifting a practice without breaking it — cohesion, covenants and who the team actually follows.
Or the DACH marketWhich German firms are actually investing, and what a UK-to-DACH move really involves.
Or the hakaGenuinely. He performs across Europe. It is a better story than most partner conferences.

David Stone

Partner

David manages our candidate network and project delivery across the DACH and UK regions, with over ten years in international executive search within professional services — consultancies, strategy houses, private equity and technology services. He also advises clients on talent advisory and D&I initiatives, and builds the firm’s learning & development programmes.

David is an avid traveller — 65 countries and counting — and enjoys building diverse, international teams.

LinkedInEmailWhatsApp+44 20 4542 8700
Ask me about partner economicsBuy-ins, revenue credit, guarantees, covenants — the mechanics behind our explainer series.
Or German consultingDelivery across the DACH region — and how the German market differs from the UK at partner level.
Or travel65 countries and counting. It is also why he is good at building diverse, international teams — he has spent a lot of time being the outsider in the room.

Onika Kwatsha

Manager: Research & Candidate Engagement

Onika leads research and candidate engagement across Strat-Bridge’s mandates. She runs the market mapping behind every search and manages the first approach to the Partners and Directors on it, then stays close to candidates throughout the process. Along the way, she tracks the movements that matter, from promotions and departures to practices growing or under pressure, and feeds them into the market intelligence and firm analytics Strat-Bridge brings to each client.

South African-born, Onika is always looking for her next adventure, whether that’s hiking a new trail or discovering a new corner of the world. She’s also an avid Formula 1 fan and rarely misses a race weekend.

LinkedInEmailWhatsApp+44 20 8629 3157

Anthea Tuakanangaro

Finance Director

Anthea is a London-based Chartered Accountant from New Zealand with Big 4 experience at PwC across the UK, Europe, New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific. She owns the firm’s financial and operational performance — reporting, compliance and internal systems — and partners with the founder on commercial decision-making, keeping the business set up for scalable, sustainable growth.

Outside the firm, Anthea is proud of her Polynesian heritage — from the islands of Mauke (Akatokamanava) and Rarotonga (Tumutevarovaro) in the Cook Islands — and stays connected to the Pacific and Māori community in London.

LinkedInEmail
Ask me about the numbersFinancial visibility, strong controls, and commercially driven decisions — pragmatic and hands-on.
Or the Cook IslandsMauke and Rarotonga — and the role culture plays in building connection and community.

Our foundations

Recruitment is hard, and people matter.

That sentence is the whole reason this firm exists. A senior move is a capital decision, made by a person, at a vulnerable moment, on incomplete information — and the industry around it is not always built to honour that.

So we did not workshop a set of values into existence. We took ours from tikanga — Māori principles carried, tested and lived across centuries, through immense change — the kind of change our own industry is living through now — and still intact. They were never written for business. That is precisely why they hold: they were built to govern how people treat one another when it is difficult, when there is something at stake, and when nobody is watching.

These four are our pou — our pillars. These uphold our entire firm.
+Choose a pou to read what it means, and what it looks like in our work

Manaakitanga

Care and dignity

Often translated as hospitality, manaakitanga is about the elevation, protection and support of another person’s mana (authority and prestige). For us, it is the recognition of responsibility for those within our care. When a candidate or client comes within our care, we carry an obligation. This is about treating people with respect and dignity, including continued engagement and honest communication, ensuring that nobody is left waiting for news that never comes.

Manaakitanga also means there is a reciprocal obligation for those engaging with us to have the same level of care and dignity.

Whanaungatanga

Relationships

We call this one “be real.” Whanaungatanga is the practice of being a family, of bonds formed through kinship and forged through working together on common goals. It is strengthened through shared effort and repeated contact.

In Māori practice we introduce ourselves through pepeha: our mountain, river, familial ties. This practice is about finding connections by sharing about who we are. We also ask you to bring all of yourself into our space so we understand who we are working with.

For us, the relationship is as important, if not more, than any single mandate. It is about inclusivity and building and maintaining a network built on genuine connection rather than proximity.

Tika & Pono

Just and honest

Tika is the correct way of doing things. Pono is truth and sincerity. Together they are about acting with integrity: the right actions done correctly and honestly.

We will work with our clients and give the honest and correct feedback for you, even if it’s not in our best financial interest.

Kaitiakitanga

Guardianship

Kaitiakitanga is the responsibility of guardianship: it has a rights and responsibilities nexus. Traditionally, it is the duty to protect and care for land, waters and resources for future generations, as an extension of the right to use and manage resources.

Extended to how we work, it’s the idea that we hold something precious in trust, not just use it.

Our mark

The whai

The mark beside our name is a whai, a stingray. In Te Whānau a Tutawake, our founder’s hapū (Māori tribe) in Aotearoa New Zealand, the whai is the kaitiaki: a guardian.

It isn’t decoration. It is the same idea the fourth pou above is named after — kaitiakitanga, guardianship — rendered as the symbol we put our name next to, on every document and every page.

Our backing

Backed by Ngāi Tahu

Strat-Bridge received seed investment from Ngāi Tahu, the iwi (Māori tribe) of our founder’s whānau (family) in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Ngāi Tahu represents the descendants of Tahu Pōtiki and holds deep connections across Te Waipounamu, New Zealand’s South Island. For generations the iwi has acted as kaitiaki — guardians of the land, waters and communities — balancing economic progress with long-term environmental and social responsibility.

That support connects our work in Europe to a wider legacy of enterprise, stewardship and intergenerational thinking. These principles shape how we approach growth: with a long-term perspective, respect for people and place, and responsibility for the value we help create.

What we believe

Five convictions.

+Hover any belief for what it means in practice
Precision over volumeOne market, covered properly. We take fewer mandates and run every one personally — firm-defining hires, not transactional placements.
Advice before placementWe tell candidates to stay when staying is right, and clients when the brief is wrong. The fee never decides the advice.
Confidential, alwaysA tight circle on every mandate. Nothing you tell us moves without your approval — on either side of the table.
Publish what we learnMarket maps, sentiment reports, partner economics — anonymised and put in public. Thought leadership you can check, not claim.
Long-term over quick winsWe judge a placement at year two, not week two — we would rather lose a fee than fill a seat that unravels.
25+combined years in consulting and professional-services search
200k+monthly impressions across the top five consulting markets
M→PManager to Partner — and whole teams moved together
5markets — UK, DACH, wider Europe and the US, one sector

Diversity & inclusion

Inclusion, in every mandate

Strat-Bridge recognises the influence we hold as a search and talent firm, and the responsibility that comes with it. We lead and advise on diversity and inclusion across every mandate we take, with an anti-discrimination approach to recruitment — regardless of race, gender, age, sexual orientation, disability, ethnicity or otherwise.

Read our full Equality, Diversity & Inclusion statement →

Questions

About FAQ

What is Strat-Bridge?

Strat-Bridge is an executive search firm focused exclusively on the strategy and management consulting sector, placing Partner, Principal, Director and Manager-level leaders — and whole teams — across Europe and the US.

What makes Strat-Bridge different from generalist search firms?

We work in one sector only. That focus means genuine networks at Partner level, market maps that are already current, and honest advice on how a move will actually land — for both firms and candidates.

Who leads Strat-Bridge?

Strat-Bridge was founded by Ben Appleton, who leads the firm’s search work alongside a senior team with deep consulting-sector experience.

Where does Strat-Bridge operate?

Our home markets are the United Kingdom and Germany, with active coverage of Switzerland and wider Europe, and searches into the United States. We cover the UK and DACH together, which is what makes cross-border moves between them work.

How do I start a conversation with Strat-Bridge?

Book a Partnership Scoping Call, email info@strat-bridge.com, or use the contact page for a confidential discussion about a hire, a team move or your own next step.

Partner with us.

Hiring, moving, or just mapping the ground — 30 minutes, no agenda needed. Coffee optional.

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