Everyone has their own strengths and to truly be collaborative you need to be able to recognize peoples’ strengths and trust them to deliver, all in the name of creating value for the client. I try to do that as much as possible, where I try to best understand my strengths but also understand where other people can come in and add greater perspective, greater insight and new ways to approach issues and then step back and say ‘Oh wow that’s different and more impactful.
Why did you get into consulting?
I love the variety of consulting and the work you do. It’s different clients, different teams, different challenges –It’s like a different job every few months. For me, that provides a level of intellectual stimulation that I find you don’t get from having a set job title.
I’m also not one to dislike travelling, so I kind of like that aspect of it too. Consulting has always been great from that perspective too
I kind of fell into this job and realized I really liked it. After my MBA I started applying to different jobs which started with a couple of jobs where I was doing internal consulting. So, I was part of a team but working in cross-functional units. After that, I joined a number of larger, global consulting firms and did the “true” consulting experience.
What drew you to TPG?
What drew me to TPG specifically was Dave and his vision for TPG. Having the opportunity to come in on the ground floor and get to work with these people has been great. I think I was the 14th or 15th hire and now we’re close to 40 employees. And that’s not even net, because a few people who joined before and after me have left as well.
The term Family gets thrown around a lot, but here I think it really means something. To be a part of a firm that’s growing and to be able to build that strategy along with the other leaders here, and to be able to engage with the consultants and the interns and leadership – it’s really unique. You don’t get that with a big firm. I find most big firms are mainly focused on the delivery on a project. Obviously, we have a lot of the same pressures, but the folks who work here help alleviate some of that pressure.
We do a lot of team activities like the Tough Mudder and VR experience that are great– you just don’t get that chance to do that with other firms.
The offsites I think are really unique. They are a way to level set from a strategy perspective, and from a value perspective—value for the firm and for the clients. It’s a way to let loose a bit and have some fun, and it really grounds us with a commonality that is important for a growing firm. It allows everyone the chance to get their fingerprints on the company as well.
What has been a main takeaway in your experience here?
It’s not so much that I learnt it here, it’s more so been reinforced – that everyone has their own strengths and to truly be collaborative you need to be able to recognize peoples’ strengths and trust them to deliver, all in the name of creating value for the client. I try to do that as much as possible, where I try to best understand my strengths but also understand where other people can come in and add greater perspective, greater insight and new ways to approach issues and then step back and say “Oh wow that’s different and more impactful”.
That has been reinforced here and part of that is the diversity of the folks who are hired here. It might not sound like we are diverse since a lot of them are Industrial engineers (IEs), but at the same time, we have IEs with manufacturing experience and IEs fresh out of undergrad, but everyone brings that uniqueness to it. Everyone brings their own individual value to the team.