Excellence in Leadership
DR. MARIN GJAJA/BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP
WHAT’S THE BEST ADVICE—PROFESSIONAL OR OTHERWISE—YOU’VE
EVER RECEIVED?
GJAJA: If you try to do reference-quality work on every project, you will
sometimes succeed, and great consulting work will beget more work
at your clients.
Dr. Marin Gjaja is a Senior Partner and Managing Director, Chicago at Boston Consulting Group where
he focuses his work on large-scale
transformational efforts with large
companies. He is the former leader
of BCG’s U.S. Great Lakes business,
global Consumer Products business
and Midwest Healthcare practice.
Marin is also the Chair of BCG’s
Center for Illinois’ Future, which focuses on local social impact and public
sector work supporting education, violence reduction, economic development and struggling neighborhoods.
While his accomplishments at
BCG are off-the-charts impressive,
Dr. Marin Gjaja is one of those rare
individuals whose pre-consulting
accomplishments are as impressive
as his work with clients. Prior to
joining BCG, Gjaja was a scientific
researcher in computational neuroscience at Boston University and a
member of the U.S. Men’s National
Volleyball Team where he was an
alternate for the 1992 bronze-medal
winning U.S. Olympic Team.
“I feel like my background as a
competitive athlete has had an influ-
ence on me by causing me to always
seek to get better as a consultant, to
deliver better work for my clients,
and to deliver better experience for
my teams,” Gjaja says.
He holds a PhD in computational
neuroscience from Boston Univer-
sity, where he was a Presidential
University Fellow. “I was in the first
crop of consultants that BCG hired
with PhDs, and I ended up looking
at consulting because one of my col-
lege roommates worked as a summer
intern at BCG the summer before I
finished graduate school,” he says.
But his BCG accomplishments are
extraordinary, as well. Since joining
the firm in 1996, Gjaja has worked
with companies across most major
industrial sectors. He has spent the
last 15 years primarily supporting
CEOs and senior leadership teams
of large and successful organizations
to make sustained, step-function
changes in their performance trajec-
tory from strategy to implementa-
tion, including: Defining a new stra-
tegic direction with organizations’
senior leadership teams; supporting
organic growth through R&D, in-
novation, product launch, segmen-
tation, and pricing; supporting in-
organic growth through end-to-end
M&A and post-merger integration
for tuck-in and major acquisitions,
including three of the 10 largest
CPG mergers ever; and, improving
productivity and margins.
“I’ve had the good fortune of
having the opportunity to apply my
coaching skills to benefit a broad
range of civic and social impact cli-
ents,” Gjaja says. “There has been
nothing more rewarding than seeing
those clients succeed and the impact
that they have on peoples’ lives.”
And none of it would be possible,
he says, without the incredible col-
leagues and teammates that he’s had
at BCG for over 20 years. “Every
opportunity I had at BCG came from
them, I have learned so much from
their coaching and mentorship, and I
have benefitted from their incredible
support and generosity.”
In fact, he counts having had the
chance to help support the success
of both so many different clients and
BCGers over the years as one of his
proudest accomplishments.
Another may be this recognition as
a Top 25 Consultant. “It’s a high hon-
or to earn the respect of and be rec-
ognized by my colleagues and peers.”
THE TOP
T
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EN
TY
FIVE25
CONSULTANTS
2019
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