Internship Spotlight: Dan Baglini ’27, McKinsey
Coursework in generative AI and resources from the SOM Consulting Club prepared Dan Baglini ’27 for a successful internship at the global consulting firm.
Internship: McKinsey & Co., Darien, Connecticut
Hometown: Cumberland, Rhode Island
Pronouns: he/him/his
The SOM class you're using on the job: Generative AI and Social Media
Go-to work lunch: Uber Eats poke bowls with plenty of protein & veggies
After-work routine: Team dinner, the occasional trip on my manager’s boat, or one last push on the next day’s deliverables
Favorite thing about internship city: The people. The Darien office is filled with leaders who put on fun events that build a great community.
A few months before Yale, when I was still serving in the U.S. Army, I was working late in my brigade headquarters, trying to reacquaint myself with accounting. I Googled around for some SOM resources and found myself scrolling through faculty biographies instead. I sat alone in that office and could feel tears coming; I could not believe that I'd have the privilege to learn from such accomplished people.
This summer, during my consulting internship, I felt something similar. All of my colleagues had been exceptional in whatever realm they worked in prior to McKinsey. As a former intelligence officer, I knew firsthand that several of the vets I was working with had served in some of the most elite units in the U.S. military, while others had high-level international diplomacy experience. Despite their credentials, they carried no ego. I learned immensely from them over 10 weeks, but what surprised me was how many of the skills I honed I had first developed at SOM.
Monday to Thursday, I worked at the client site on an operations study, and Fridays were at the Darien office. Work was cyclical: hypothesize, gather data, build a model, build a page, present, revise, repeat. We worked hard and I liked the intensity; we were constantly pushed by our senior partners and the client! I arrived knowing almost nothing about my study's industry and still needed to be able to interact with managers who had spent decades in it. In June, I was watching my colleagues lead meetings. But with their patient guidance, I was leading the meetings myself by July.
Consulting Club had already equipped me with a lot of the necessary muscle: how to break down an unfamiliar problem in a structured way, generate a hypothesis, and solve it out loud in an easy-to-understand way with a partner you just met. The caveat is that recruiting cases are basically individual problems, whereas 80% of my day on a study was spent collaboratively problem-solving as part of a large team. Consulting ultimately is a team sport.
Professor Tauhid Zaman’s Generative AI and Social Media course showed up more than I expected. He showed me that if you can imagine something on a computer screen, you can probably vibe-code a solid version of it into existence. The course got me comfortable with Cursor, an AI coding environment. On top of PowerPoint and Excel, I vibe-coded lightweight HTML and JavaScript pages that let clients explore how different assumptions would affect analyses. AI wasn't doing the thinking; it was helping me communicate my ideas clearly, in a format that a client could play with.
SOM also taught me social endurance: the ability to sit down with a stranger, immediately build rapport, and work well together. I remember practicing it over and over again during Orientation, meeting classmates from across the world and across industries and learning how to connect with each one uniquely. Some of my favorite reps came during “Vatican Dinners,” a not-so-secret small-group dinner society at SOM; I learned that having sincere conversations is a practiced skill, one that builds the trust that allows me to excel in both business and society. SOM also taught me ruthless prioritization of time; during the school year, there are simply more activities in a given week than you have time for. The internship was a firehose in the same way. I had to quickly prioritize what solutions mattered and what the 80%-complete model looked like.
My colleagues raised my standard for what excellence looks like. My engagement managers were extraordinarily patient in helping me develop my work up to the firm's aesthetic and rigor standards, and my fellow associates were constantly checking in and showing me tips and tricks. It was an awesome working environment. Some of my favorite moments of the entire summer were our dinners, where I listened to colleagues trade stories from the wildly different lives they led before McKinsey.
Late in the summer, my professional development manager asked me to lead the office’s Gen AI Day. I was nervous, to say the least. I built the schedule, recruited partners to speak, and ran a 90-minute live Cursor demo with a friend! About 50 people attended. It was the last day of my internship, and during lunch, as I was managing the partner discussion, my recruiter congratulated me with the news that I had received a return offer.
I came to SOM to learn business. This summer showed how much useful preparation happens in places other than the classroom. A case with a classmate, a Vatican Dinner, an overscheduled Wednesday, a late night where I needed to get the majority of a paper done as quickly as possible—those were all good preparation for my summer and beyond.
