One on One with The Highland Group's Hugo Melgarejo

Hugo Melgarejo is a consulting industry veteran with 20 years of experience in designing and implementing performance improvement initiatives in Fortune 1000 and Global 1000 companies. After serving as President of Proudfoot Consulting, Melgarejo left the firm to join The Highland Group in 2009 as Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Americas. Under his leadership, the strategy and operations firm has tripled in size and opened offices in Brazil, Chile, and Canada, among others. "It is amazing and very exciting to see what is happening in the organization, but it's also a big challenge," he says. Melgarejo sat down with Consulting One on One to talk about The Highland Group, its growth and its strategy and some of those challenges going forward.

Consulting: Since you took over, The Highland Group has been growing like gangbusters. Why is that?

Melgarejo: We started in the $10 to $20 million range, and it's easier for a firm to grow when it starts at that number. We grew at 100 percent in 2010, 80 percent in 2011 and we're projecting another 50 percent growth for 2012. By the end of this year, we'll be somewhere between $100 to 150 million, which is five fold from a $20 million company. The next phase is for us to continue to grow, but reduce that rate of growth and make sure it's sustainable. It's challenging, it's fun and it gives us a ton of possibilities to bring significant talent to the firm.