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The Importance of Diverse Educational Perspectives in IBC
Anushka Agashe, IBC Experienced Consultant
“It is interesting to hear others' viewpoints, perspectives, and ways of thinking, and that overall positively boosts the team motivation for the project as well.” -Kayla Chen, IBC Senior Consultant
As highlighted by media coverage in recent years, it’s clear to see that diversity has been a top priority for many American companies. Consulting firms haven’t escaped this trend. Diversity is necessary to develop more creative and varied workforces, but for many people, the term “diversity” is often limited to increased racial or gender inclusivity and equity. Diversity in education and experiences, though, is also critical.
In consulting, there’s often a perception that consultants come only from business-related backgrounds. While it’s true that this is a common path, both in the workforce and within Illinois Business Consulting (IBC), it certainly isn’t the only path. For example, approximately 50% of management consultants at McKinsey & Co. don’t have a degree in business. Rather, their backgrounds run the gamut from engineering to the arts. As a bioengineering major myself, I’ve personally seen the benefits of working alongside people whose backgrounds differ significantly from mine.
IBC prides itself on being a diverse organization, and my own experience within it has been improved and my viewpoint expanded by working with people from different racial, social, and educational backgrounds. In fact, IBC’s own education breakdown reflects a similar pattern as some of the top consulting firms in the world. While students from the Gies College of Business make up about 50% of the approximately 250 members of IBC, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Grainger College of Engineer each make up almost 20%. The other colleges within the University of Illinois aren’t represented quite as heavily, but the size of the organization means that they often have 5+ members contributing to projects every semester.
There’s a reason that IBC draws students from such different educational backgrounds. The organization presents a great learning opportunity and hands-on experience for students who might not be pursuing a degree in business but still want to familiarize themselves with what consulting entails. Specifically, students from all colleges gain an understanding of how businesses make decisions and gain real experience in fields like marketing, product development, operations, and more. However, as much as IBC benefits these students, these students and their diverse viewpoints help improve IBC as well.
For one, IBC’s work covers a wide range of topics. Some of these involve more typical business concepts such as developing go-to-market strategies or human resource consulting. However, IBC also has many projects in more technical areas such as nuclear energy, quantum computing, economic impact, the space economy, and generative AI. When it comes to projects like these, teams are improved by having consultants with backgrounds more closely aligned with the subject matter or who can provide unique insights and ways of thinking.
Senior consultant Kayla Chen, a freshman in sociology within the College of Liberal Arts and Science, spoke of her fears of facing a steep learning curve when entering IBC. Despite her fears, she found that she was able to rely on the people and mentors around her and said that working on diverse teams has had a profound impact. She also talked about how she was able to add unique value to the teams she’s been on by applying problem-solving frameworks she learned in class, despite none of her projects directly relating to her major.
That’s not to say that coming into an organization that is supported by Gies and made up of a majority of business majors is always easy. Yunji Nam, a project manager (PM) and masters student in bioengineering, spoke about her experience as an engineering student within a business-focused organization. For example, she described her struggles with understanding business terminology when she first joined IBC. She also described how she wasn’t aware of different metrics and frameworks that could be used to assess markets until she was introduced to them by her PM at the time. Yet, despite these struggles, Yunji was able to contribute to her projects in unique ways. Her last project was related to biometrics and AI, so she was able to connect the project with what she’s learned in her classes about the applications of AI in healthcare to better understand the field and the goals of the projects. She was also able to use her own understanding of the topic to help explain concepts to team members whose backgrounds didn’t align with those topics as well as hers did: “I was able to explain the difference between AI and generative AI in simpler terms to another consultant using an example I learned from class.” Now, in her role as a project manager, she has increased responsibility within the organization and has gained more management and leadership experience on top of the vital business skills she began developing in her first semester.
Aadhya Mavani, a sophomore in finance and data science and current project manager spoke to me about her experience as a senior consultant on the same project Yunji talked about. She initially felt apprehensive to hold a leadership role because she lacked familiarity with the topic, but working alongside people with more technical majors helped her develop her understanding: “Team meeting discussion, in particular, allowed me to understand [the topic] better because the members with engineering and bio[logy] majors had a better grasp of it and explained [the topic] in a way that helped me understand it more easily.” Beyond her own understanding, she also highlighted the importance of people with diverse backgrounds to ensure that the content being produced by the team meets client expectations. “If we only had [G]ies majors on the team,” she explained, “I am not sure if the slide content would be as good, especially in the initial weeks, as it takes time to familiarize oneself with a technical topic.”
The importance of diversity within teams has been proven time and again, and IBC is no exception. Not only does the diversity in majors and backgrounds that’s so prevalent throughout IBC provide opportunities for students from non-business backgrounds, but these students help make IBC’s projects better. As someone who’s experienced both the struggles of being a non-business major within IBC as well as the feeling of being able to contribute uniquely to my projects, I can confidently say that any learning curve that exists is quickly overcome by students with distinctive educational backgrounds, and once that happens, the whole organization benefits.
A Day in the Life: IBC Senior Consultants
Ema Janeska, IBC Senior Consultant
“As a senior consultant, I have increased my situational awareness and adaptability. This includes putting myself in a new consultant's shoes and reflecting what I can do to increase their understanding and efforts for the project.” -Emily Zhao, IBC Senior Consultant
At IBC, the thrill of problem-solving becomes a daily adventure in the role of a senior consultant (SC). Sitting between the consultant team and the project manager, SCs enthusiastically help consultants bounce ideas back and forth, fostering close collaboration with the project manager to drive projects forward. This role offers a continually engaging and rewarding journey.
Senior consultants are a vital part of IBC and a key component to a team’s success. As a senior consultant myself, I’ve seen firsthand the amount of effort those before me put into this role. During my time in this role, I have grown tremendously, both personally and professionally. I surveyed 16 senior consultants and spoke to 6 of those respondents one-on-one. Through these interactions, I learned how they found success in their roles and found similarities in my own experience. Let’s learn more about the facets of this role and what current senior consultants have to say!
Breaking Down the Senior Consultant Role
Let’s backtrack for a second. What exactly does a senior consultant do? How does the role differ from the work of a consultant? Each SC you talk to is likely to have a different response to this question.
As a senior consultant, you take on all of the normal responsibilities of a consultant as well as the additional tasks of leadership. Thus, you often serve as the primary role models for consultants. In my opinion, it has been the most rewarding feature of my experience in this role thus far. Knowing that consultants on the team look to me for guidance but also feel comfortable enough to reach out with any and all questions they have only motivates me to strive for more. The dynamic that you are able to create with the rest of the team when holding this position is unmatched.
In order to find success within IBC, you have to be passionate and organized, balancing all of your tasks gracefully but also understanding when you can and should reach out for help. From handling consultant questions to staying connected with fellow leaders and managing your own weekly tasks, IBC will naturally remain a key focus, ensuring you're always on top of things without missing a beat. Personally, I am always excited to see a Slack message pop up from one of the consultants on my team. No matter the time of day, I am eager to help my team out in whatever way that I can.
“Being a senior consultant means I need to check my messages throughout the day to make sure I am not missing important information or questions from my team. This change is rewarding because I enjoy being quick to respond and being a reliable source for help.” -Benjamin Miralaeff, Senior Consultant
As our senior consultants expressed, the primary way that you see the impact of your role on a daily basis is through the help that you can provide to the consultants on your team. It makes the steady stream of messages, event planning, and slide edits each week all worth it in the end.
Another significant aspect of being an SC is the impact that the role allows you to make on your team, especially new consultants.
"I decided to apply to the senior consultant role for IBC because I really enjoyed seeing the role my former SC on my first project played in helping shape the experience of the new consultants.” -Raj Thadani, Senior Consultant
Tips on Being a Successful Senior Consultant
Beyond the technical—providing edits on client deliverables, planning team events, and creating the project discovery pack slideshow to better the team’s understanding of the project—there are two big ways that this role is distinctive from the consultant role.
First, senior consultants initially scope the project before the team is fully staffed. Spending time speaking with the client as well as interacting with the project manager, senior manager, and executive mentor allows us to gain a deeper understanding of the project, making it easier to aid the other consultants later on.
Second is fostering a positive team environment. As a senior consultant, you act as the bridge between the consultant team and leadership. This could mean anything from leading a fun icebreaker activity at the beginning of the weekly team meeting to helping the consultants understand the true impact that their work has on the client and the project as a whole.
"I like that I have access to both parts of the team—I'm still very involved in the actual work of the project while also helping out with the project management and leadership side.” -Sydney Thach, Senior Consultant
Understanding these differentiating factors is crucial to being a successful senior consultant within the dynamic landscape of IBC. Through my conversations with other senior consultants and personal reflection, a common pattern became apparent: The most valuable attribute of past senior consultants was their skill in fostering relationships with each team member. While the work at IBC is incredibly significant, the emphasis on people and their growth surpasses it all. Ultimately, a successful senior consultant will effectively emulate IBC's commitment to growth and collaboration, leading consultants along in the process while actively participating in it themselves.
What Can Economic Impact Do For You?
Anushka Agashe, IBC Experienced Consultant
What is economic impact? Don’t worry, it’s not some complicated, technical concept or even hard to understand. Have you ever heard the phrase “positively impacting the community” or something along those lines? What if we could quantify and put a number on what exactly “impact in the community” means? That’s what economic impact is, and it can be found everywhere: from company mission statements and ESG (environmental, social, and governance) releases to the restaurants on Green Street! In this article, I will explain economic impact and how we’ve used it in IBC to support five projects, including their clients and their communities. I hope my experience encourages you to explore different opportunities and venture into the unknown—you might be surprised at what could happen.
As a freshman majoring in communication, I wanted nothing to do with economics as I was still getting acquainted with core business concepts. After being placed on an economic impact project I thought, “What would I have to contribute? I am literally learning about how to even talk effectively in my communication courses…” But I quickly found that it’s not as hard to understand as I originally thought. So, what’s the big idea? Sure, any organization or company can say they’ve made an impact on the community. But think about it this way—we’re putting numbers where people’s mouths are. We are conveying the overall health of the local economy by using an organization’s financials as benchmarks. By using economic impact modeling software, which utilizes multipliers that have been calculated from the source of the income, along with the finances from said organizations, we can put a monetary value on how much they’ve added to the community. IBC has completed five economic impact projects total, including ones for one of the country’s largest urban transportation organizations and a collegiate athletics organization. Our clients were surprised by how we helped them create a solid forward-thinking plan through our insightful economic impact analysis. By making the reporting clearer for key stakeholders, we effectively found a secure path forward for the clients. Not to mention it made their marketing teams’ lives a whole lot easier.
The gist of economic impact is that the money spent by companies, consumers, and employees gets cycled through the economy to create additional spending. And then even more spending goes into that spending. And it keeps going! The same concept applies to jobs, too— creating jobs implies there was a job in the first place that needed more labor. Let’s go a little more in-depth: There are three simple levels of impact that, when combined, get us that total economic impact. First is direct impact, which is actionable money a company/organization puts into the community (e.g. purchasing pizza for a company celebration). Then there’s indirect impact, which is the money spent on the additional purchases caused by the direct impact that circulates in the community (e.g., the suppliers of the cheese, pizza cutters, and cardboard boxes). Finally, there’s induced impact, which are the changes in household spending caused by both the direct and indirect effects (e.g., the pizza restaurant employee spending their salary). Induced impact was by far the hardest to wrap my head around initially. However, it became easier to understand when I realized it’s a label for the process by which the earned money is recycled back into the economy when you buy something. This is because the product you are purchasing has production costs associated with it. I used an example here of a pizza restaurant, but there are many more applications for economic impact, such as construction, policy implementation, projects from your local park district, or anything where money changes hands.
My time on an economic impact project was truly invaluable. It opened up a whole new way of thinking for me. However, even though economic impact is a great indicator of how companies effectively impact the community, it’s hard to quantify the actual value of how it benefits society. Here’s an example: a McDonald’s location vs. a soup kitchen. On paper, the McDonald’s location would have a greater economic impact. But that doesn’t invalidate the soup kitchen or the actual good that comes from it. There’s a fine line between straight financials and ethical well-being. Using this perspective, economic impact is not just limited to three levels and can also include any impact outside of the money flow that can’t be measured monetarily. For example, we know spending money on public transit causes the main three levels of impact, but it also lowers pollution, gives disadvantaged communities access to transit, and reduces wait times.
I strongly believe that economic impact has had a positive effect on the different projects IBC has participated in—it helped connect the organizations’ values to what they were saying and provided them with tangible numbers to back it up. They could utilize this info to request more funding, build marketing materials, and so on. Economic impact causes you to think like a healthy skeptic and consider both sides of the story; it’s a skill I’m grateful for learning this early on in my educational career. It’s one of the most fulfilling feelings knowing that you helped a community practically and sustainably. My preliminary nervousness about the project turned into admiration and respect. That initial “What would I have to contribute to this project?” soon became “How best can I learn this concept?” and “How can this info impact our client?” And the growth mindset turned out to be a lot more helpful than I was expecting.
Obviously, I am not an economist, but I feel satisfied knowing that this is a huge leap forward in my educational journey and also in my future career. I hope this story reaches those who are not in business or economics as not a cautionary tale but rather an exemplary one. Joining IBC was the first step in a long journey of learning new concepts, and I cannot wait to see what I can accomplish in my future projects!