I came to Bain for two reasons: the people and the results mission. Both distinguished Bain from the other positions I was considering coming out of college.

Bain is a place where I am surrounded by incredibly smart and talented people who do not take themselves too seriously. It is also a place where I can be myself. I do not feel I have to conform to any specific profile to fit in.

On the surface, as an African American woman, I am different from most colleagues (at Bain or anywhere else in the industry). However, across three offices I have made lifelong friends and built mentor relationships with a number of people who do not look like me and do not have my background. What is the same is our common values: a passion for learning, having an impact, a belief that people are our most important asset, and a desire to enjoy ourselves every work day.

The flexibility that Bain has afforded me is fundamental to a career lasting more than 20 years. I transferred twice during my 15 years of client-facing work for personal reasons. I also worked part time for four years as a client-facing manager. Talk about flexibility: I had a 60 percent allocation, which I sometimes took as three full workdays a week and sometimes as four shorter workdays. It varied to fit with the needs of my clients and my family, and it worked pretty well while I had young children. I also took two leaves of absence. The first was a two-year leave to attend business school. The second was while my husband did his fellowship in pediatric orthopedics. During that year I had our second child, so I elected to not work. When I returned I picked up where I left off and continued as a part-time client-facing manager. Finally, about eight years ago, I transitioned to an internal position.

I can honestly say that when I started at Bain in 1986 I would never have guessed I'd still be here in 2010. But at each step of my career, when I have evaluated the alternatives, Bain has always felt like the best place for me to build my skills, have real impact every day and enjoy my work and colleagues.

People are my passion at Bain. That is why after 15 years of client-facing work, I moved into managing HR for the Chicago office. As a client-facing manager I always took on "extra 10 percent roles" dealing with managing and developing our people. For example, I was a staffing manager for many years; I spent one year leading our recruiting efforts at Booth (then U of C GSB); I spent another year creating a new integration program for our office. In 2001, when the office became large enough that we needed someone dedicated to internal people management, I accepted that role because it fit with my ongoing passion at Bain.

Outside work, my passion is my family. I have three boys, ages 14, 11 and 5. I spend a lot of time attending sporting events: soccer games, baseball games, basketball games. Outside of sports and my boys (including my husband) I love to exercise, attend dance and music events (I am on the board of an African dance company in Chicago, the Muntu Dance Theatre), cooking, and travel.

One of my first projects in my North American Human Capital role was to lead an effort to improve AC retention in NA. I assembled a team, oversaw the analysis, helped develop recommendations, presented those to the leadership team (including the worldwide managing director), and have worked to implement and monitor the results of those efforts. We have seen an almost 10 point improvement in our AC retention rate across the region. This was a fun project for me. It leveraged skills developed in my many years of client-facing work. But I also got to manage and oversee the results, a luxury you do not usually have on the client side. Most importantly, I have been able to materially impact an important strategic lever for our business.

Simply put, I have worked at Bain for 23 years because of the people and the culture. What made it so easy to stay here as a black woman stems from both how comfortable I feel in this environment and the flexibility Bain has afforded me over my career. There are so many interesting people at Bain with different backgrounds, interests, and passions. You will never be bored by the people at Bain. You will find others who share similar values but you will also be exposed to colleagues with very different perspectives. That is what makes it such a fun place to work.

When I started at Bain I thought I would work here for two years and get a "real" job. What has surprised me is that after 23 years I continue to learn and be challenged in new ways. I really feel I have an ideal job. I am challenged every day by what I do. I work at a firm with people whom I love and values that I share. But I still have enough flexibility to have a very fulfilling life outside of work.