Richard Sowter is a Partner at Omera Partners operating across two specialist practices: Digital Infrastructure and Professional Services. In Digital Infrastructure, he specialises in executive search across data centres,telecommunications, network infrastructure, and technology vendors throughout Australia and Asia-Pacific. In Professional Services, his focus is exclusively on Partner and Managing Director level appointments for top-tier global consulting and advisory firms, local boutique practices, and new market entrants across Australia, New Zealand, and South-East Asia. With 17 years of executive search experience, including 13 years based in Australia, Richard brings the regional depth and global perspective to navigate two distinct markets: a mature Professional Services sector where relationships and reputation define outcomes, and a fast-emerging Digital Infrastructure sector where the talent supply has yet to catch up with the pace of growth. As digital infrastructure investment accelerates across Australia and the broader Asia-Pacific region, Richard is focused on growing Omera's Digital Infrastructure practice into the region's leading executive search partner for the sector..
What are the biggest challenges your clients face in finding senior talent?
“Digital infrastructure is scaling faster than the leadership talent pool. Data centre operators, telecommunications carriers, and network infrastructure businesses are all competing for the same limited pool of C-suite and senior executives. The organisations that win are the ones willing to look beyond their immediate sector and geography for cross-industry executive talent and back capability over pedigree. In Professional Services the challenge is almost the opposite.The talent exists but it is deeply embedded. Senior Partners and Managing Directors are not on the market. They are building practices, serving clients,and rarely thinking about a move. The work is about building genuine relationships long before a mandate exists.”
Which industries or functions do you specialise in?
"Mydigital infrastructure practice spans the full value chain, from data centreoperators and hyperscalers through to the telecommunications carriers, networkdevelopers, and technology vendors enabling connectivity across Australia andAsia-Pacific. Alongside that, I work within our Professional Services practiceplacing lateral Partners and Managing Directors across strategy, advisory,management consulting, and technology services; with active coverage acrossAustralia, New Zealand, and key South-East Asian markets including Singapore,Malaysia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, and Japan."
What types of appointments are you most proud of?
“In Professional Services, the most rewarding work involves securing Partners and Managing Directors for consulting and advisory firms where the brief is genuinely complex and the right talent is rarely visible from within the client’s own network. These are leaders who will define a practice, win significant client relationships, and shape the strategic direction of a business.”
A global consulting firm sought to address a significant diversity imbalance within its Australian technology consulting practice, where female representation at Partner level stood at just 19%. The brief was clear: identify and appoint senior female Partners capable of leading at the highest level,without compromising on the commercial and technical credentials the practice demanded.
Richard ran a global search with a deliberate focus on the local market, ultimately appointing four female Partners: two from within Australia and two from overseas. Beyond the appointments themselves, one of the incoming Partners brought with her a team of six, accelerating the practice’s capability build in a way that a traditional search process alone could not have achieved.
The result was a material shift in Partner-level diversity and a step-change in the practice’s capability and capacity to deliver, achieved within a single mandate.
As Richard reflects: “The best appointments don’t arrive alone. When you find the right leader, you often find a team behind them ready to move. That is how you build capability quickly, and sustainably. The goal was never diversity for its own sake. It was finding outstanding leaders who happened to shift the dial. There is a difference, and clients feel it.”
How do you build trust with both clients and candidates?
“By knowing the market better than anyone in the room. I take a research-led approach to executive search, wanting to understand the full talent landscape before I pick up the phone. Clients and candidates come back because I give them a perspective on their market they cannot get elsewhere, not just a shortlist.”
"Greatness in leadership is rarely loud. It is found in the executives who have spent years building something real; deep expertise, trusted relationships, a clear view of where their sector is heading, and the conviction to act on it. Our role is to find them and put them where it matters most.”
What keeps you energised outside of work?
“Family comes first. I am a proud husband and father based in Melbourne. Beyond that, I am chasing a single-figure golf handicap with more enthusiasm than success, and I never say no to good food, red wine, or a new travel destination.”
