Julie Mercer, a Principal at Nous Group, has always sought to contribute to positive social outcomes; so, when the company’s founder, Tim Orton, tapped her on the shoulder, joining Nous’ growing UK team was a natural next step. Founded 23 years ago in Australia, Nous Group – a Bramble Hub partner – remains true to its original purpose: delivering positive influence and improving people’s lives through its management consulting services. This ethos, and the company’s service offering, are fuelling its expanding influence in the UK public sector.

Julie joined the team a year ago and now works alongside Tim (Managing Principal and CEO) and highly experienced Principals including Katharine Purser, Peter Horne and Simon Lancaster in its thriving public policy practice.

Like that of her Nous colleagues, Julie’s career trajectory has been impressive. Julie has always considered her work choices alongside her contribution to social wellbeing.

With this ambition in mind, Julie began her working life monitoring the use of public finances and tracking value for money at the National Audit Office (NAO), before joining Arthur Andersen and then Deloitte.

At Deloitte, while juggling a fast-paced career and a growing family (she has three now-grown up children), Julie set up the firm’s global education practice, where much of her work was dedicated to closing the national skills gap and supporting teams around the world to grow their influence with government and institutions. “In the early days we worked with government on higher and further education and schools policy, working on plenty of national reform programmes to raise standards.” And then under the Cameron government, Julie’s focus shifted to higher education, supporting the sector review the impact of the 2011 reforms and addressing a whole range of challenges universities face from student experience to professional services redesign, academic strategy and curriculum reform to international reputation, and securing financial sustainability to commercialisation and pricing strategy.

After 22 years with Deloitte, Julie set off in search of a new adventure, joining strategy firm Cairneagle and extending her experience in the for-profit sector before moving to Nous to help build its growing practice.

Nous has around 50 people in the UK – a mid-sized outfit – but is much bigger in its home country, Australia, where it employs more than 600 people, and is a well-known public sector supplier. With another 50 people in Canada, the company employs over 700 people globally and draws on its international network to deliver big thinking and even bigger outcomes.

Nous encapsulates similar social values to those that Julie has treasured throughout her working life. “At Nous, our decisions are guided by our purpose and our ambition to think big,” Julie says. “We are meritocratic, we win together and lose together. There is a genuine sense of collaboration and responsibility to help each other succeed.

“We have a shared ambition to go further in our thinking and redefine success so that is multidimensional and far reaching. It’s an organisation that is genuinely focused on uncovering the best outcomes and this really resonates with me. Working at Nous feels like a coming home.”

Beyond its purpose, its cultural excellence and deep expertise is what most sets Nous apart. “We recruit more experienced people than the bigger firms and that gives us an unmatched depth of capability while clients get direct access to senior expertise.”

Company size is often raised as an issue for consultancies, and Nous Group occupies a sweet spot in between the smaller specialist companies and the giants. At 700 people globally, Nous is no minnow, and even though it only employs 50 in the UK, it often deploys consultants globally, so it draws from a much larger pool of talent and experience.

One of Julie’s jobs is to establish the Nous brand in the UK – ideally so it becomes recognised to the extent it is already known in Australia.

“We need to ensure that government buyers understand our size and capabilities. Nous has the back-office of a big organisation, but also the agility and energy of young one. We offer something a bit different. We have a constant focus on getting better as we get bigger”

And while they’re taking over the world (or at least, growing rapidly in the UK public sector), Nous employees are enjoying themselves. Julie notes that “this is such a fun place to work, and there’s a great social life, particularly among the younger staff. Almost every Friday, we finish early and have a ‘care and connection’ session and focus on issues that employees care about. It’s this strong sense of connection that enables collaboration and underpins our culture.”

“It's a very exciting time at Nous - we’ve just launched a new brand campaign that talks about the way we work and what we offer our clients. It showcases how we bring together unique combinations of talent, attributes and insights to find better solutions. It reflects how we avoid trade-offs to give clients the best experience and the best outcomes. Expert, meet ease; ideas, meet ideals”.

It seems that Nous Group is likely to become a well-known UK name in the near future, and Bramble Hub is proud to be a part of that growth.