About Sierra Consultants and Sherif El Maghraby.
Sierra Consultants was founded in 2023 by Sherif El Maghraby after a short stint at Grant Thornton in the Treasury Management practice. During this short period, Sherif learned how the consulting business was led and how to bring value to clients of the firm.
While the time at Grant Thornton was a great learning experience, it was not the best fit and there were some clear gaps in client assistance that Sherif set out to fill.
While Sierra Consultants can fulfill any mandate related to Treasury and Management (such as RFPs, fraud vulnerability assessment, payment modernization & optimization, etc.), two main offerings were missing and required someone to fulfill them in the market.
Banking Optimization
The first one was Banking Optimization. When this was originally tried by Sherif himself at Grant Thornton for the first time with a large insurance company, the results were an ROI of 8,000%. This number seems comically large, but it is accurate, verifiable, and replicable.
Competitor consulting firms, however, simply do not have the knowledge or flexibility to offer Banking Optimization, due to its reliance on expert Capital Markets’ Treasury Banking knowledge.
Commercial Office
The second offering is the Commercial Office. This service helps companies expand to North America with the help of highly qualified, experienced professionals while minimizing their financial exposure.
The Commercial Office conducts market studies, leverages existing information on its target markets, and executes on the sales strategy while remaining faithful to the spirit and culture of the contracting company’s founding.
This turnkey offer allows the contracting company to continue its focus on its home soil while trusting that its operations elsewhere are conducted with respect to the local market’s legal and cultural requirements needed to succeed.
While conducting business in North America, the consultants will provide regular reports, performance indicators, and feedback on market penetration, which can, in turn, be leveraged worldwide to continue expanding to new markets.
We are here to help.
So what makes Sierra Consultants different? Why choose us over anyone else? Because no one else does what we do.
In times when you need clarity & confidence, we are here to help.
About Sherif El Maghraby, Founder & Managing Director
Sherif El Maghraby has led two professional lives, with almost nothing in common between them. He started out as a professional musician, for which you can find footage of his many performances around the country as a guitar player.
Around age 23, in search of stability, he got an entry-level position at the BMO Financial Group. From there he went on to lead multiple successful projects and countless positive client interactions, garnering a reputation for being a staunch customer advocate—which translated directly into everything he did for the bank.
This advocacy yielded him consistent success in every one of his roles throughout his career at BMO. At age 27, he got his start in Treasury Management, where he was implementing treasury management products for BMO for its Corporate Finance and Capital Markets sector clients.
By age 29, he was one of the top-ranked Associates in the country. He was mentored by his Vice-President Pierre Fontebasso, who solidified his existing foundation of customer advocacy for several years, and was considered a shoe-in for the eventual VP role. Upon Pierre Fontebasso’s retirement, Sherif was offered a Director role at Grant Thornton, for whom he worked for about a year before parting ways and starting Sierra Consultants.
His mission was to help his clients in a measurable, valuable way. He believes his banking background and expert knowledge are critical to this mission.
On a personal note, Sherif enjoys spending time with his young family. In his own time, Sherif still plays and records guitar and practices a variety of martial arts, including Muay Thai, Jiu-Jitsu, and Freestyle Wrestling. He is also a car fanatic (or a petrolhead in the UK), whether it be for Formula 1, GT, or Sim Racing.
