Phil Schmoyer

Principal, Baker Tilly Advisory Group

Phil brings nearly 20 years of experience guiding institutions and organizations through complex digital and operational transformation. As a co-leader of Baker Tilly's digital strategy and transformation practice, he has become a trusted advisor to colleges and universities navigating some of the most consequential changes in higher education today—from institutional consolidation and shared services to data modernization and the student experience. He helps leaders align growth strategy with mission and academic vision, redesign operating models, and modernize how their institutions manage and use data to serve students, faculty, and stakeholders.

Phil has led some of higher education's most ambitious transformation efforts. He served as executive leadership on a landmark initiative to integrate multiple universities into a single, multi-campus institution—consolidating more than 400 processes into a simplified, consistent operating model while advising the University President on governance throughout the reorganization. Partnering closely with the Provost, he developed a core curriculum analysis and synthesis process to ensure program continuity and establish a foundational framework for launching new colleges within the system. He has also stood up enterprise shared services capabilities across an institution and built the feasibility study and business case for a higher education consortium exploring shared service delivery.

Phil is equally fluent in the data and analytics challenges facing today's institutions. He has led the design and delivery of enterprise data platforms that improve integration, reporting, and analytics across academic, financial, operational, and student-facing functions. Working shoulder to shoulder with university leadership, IT, and institutional research, he defines data strategy and governance and then delivers the pipelines, dashboards, and reporting tools that power enrollment management, student success, academic planning, and operational effectiveness—turning the fragmented data environments so common in higher education into scalable, governed platforms that leadership can trust.

At the heart of Phil's work is a commitment to the people higher education serves. He has built student-centric journey maps to surface the moments of truth that shape a student's experience, using those insights to design better, more empathetic engagement. He regularly guides institutions through agile transformation and customer experience improvement grounded in human-centered design.

Before joining Baker Tilly, Phil held roles at a leading management consulting firm, focused on delivering digital initiatives, aligning strategic vision with execution, and driving operational improvement through enterprise risk management and design thinking. For higher education leaders facing hard questions about how to transform while staying true to their mission, Phil is a partner who understands both the strategy and the student at the end of it.