I spent the last four years with American Airlines, in planning and analysis. I provided analytical support to operational leaders, creating and implementing staffing models. I really enjoyed the airline industry. It’s very dynamic and challenging.
But a lot of people in the industry have been with the same company their entire lives, and they tend to look at problems from one perspective only. That limits your ability to find new solutions.
I came to business school because I want to be able to make a career transition. Yale SOM offers a really inclusive approach. The integrated curriculum, and the way it gives you all the different stakeholder perspectives, really appealed to me. A lot of the cases we’ve studied concern the airline industry, because it is so complex, and there are so many moving pieces. I feel like I had a head start.
You feel Yale SOM’s mission of educating leaders for business and society in every area of campus life. The impacts of business decisions on society are part of our classroom discussions. And there are entire courses, like State and Society, that are really based on the mission, and we look at impacts on a larger scale.
This semester, I’m taking an elective course that just debuted. It’s called Inequality and Social Mobility. It’s centered around inequality in the U.S. and how people can move up the socioeconomic ladder. It’s incredibly fascinating and relevant.
I’m also part of the Social Impact Consulting Club. I’m working with SARAH, Inc., a nonprofit that offers services for adults and children with intellectual disabilities in the New Haven area. We helped them redo the dashboard they use in presentations to their board every quarter, incorporating some different metrics to measure the success of their program. Now we’re expanded a bit into actual day-to-day operations. We’re coming up with metrics that’ll help with their decision making as well.
I arrived at Yale SOM pretty set on wanting to go into consulting. I’d been focused on the operational side of things, and I wanted exposure to different functions and industries. I joined the Consulting Club right away, and it’s been a big help. The second-year students are so generous with their time. They give advice on how to network and how to case, and they also explain the structure behind the whole process.
Finding an internship is a very long process of meeting people, meeting firms, applying, interviewing, and then finally making the actual decision to commit. The CDO was a great resource. They helped with my résumé and cover letters, and a lot of the consulting interviews are part of the on-campus recruiting that’s organized by the CDO.
This summer, I’m going to be interning at the Boston Consulting Group in Philadelphia. It’s the exact sort of opportunity I was hoping for.
