Dr Heinz Pley joins Hyphen in Executive Advisor role.

03.05.2023

This move represents another high-profile addition to our executive team after the recent recruitment of Akin Akbiyik. He also provides valuable experience to our young and ambitious team having occupied senior roles with Morgan Stanley, Oliver Wyman, McKinsey and Boston Consulting Group among others over the course of a long and distinguished career. 

Heinz will aid us with our strategic business development efforts, leveraging his network and working with our co-founder Dr Erhan Ermis and our two Vice-Presidents of Client Partnerships, Akin Akbiyik and Pietro Vecchiato. His 30 years of professional experience, acquired at the highest level around the world, will also provide crucial guidance to our clients over the course of our engagements. 

Heinz will also utilise his decades of corporate knowledge to help us on our growth journey. He will advise our founders on all manner of topics as we look to expand into more markets, and he will collaborate with both new and existing clients. 

Heinz has followed Hyphen’s journey with interest since the company’s launch in 2018 and has now become our eighth recruit of 2023. 

“It’s an exciting business concept and Hyphen is unique in its sort of combination and has differentiated itself in the professional services marketplace with terms of the quality of the work it is doing,” said Heinz, who met our team in person at the Athens co-working retreat in March. 

“I think there’s more investment in building relationships and understanding the needs, there is more thought partnership and bespoke curation of the resources – all of that differentiates Hyphen.” 

For Heinz, joining Hyphen also represents something of a reunion with old friends and colleagues. He has previously worked with all three of our co-founders – Erhan, Michael Savolainen and Avinash Nandakumar – and Pietro during their respective tenures with BCG. 

And he expressed his delight at being able to team up with our senior leadership team and help to build on the rapid expansion of the last five years. 

Heinz added: “I’m super excited about the organisation that the founders have built in the five years since they started up with this idea. It’s a diverse team full of different skills and it’s very dynamic and fun. It feels like a bunch of friends working together on something, rather than just being work colleagues.” 

Increasing the capacity within the Hyphen team has been a key part of the recruitment drive over the past 12 months. Along with the recruitment of Akin earlier this year, Heinz’s hire will enable us to work closely with more clients to give them the services they expect. 

Erhan said: “Having someone we know and trust like Heinz on board will help us enormously from a client partnerships perspective. His connections around the world will help us to explore new avenues for growth and his experience and expertise will bring further depth to our engagements. Heinz’s active involvement with engagements will increase our capacity and enable more clients to enjoy a first-class project experience.” 

Heinz’s professional services career began at consulting giant McKinsey, for whom he worked for more than 16 years in South Africa. His time with the firm saw him rise to the position of Global Head of Mining and Expert Partner before he joined Morgan Stanley in London, taking the title of Managing Director of the company’s mining and metals group within the Investment Banking Division during a two-year stint. 

Other directorships and partnerships followed at Mubadala Development Company, for whom he worked for 18 months in Abu Dhabi, and then Boston Consulting Group, where he was Global Head of Mining, based out of Dubai for five years. His most recent full-time role was as a Partner of Oliver Wyman, working from Dubai and Johannesburg until March 2023. 

During his career, he has served major players around the globe and has been hugely important in helping them with strategy development and implementation, large-scale transformations, organisation redesigns, and strategic sourcing. 

As well as working all over the world and for some of the biggest companies on the planet, Heinz also has a biology degree from the University of Regensburg and a PhD in structural biology from the Stanford University School of Medicine. He was also a professional chess player earlier in his life. 

Michael added: “I am very excited to work with Heinz again and am delighted to have someone I count as a true friend with us at Hyphen. Heinz was a guest at my wedding, and I am truly grateful for all his support and guidance since we first met and I expect he will provide plenty more useful advice in the coming years! 

 Having worked closely with him in the past, we all know the ways he can improve our operations on the client side. With his decades of high-level business acumen at our disposal, Heinz will also be a valuable source of advice for the co-founders as we continue to chart Hyphen’s journey into the future.” 

Welcome to Hyphen, Heinz!