Mr. Yao has worked with clients in various industries, including retail and consumer goods, real estate, technology, automobile manufacturing and cultural tourism. 

Prior to joining Alvarez & Marsal, Mr. Yao was in charge of the apartment division of the largest hotel group in China, where he built a team of more than 100 people in two years. His division served nearly half of the apartment enterprises in the Top30 real estate with capital investment. The divisional business lines provided complete end-to-end solutions for enterprises from marketing, operations, finance and digitalization.

Prior to that, Mr. Yao worked with McKinsey, managing and executing client projects as a Strategy and Transaction Partner. His notable engagements include helping water purification enterprises develop business growth strategy, working on branding, marketing, online, offline, and new retail channels to empower first-line retail. Enterprise revenue grew by 60% for two consecutive years. Mr. Yao also developed digital retail strategy for a leading home appliance enterprise, identifying market opportunities and development direction, business model, profit model and business methods, and selecting key market areas to expand the number of stores to 6000+; built the second growth curve for the leading utility company, doubling new business revenue and reaching 30% of the main business; and helped a share-listed kitchen appliance head enterprise business transformation project, stabilizing the profit margin of the first category and successfully exceeding performance growth of competitors a year later.

Mr. Yao earned a bachelor’s degree in Fudan University. A native Mandarin speaker, he is fluent in English.