Management advisory Rising Phoenix Consultancy takes flight in Dubai

The Emirates has welcomed a new management consultancy with the founding of Rising Phoenix in Dubai, led by managing director Kirsten Westholter.

Aimed at helping clients achieve customer excellence through process improvements, the newly launched Rising Phoenix Consultancy has been established by experienced Dutch consultant Kirsten Westholter, who first visited Dubai on a retail supply-chain project with former employer Molenaar & Lok Consultancy (MLC) three years ago and has since relocated permanently after falling in love with life in the emirate.

With a drs. in Economics (doctorandus, a pre-doctoral title roughly equivalent to a Masters in English-speaking countries) and further post-graduate studies in strategic and change management, Westholter kicked off her career with tech consultancy Sogeti (a part of Capgemini), altogether spending 13 years with the firm and working on long-term assignments for Dutch bank ABN AMRO among others.

From there, Westholter joined Molenaar & Lok Consultancy (MLC) – a Dutch consulting firm specialised in Customer Excellence – which would ultimately lead the senior consultant to Dubai on a transformation project for local retailer Home Centre (part of Dubai-based retail chain Landmark Group), with a focus of improving supply-chain processes. This would require Westholter to travel continuously between the Netherlands and UAE.

“I felt kind of stuck in between two worlds, the first one being my life in Amsterdam and the latter my new life in Dubai,” says Westholter, reflecting on the time and her comfortable life in Holland, while living out of a suitcase for stretches in Dubai. “Something was missing. Looking back I was stuck in my comfort zone and needed new horizons. In the new life I fell in love with Dubai, with the ease of making new contacts and the thrill of a new challenge.”

With the blessing of MLC, Westholter finally took the plunge, uprooting her former life for new horizons in Dubai – in time landing a positon as a senior business analyst/consultant with German fintech firm Fidor and being immediately thrown into an assignment for ADIB (Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank); one later recognised with an international gold in the Efma-Accenture awards for its innovative community banking platform.

And then, after three years in the region, Westholter felt ready again for another new challenge; with the launch of Rising Phoenix Consultancy coming as a result. “It was time to be brave again,” says Westholter. “Being a freelancer or having my own company was something I had in my mind for a while. Being able to arrange my own assignments, partnerships, doing my own branding/marketing, these are all things which were yelling yes, yes, yes! The time was finally there at the end of the year to make this idea a reality.”

That new reality, Rising Phoenix, is a cross-sector consultancy focused on developing customer journeys and continuously improving processes for SMEs through value adding activities and coaching at all levels of management – with Westholter applying her expertise and experienced gained across Europe and the Middle East in business process improvement (Lean/Six Sigma), process analysis and (re)-design, change and project management, and coaching and customer excellence.