Manisha Shah - Member Profile

With more than two decades of experience advising client leaders on strategy, planning, and operational improvement topics, Manisha is the founder of EmStar Consulting, a growth and transformation advisor to senior executives in regulated sectors such as insurance and utilities. She has extensive transaction and transformation experience across varied industries, business models, investor-owned and strategic ownership models, and company sizes. Her clients most appreciate her pragmatic, results-oriented client delivery at the intersection of strategy and execution.

Manisha has served the senior management or Board of Directors of various energy industry clients, including electric and gas utilities, electric transmission entities, and research, technology, and service providers to the utility industry. Her engagements in this space have covered strategic planning, market assessment, growth strategy, market entry and execution plan development, business and operating model transformation, and operations and organization issue identification and mitigation.

In addition to the energy sector, Manisha has extensively served financial services companies on topics ranging across strategy development, product portfolio strategy, innovation, and rationalization, strategic options evaluation, post-merger integration, cost reduction and sourcing initiatives, process and organization improvements.

Prior to founding EmStar, Manisha was a Managing Director (Partner), Strategic Consulting with Houlihan Lokey, a leading global investment bank focused on mid-market transactions with a large concentration of private equity clients. She was previously a Director (Partner) with Bridge Strategy Group LLC, a Chicago-based boutique general management consultancy. At both firms, Manisha was responsible for leading and developing the natural gas practice while concurrently serving insurance clients. In this capacity, she led both relationship and intellectual capital development, specifically designed to build the practice’s reputation in the sector. At both firms, she was also a passionate practice leader, committed to mentoring and developing consulting professionals and teams, and held a people leadership role across the recruit-to-retire cycle for all consulting professionals.

Before Bridge Strategy Group, Manisha was a manager in Accenture’s Organization & Human Performance practice, where she led business transformation and change management efforts at property casualty insurers, fintech, and public sector clients.
Manisha is a Chicago-based empty nester. She is happy to collaborate across geographies as travel is not a constraint and new professional and personal experiences are extremely welcome!