One on One With Accenture's Annette Rippert

Industry veteran Annette Rippert started at Accenture back in 1986, and was made partner in 1998. She has an extensive background in technology and digital transformation efforts, leveraging that expertise in her previous role as head of Accenture's North America Technology business, which she rapidly expanded into new areas like data, cloud, and supply chain solutions. Her current role, leading Strategy & Consulting for the firm, sees her at the nexus of business, technology, and human potential. As if that impressive career trajectory wasn't enough, Rippert found time through it all to raise five children, only to return to the workforce and continue her meteoric rise within the firm. We recently caught up with Rippert to discuss her current role, and how the pandemic is creating opportunities for companies to transform both internally and externally.

Consulting: What have been your biggest priorities during your time in your latest role?

Rippert: As you think about the importance of what's happening right now in industry, in our strategy and consulting business we're focused on looking at the competitive nature of our clients in their industry, their growth, their profitability, how they deliver sustainable stakeholder value. Our business has been founded over a long period of time around the way that we serve, over 40 industry sectors, across all enterprise business functions, across our web ecosystem partners. We've been focused on building that business, but something very important has come into focus as I've come into my role, and as you think about the nature of the pandemic. That focus has been on industry transformation, initially, of course, on the ability of organizations to really sort out the impact of the pandemic on their own business. What we're focused on now is the use of data, analytics, artificial intelligence, the way we use the levers of technology in order to fuel transformation, business strategy, and thinking about how the industries themselves are changing. That's been a major focus point.