Internship Spotlight: Lexi Jaster ’27, BCG

Internship: BCG, Philadelphia
Hometown: Glen Ellyn, Illinois
Pronouns: she/her/hers
The SOM class you’re using on the job: Modeling Managerial Decisions
Go-to work lunch: Poke bowl!
After-work routine: Physical therapy, reading by the pool
Favorite thing about internship city: Soft serve from my favorite ice cream store, 1-900-ICE-CREAM, and cheesesteaks from Angelo’s!

This summer, I joined BCG’s Philadelphia office as a summer consultant. During my 10-week internship, I found myself working with a nonprofit client in the sustainability space—a pretty different world from healthcare, the industry where I spent the first four years of my career.

When I arrived at the office, I dove into one phase of a larger project that was already underway. My work helped the client think about its revenue streams, both by developing new opportunities and strengthening existing ones to support its long-term financial independence. Sustainability was a completely new area for me; the last time I spent so much time on climate-related topics, I was an undergrad taking courses on oceanography and natural disasters. It’s been fun to revisit those interests in a completely different context, and I’ve enjoyed learning about the field in greater depth.

At the same time, I have been surprised by how much of my previous experience has carried over. My background in analytics and pricing has been useful when thinking through revenue opportunities, even though the client and industry are very different from anything I worked on before. One of my favorite parts of the internship has been seeing how skills I developed earlier in my career can translate to a completely different setting.

I also entered the internship with practical skills from my first-year coursework and extracurriculars at SOM. The Consulting Club’s curriculum helped me learn how to break down messy problems and structure my thinking more clearly, while core classes like Modeling Managerial Decisions and Executive gave me frameworks for evaluating decisions when there is not one obvious answer. I have found myself coming back to both throughout the summer, whether I am approaching a new problem or thinking through different options with my team.

And even though the industry was new to me, I gained exposure to consulting before I began my internship. As a first-year member of SOM’s Social Impact Consulting Club, I worked with a government client on a project focused on improving the effectiveness of a council working toward statewide workforce goals. That experience gave me an early look at consulting with a mission-driven organization, which has been helpful this summer.

The SOM community has been a fun part of my experience at BCG. Many of the consultants I connected with during recruiting were SOM alumni, and it was nice to see some familiar faces around the Philly office when I started my internship. Having another SOM student in my intern class has been great, and I have enjoyed occasionally running into classmates when working outside of the Philly office.

That community came in handy when I started the summer with an unexpected challenge: I tore my ACL at the end of the semester and underwent surgery just a few weeks before the internship began. Starting a new job while recovering from surgery was definitely not how I pictured my summer, but I have been incredibly grateful for how understanding and accommodating everyone at BCG has been. Throughout the summer, I have had people offering to help, checking in on me, and cheering me on as I work my way through a very long recovery.

Looking back, this summer has helped me clarify where the skills I’ve built—at work and at SOM—can take me. I came into SOM looking to expand my career horizons beyond healthcare, and this internship gave me the opportunity to do exactly that. I am excited to bring what I learned this summer back to SOM for my second year and continue exploring what a career in consulting can look like!