I continue to be impressed by the intellectual stimulation I regularly find even in weekly team meetings, and by the value we routinely deliver to our clients.

• Why Bain?

  Bain does great work.  I continue to be impressed by the intellectual stimulation I regularly find even in weekly team meetings, and by the value we routinely deliver to our clients.  The fact that we usually have lots of fun in the process is definitely an important bonus.

• My passion

  It has been important to me since joining Bain to build my international experience.  Bain has been exceptionally supportive of this, sending me on a 6-month transfer to Singapore (from where I landed in Australia) and also sponsoring my MBA at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France.  My resume has strengthened remarkably in a very short period of time as a result. 
  
  Outside the office, I'm a craft beer enthusiast.  I spent my MBA internship period working with a start-up craft brewery in London, and starting my own someday is in the works (well, it's on the backburner for now, but I'm optimistic that eventually it will come together).

• My favorite case

  My most satisfying client experiences have been with mid-cap clients.  They're usually not in 'sexy' industries, but access to senior management is remarkable in these situations, and accordingly the impact a Bain team can make in a short period of time is distinct and measurable. 
  
  A recent example was a 3-month strategy diagnostic we did with a Midwestern industrial parts distributor.  Our challenge was to help the client identify growth opportunities from their core business.  We recognized early-on that a key impediment to growing with new clients was the price point of their products:  compared to competitors, they did very limited sourcing from Asia.  Management was of course well aware of this fact, and had long disputed how to address it.  The company's core value proposition to their customers was offering the highest-quality, most reliable products, and they were not convinced that such products could be sourced from Asia.  Through a lot of one-on-one time with our client's quality inspectors and engineers, I was able to develop a comprehensive fact base of what could reasonably be expected from current vendors, and where additional vendor relationships could be found.  Our team was able to re-orient management's thinking towards perceiving Asian sourcing as an opportunity through capitalizing on existing vendor relationships, rather than as a competitive threat.  It was the first time I understood that results can be achieved through our objective, facts-driven facilitation, and not just by breakthrough analysis.

• My personal results story

  I'm just coming off a case where we helped a very large public company better understand the value of an acquisition they were considering.  They had already made an offer for the target, and although it was a sizeable premium, the target refused.  In just 2 weeks our Bain team was able to show our client that a large portion of the target's business is tenuous and could go away over the next few years.  While our client is still interested, they will be making a much more informed offer next time around.  I feel very good about the fact that we helped them avoid a potentially massive misstep.

• A final thought

  Consulting is not for everyone.  The schedule is unpredictable, our tasking always involves addressing a lot of ambiguity, and the hours can be long.  But the rewards offer an attractive counterbalance, namely, I've found it to be work that provides unparalleled stimulation and satisfaction.