Month: September 2025

Amid a new surge in arrests enforcement, ICE has expanded its presence and reach around the region through cooperative local law enforcement agencies.

• Will Oakley is an independent consultant who lives in London.
• He started his career at Accenture and then decided he wanted to operate independently.
• This career choice has allowed Oakley to have flexibility in how he works, he told Business Insider.

Will Oakley, 35, lives in London and works as an independent consultant. He works, in part, with the Barton Partnership, which helps him bring in other consultants as needed to assist in his work with clients. The following has been edited for brevity and clarity.

I started out my career at Accenture, so I went through the graduate machine there, did my training, my time in the trenches, and enjoyed that experience. Accenture is a huge consulting company, and it’s a great place to cut your teeth. But with all of those large, tier-one and tier-two consulting firms, they come with a certain culture and a certain way of working.

There’s always been a bit of an entrepreneurial spirit in me. When I started and looked at the next 10 years, I thought, did I want to climb that corporate ladder, or take some risks and try to build my own portfolio of clients?

I’ve been independent since 2014. A lot of people say I’m kind of an independent consulting thoroughbred, in the sense that I haven’t really ever had too much of a long, permanent career.

The last decade has been spent going from client to client. I’ve been lucky enough to have client relationships that have lasted four or five years and never really had to have a break between those contracts. I’ve just kind of rolled from one to the next, and companies like Barton have helped me do that in the last few years and given me some further pipeline and opportunities.

Network-based consulting

Other parts have come from my own prospecting, my own network, and some recommendations. Today, I’m not just an independent consultant. We’re starting to pull together a new model and way of working, where it’s network-based consulting. We’re starting to form together into teams of consultants who can do projects and programs for clients at much larger scales.

Clients, we found, are looking for an alternative to those traditional players who usually come with extremely high costs. Clients come to us and say, “Hey, can you do that next step in the chain of what the firm was about to do?” So, we’ve kind of followed in the wake of these huge container ships and made a pretty good living off the back of that.

When it was just me, there was sort of a predefined expectation with the client of what they were shopping for. It might be, “I need a project manager, and I’ve got a series of deliverables already done; I just want you to come in and do so.”

Now, it’s kind of changed the narrative. I can bring other people into the conversation to not just execute, but maybe help you look forward to recommending what you should be thinking about.

‘A meritocracy kind of guy’

The thing that attracts people to this approach is the flexibility. If you decide to take some time out, you’re your own boss. We’re often working with remote and global clients, so there’s an element of being able to locate yourself around the world and move between different clients.

While our day rates are lower than traditional consultants’, people often take home more than they might have with a permanent career at a big firm.

One downside is trying to find a way to mitigate knowledge loss. I wouldn’t quite call it IP, but the content that you bring from one client to the next. Often, when you’re engaging with clients, what you’re building is for them, and it’s their IP. That’s what they’re paying you for. In the background, there are loads of playbooks and frameworks, and materials that you can store for yourself. But how do you galvanize five, 10, 15, 20 other independent consultants to rally around the same service offering or solution?

I am a meritocracy kind of guy. I like to deliver good work and be judged on the results of that work. For those at more traditional consulting firms, it can be a pretty brutal political game. Some people love that, but a lot of the advice I got right at the start of my career was that the people who make it to the top are the people who take the most shit for the longest period. I thought, “Is that the life I want?”

The best advice I give other independent consultants is, whatever level of experience you’re at or whatever role you’re playing, invest in yourself so that you can be indispensable.

Do you have a story to share about your career? Contact this reporter at tparadis@businessinsider.com.

• Charles dated my mom 30 years ago. Though their relationship didn’t work out, he stayed in my life.
• When we travel together, people often ask if he’s my dad or my stepdad.
• I call him my “second dad,” and he’s expanded my definition of family.

What do you call someone who isn’t your dad, isn’t your stepdad, but still chooses to show up for 30 years? Well, that’s been my conundrum with my mom’s ex-boyfriend.

Charles dated my mom for six months when I was four years old, and never fully left my life. He and my mom remained friendly, and over the years, he lingered on the periphery. There would be short visits, small gifts, and, after he moved from Johannesburg (where we lived), to Australia, the occasional phone call to stay in touch.

My mom has always had mixed feelings about our bond, but only because we make her feel like she’s living in an upside-down family sitcom. When I was a teenager and we would fight, I’d grab the phone, call Charles, and dramatically yell, “Talk to my mother! She’s being unreasonable!” It would drive her up the wall. These days, Charles and I routinely scandalize her on our group calls with our colourful banter.

She also appreciates our bond and the unexpected ways Charles has shown up for me. He bought me driving school lessons, surprised us both by paying off the remainder of my student debt, and, when I started making adult money, he became one of my most frequent travel buddies.

On our trips together, strangers often assume he is my dad because our relationship has all the trappings of a traditional father-daughter relationship — except it’s not. It’s moments like these that remind me how unusual our bond is.

I call him my ‘second dad’

So, how do we explain our unique bond?

As a joke, I’m often introduced as Charles’s “love child.” It’s quicker than explaining the whole situation and avoids the usual confused questions. “Is he your stepdad?” He isn’t. “Is your dad gay?” Nope. “Was your dad absent?” He wasn’t. “Then why did he stay?” That’s the one question neither of us can fully answer.

Charles says he instantly felt a bond when I demanded to sit on his lap as a toddler. All I know is that he has been the only man my mother has brought home (besides my father) that I’ve liked and accepted. While there was no initial plan to stay in my life, life (as we know all too well) had other plans.

That’s why I’ve settled on the title of “second dad.” What else would you call someone who has always offered unconditional support, guidance, and love? DNA may not bind us, but he is the definition of a father.

Our bond expanded my definition of family

I’ve never met anyone else with a dynamic quite like ours. Sure, people form bonds with stepdads, but your mom’s ex-boyfriend?! It’s unusual, bizarre, and I wouldn’t change a single thing about it.

Charles made me realize family is more than the people who share your last name — it’s the one you build. He taught me true commitment doesn’t come in the form of labels. It’s an intentional action, a choice you make every day to keep showing up in someone’s life.

Plenty of us have complicated family trees, but I’ve learned through our relationship that it’s the people who unabashedly choose you that make you feel the most at home. Whether it’s your blood or your found family, everyone deserves at least one person who stays simply because they want to.