Above, L-R: Bryan Flowers (Mintel), Patrick Cengia, Ben Fracker, Ian Fisher, Shelby Westart (Mintel), Marissa Marquardt, Hannah McGovern, and Jane Joliffe.
Student leaders from different majors, many in accountancy, participated in a two-week experiential, immersive experience living the life of consultants working for a firm. Offered as a Winter Term elective course titled Strategy-Based Consulting, students interact with three different clients to learn their needs as they are presented with client challenges. This year, the participating clients include three-time participant WTW (in partnership with WTW Executive Compensation Consultant and Center for Business Leadership [CBL] Advisory Board Chair Andy Goldstein ’83), two-time participant Mintel (in partnership with Mintel Americas President Ben Dietz ’04), and first-time participant Principle Valuation LLC (in partnership with Managing Director Paul Shade ’03).
This year’s projects involve understanding the future structure of work in a hybrid environment (Mintel), understanding and managing quiet quitting risks (WTW), and identifying targeted clients in the not-for-profit health system hospital industry for providing asset-relifing consulting services to reduce cost of capital by better reflecting a more accurate depreciation expense. To emulate the atmosphere in actual consulting firms, students are encouraged to collaborate across projects and have access to prior projects involving the same clients or projects from other clients with similar challenges. The emphasis on inter-team, intra-team, and inter-program research and collaboration fosters a stronger sense of community and reflects realistic opportunities not available in the classroom.
The program, which was established in 2018, was initially sponsored by EY’s consulting practice for its first few years, and the firm continues to host program sessions and other events in its Chicago offices. The Shade Family Foundation has been the program sponsor since 2022. The foundation’s sponsorship reduces fees to enable greater access for students who might not otherwise get to attend. The Shade family also works with the Union League Club of Chicago to enable students to stay in the luxurious club for a very reasonable rate, which provides students a place to work and recreate during downtime.
Students are placed in teams on day one and participate in team-bonding experiences such as a Chicago scavenger hunt, but they are not assigned clients until they have visited all three clients in order to envision that they are addressing each challenge. After the third client visit, students participate in a consulting teamwork workshop led by Isaac & Oxley CBL Johnson Director Megan Gerhardt and accounting alum Jack Watson ’22, during which they are assigned their clients.
Students spend the bulk of the two weeks in Chicago working on their client challenge at the client offices. They were assisted by additional client employees, including Miami alums Matt Conarroe ’21 from Principle, Danny Mason ’10 from WTW, and ELCE 2022 participant Nana Hemaa ’22, now at WTW.
Most valuable to the program is the consulting workshop held two-thirds into the program, in which alums David Shade ’01 and Ryan Coli ’10, along with other professionals in the office, meet with the participants in small group breakouts to help them prepare for their presentations at the end of the week. The insights shared with the participants by experts in the field help them pull tighter their materials and provide them with confidence to present to the professionals. The final presentations occur at client offices on the last day of the program in conjunction with the Celebration Dinner, sponsored by EY.