 I want to thank everybody for coming on today, and I want to thank our alums for joining us to talk about the work that they've been doing and what the world of consulting, especially public consulting is like, and we'll jump right into it. So we're going to start with bios. So, Parna, do you want to start? Oh, okay, yes. I can, absolutely. So just like how I got to where I am, like what are the different, okay, all right, cool, we can do that. So I graduated from Tufts in 2013. And my first job out of college was actually an introduction through the IGL and I worked at the US Institute of Peace, managing programs in Syria and then broadly like helping stand up like a research unit within the team. So I was there for three, three and a half years, left to go to grad school, went to grad school at a fantastically interesting time. I was back in Boston at the at the Kennedy School, getting my MPP and in fall of 2016 the election happened and pretty much all of my dreams of going back into government largely shifted. And so I wound up spending the summer instead of Mastercard doing, helping the market a new product offering for students so that was within their public sector team. Finished that and was like, Hey, this is kind of fun. It's fun to be a consultant and wound up getting a job at Deloitte. And so I've been at Deloitte now for about a year and a half going on two years somewhere in that range. And since I've been at Deloitte, I've worked with a variety of different clients but most recently I've been working with the State Department and so happy to talk about what consulting looks like at the State Department because I know that's a place of interest for a lot of folks coming out of Tufts. Great, great. Thanks. Piali. Yep. Hi, everyone. My name is Piali Kunduveltovan. I graduated from Tufts in 2010. I majored in IR and community health. After I was also an Epic alum to 2007-2008 global poverty inequality. I also co-coordinated the MPower program when it was started back in 2007-2008. And I was also part of Allied so IGL was absolutely my home at Tufts. When I graduated, I was actually part of the BAMPH program with Tufts Med School but then I decided I wanted to do more policy and economics work so I moved to the Netherlands and I got my Masters of Science in Health Economics and Policy. My first job out of that was actually freelance consulting so I moved to Dubai with my family, was trying to figure out what I want to do, and then there was a company that was trying to explore moving into the Middle East. So in the middle of networking, I was able to just be a freelance consultant for them, new market entry for about five, six months, and then discovered I really liked consulting. It was very challenging and very exciting to do that kind of project work. And then I joined public sector consulting at PWC in Dubai. I did that for about three and a half years focused mostly on higher education and healthcare sectors. And then I moved to back to the Netherlands where I joined Deloitte in their public sector consulting, healthcare consulting slash healthcare, I should say, depending on where you are think healthcare can either be public sector or private sector. In Amsterdam a lot of my projects actually focused on international organizations as well, so aid agencies, etc. And I took a year out of consulting to go and be a project manager at an NGO that worked with Sub-Saharan African Health Startups. And that was a great way to utilize my consulting skills and also give back, instead of working only in corporate, to give back to communities and startups in different parts of the world. Great. Thank you. Bradley, you want to So I was part of conflict in the 21st century epic class 2011-2012 and future of the Middle East, North Africa. And that was 2014. And, you know, those were about for me about conflict resolution and learning how to do that. And so I kind of thought the next step was to go into government at the State Department to learn how they go about doing that. And while I had good experience, I kind of found the that it was somewhat poorly run. But if I wanted to do IR, I had to do State Department, right, or government. And so I kind of was left wondering, all right, what else can I do. And I realized that I like solving problems. And that if I was to eventually be in government, maybe not out of college, but maybe 20, 30 years, I needed to have like a management skillset. And also the people that were in those positions were from, you know, like political appointees or having worked 20, 30 years in the department. So I decided to look for alternative routes. And that led me to government consulting and I've been working for Deloitte. Now for five years in DC, advising different government agencies, not just federal but donor organizations like the World Bank, and as well as local. And then a lot of the work I've done is around strategy and emerging technology, particularly drones in Africa and kind of advising different government agencies and donors about how to kind of sustainably use drones for healthcare delivery. And then what I wanted to go through is if you can kind of talk about the work that you're doing now and kind of how you see consulting and how, how it plays out in the groups that you work with or the agencies that you work with. And why don't we go back and start with a partner. I would say in terms of the skill sets that I use on a daily basis. There's a lot of research, looking at like what are things that people have done in different contexts and how does it apply to the State Department. A lot of conversation, a lot of bringing people together to have tough discussions and facilitating that. A lot of client relationship management right so at the end of the day, we work hand in hand with the State Department but that doesn't mean that we are State Department employees ourselves right so there's a little bit of also managing the relationship between, what is the work that we're doing and the folks that we directly respond to. So I would say that's skill sets and things that I use on a daily basis. Can you just, can you just talk about like why would the State Department bring in Deloitte, like why wouldn't it be in general process for that. So, um, so with any government agency, there's like the mission of what they do, and then I think there's the pieces that help it facilitate doing it better. In general, government hiring is very slow and very expensive, right, to be a government employee to be a fed as they call you is is a great privilege you get great benefits you get really well taken care of, but that hiring process from USA jobs is all the way to clearances to when you actually come on board, super super slow. So contractors are an essential part of the operation because in many situations you're almost augmenting the staff that exists there, and sitting side by side in the office with them and doing stuff. They're working on a short term project that has a specific thing that needs to be achieved. And it's easier to hire a contracting firm to do that, that it is to hire multiple full time staff who would be on them for eternity for a project that has a specific end to end objective. The last reason they might bring somebody in or maybe there's more reasons the last one that comes to my mind is if there's a particular skill set that doesn't exist in house. Right, so in the team that I work on as part of the broader Center for analytics and so there's a lot of analytics skill sets that that our team brings that may not exist in house. So that that those would be like some of the situations. Great, great. Thank you. Thank you. Piali. Yeah, I think that was a really good description of why consulting organizations get called in and why consultants get called into different public sector entities to support them. Another thing I would add is that you may be doing various things in an organization like the State Department as a partner said, which may not be related to the core business of that entity. So it's, it should be quite clear, depending on which kind of consultancy that you join that is focused on public sector, whether you're working on the core business of the public sector entity that you're working with, or you're working on the enabling parts of that organization. So whether that is back office IT, human resources, projects, project management, like those kinds of support units often get consultants put in there. And you're not necessarily always doing the, the, the various sexy exciting policy related things that you may want to be doing eventually. And it's not to say that not all public sector consultancies don't do that you just have to be mindful, depending on what you want to do and what skill set you want to grow into it as your first job out of college or thereafter, you want to be mindful of where you're joining So my experience like the others here are in Deloitte and DC, which are big for very large consultancies and have a lot of capabilities as a result, but aren't necessarily always working in the core business policy related side of different organizations. So that said, I want to give an example, two examples based on my, you know, seven year ish career in consulting. So one was for a large aid agency and what they needed help with and the kind of project that I would say is pretty typical. They had a supply chain issue and they wanted to make that more efficient so they work with basically bringing all sorts of pharmaceutical drugs and capabilities to different parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, the global south in general, but Sub-Saharan Africa is their biggest market, so to speak. And they wanted to digitize their supply chain, make it more efficient because they have what their current system is very diffused, not talking to each other and therefore there is lags in how they're able to deliver their main products to the markets. And I'm using these commercial terms, and that's because in consulting, having that commercial acumen is very important, even if you are working with public sector entities. So they're a large agency and bringing and it was a it was a large project focusing on, I think, something like 10 or 12 different countries and, you know, millions of units of drugs that come in that they that they give basically for free. It was a long project. It was about a year long. There was multiple teams involved in it from the side of Deloitte. This was Deloitte when I was working there and my main role was in project management and what that really means is being a liaison between the client, this aid agency, and the different groups within Deloitte that were supporting them. So in my day to day job, it was making sure that people were doing their job and that's what project management tends to mean. So again, not a content role, much more of a process role, much more of a man, an interpersonal management role because I was the face between various teams and one client counterpart. So a lot of my responsibility was making sure that we were meeting objectives, we were keeping them happy, and things were moving according to a schedule and a timeline. And I think in consulting that's one of the, the best things that you can get that you can't get in other kinds of industries if you just go in house, it may take you years before you're playing a project management role where you're interfacing with very high level senior managers, as well as overseeing the work of others. Whereas, I think at the time I was like 2726, and that was a big responsibility and that was typical for someone that was a senior consultant, which, which is what I was at the time. It was a big project and you know we, we were engaged with them for about a year. Another project I want to highlight is with a large ministry when I was in Dubai, and they wanted to set up a training institute. So again, not something that is part of their core business at all. So in, in, they don't have a big learning unit in their ministry that would be able to set up such a big training institute. So that's why they hired a consultancy, like PwC to do that. And again, that was about a year and a half long project, very senior level ministry officials were sponsoring it. So those were our clients, which is great exposure. And I think that's one of the big highlights of consulting you get fantastic exposure to very senior people. And you really get to understand what is on their mind and how do they think and what is their decision making schema. And that's really different sometimes from what you may assume going into these organizations. And that was a great project so setting up a training institute. I mean, I am not a teacher, nobody in my project team was a teacher, but you know this is something where consultancy is also another great exposure you get to pick up the basics and the foundational of a lot of different things really quickly and deliver. So we figured out, okay, what, who do we need to contact in order to get a good understanding of what a training institute needs to look like, what does training look like for these sets of civil servants, what are important competencies etc etc. So, in this project we worked a lot with what is called a subject matter expert so SMEs. And a lot of our project was basically getting the right SMEs on board in order to build out the curriculum build out the training, what it's going to look like, and we as the consultants basically set it up. So from the ground up we took a piece of paper that was like we want to have this and where the sponsors want to spend, I don't know, something like 7 million in setting it up, you have a year and a half, go. And by the year and a half, there was a training institute with a cohort of 60 trainees from the civil servants that worked in this ministry, going through the program that we helped get in vision and bring up. And my specific role in that was in one work stream. So when you're typically working on these large scale transformational projects you are part of a work stream. There are multiple work streams and I was a junior consultant at the time so a lot of my work was literally doing the, the day to day, bringing the facts putting it in a nice slide, bringing that to more senior people who would then say this is good this is that this is good, you know, and then you go from there. Learned a lot about training and civil servants in this particular ministry, what they need to be competent in comparing it internationally, a lot of international comparisons and best practices and things like this. But most importantly, you know, I met I learned what it means to deliver when you don't have that core knowledge skill set going into something. And still being able to work with the things you don't know and being able to ask good questions to find out the things you need to find out to do to do your job. Yeah. Great, great. Thank you. Thank you for that. Bradley. Yeah, so one thing I would kind of add in another perk of consulting is, you basically have a new job every time you have a new project. So, you get bored of it. Then you have a new project and it's like new people, it's like you're at a new company because it could be completely new people, new problem, new client. So that was something that's really, I would say attractive. The work that I've been on is. Wait, Bradley, can I ask you like, how did your job change when you started working on like drones in Africa, because that is that even a client project. The types of kind of work that I've done. So my very first project was out of at the military and they, the military was told by Congress to kind of reform the way they provided pain benefit to reservists. And that was the it it was like, fix it. And so we were kind of brought in to kind of help reform that. And, you know, that meant kind of supporting, you know, a mid-level bureaucrat who had no responsibility doing this, but then was asked to do it. And so we kind of help provide and advise through that. And, you know, that was interesting because you actually saw how a lot actually like come, it actually happens per se. So Congress do something and then like, tons of people collaborate or don't collaborate to make this actually happen. And, you know, by the end of it, we like design the new policy, but then it was going to, you know, take four years to go through Congress implement. All right, well, we'll, when he comes back, we'll let him finish, we'll have him get to the drones. Do you guys want to talk about kind of grad school, not grad school, you know, what's important and also kind of the both the hard and the soft skills that you can either learn on the job or that is are important to bring with you into the into the field. Aparna, do you want to start. Okay, so those a lot of things those grad school. It was what skills do you need. Okay. All right, grad school. Grad school is interesting. If you want a career in public sector consulting. So I would say I came into consulting out of grad school which I think is a natural transition point for a lot of people. But I also know many people who come into Deloitte or public sector consulting out of undergrad and use grad school as a transition point out. So there are those who, you know, to like grow up through like one of these firms, you know, spend four or five years there get sponsored to go to grad school and then come back. I would say public sector consulting is one of the unique places where I feel like actually most of the skills you learn slash need you probably already have or you'll learn on the job. And particularly I think it's because the way each of the roles is set up and the progression is such that you learn from the people above you, and you grow into the next level. Maybe Bradley is going to give us a great example of how he grew into the next level. Let's put a hold on that and let's try. Bradley, do you want to try to talk about how a building comes along. We were like taking a policy and given by Congress and implementing it right. But a lot of the work I did was more on strategy so. Oh no. Maybe he can call in from his phone. That's a good idea. Or turn off our video that takes a lot. Okay, all right, apparently do you want to continue and I'm going to. On the grad school role. Okay. Yeah. Um, so yeah, so there's essentially three, three different ways you can you can take it. I would say in terms of my record, I mean I went to grad school because I basically hit a professional ceiling. I was doing really interesting work and I loved the work that I was doing at US IP. A lot of it was around like program management, it was very like foreign policy like implementing programs in the Middle East, it was very exciting. But I was at a point where all of my colleagues at the time also all had master's degrees and every job I was now qualified for required a master's degree. It's one of the unique things that like in DC, a master's is sort of like everybody just sort of has it. So I went back for that reason. I would say the skill sets though that I got actually in public policy school set me up really nicely for consulting because at the end of the day, I think public policy as well as public sector consulting are trying to solve big problems. And the way that you solve big problems is you break it down into logical pieces, and you go step by step. Right, so like exactly to what Bradley was talking about before he got cut off is like, you get this sort of a big question like solve this issue. And I think consulting really teaches you and gives you frameworks to say okay how do I break down that issue. Oh it's similar to these other five problems we've solved before and this is how I'm going to take the process and go through it. So in terms of skill sets from from the I learned from Tufts it was research, it was being an excellent communicator. It was learning to manage up, which is actually a very, very important skill right, you know when Amy talks about you know the partner that she works for all of our projects have senior leadership and so managing them making sure they give you what you need. Right, but then also managing the client so I think some of those like soft skills and relationship building and that's one of the things I got out of the IGL right. I was, you know, 181920 and working with people who are much more senior than me and learning how to write professional emails, long before I got into public sector consulting. So I would say grad school is unique for every person. I can't say I have a strong recommendation one way or the other folks in consulting tend to come from all different types of grad schools. So much every professional degree you can imagine winds up in consulting somehow. I work with somebody who has a PhD in bio stats. So, really, it's whatever works for you. I can't give a hard answer there but I think in terms of skills Tufts will set you up really nicely the work that you're doing at the IGL will set you up really nicely. Yeah. Sorry, I feel like I'm a little all over the place today. Holly, both in terms of the benefit or no benefit of grad school and soft and hard skills. Yeah, I think I'll definitely defer to my colleagues up here who have done consulting in the US and I will agree with you that you do not need grad school in order to join consulting, especially public sector consulting right out of undergrad, especially if you've done internships and use your time at Tufts really well which if you're involved anything with IGL you are. I will say if you're looking to anywhere outside of the US grad school I would say I will lean towards yes it helps. Only because definitely in Europe students go coming out of their bachelors, often just immediately go into their masters, which tend to be a year long as opposed to two years here. So most graduates have a master's degree. People do recognize that's not the way the American system is so and you can still try and that would be fine, especially if you have other skills that are necessary such as language skills which is a huge plus. And if many of you are IR students you have to be fairly fluent in another language by the time you graduated I will say utilize that as much as possible, especially for public sector consulting. I felt that I had taken Arabic for four years and moved to the Middle East, even though I wasn't using it in my day to day. It gives you so much more cultural context and rapport building with colleagues that you are working for in your agencies. So not necessarily in the firm itself but in in your in your client firms. So yeah so if you're looking to abroad I would say think about grad school and what kind of grad school anything I think just go to a rigorous program where you have to develop a lot of critical thinking skills because at the end of the day. That's the most important technical skills that I will say consulting requires insatiable curiosity and critical thinking skills you have to be with more than okay with uncertainty and problem solving you have to want to solve problems and you have to want to do whatever you need to do in order to get the information so that you can solve the problem that is in front of you. And those can be big problems, small problems, like, you know, people up here have already said consulting is basically all about you're given a task you have to break it down into smaller components and each of those smaller components is essentially a small problem you have to solve. And so I would say that's the biggest, like, hard technical skill, I mean, good problem solving skills. And I would say the biggest soft skill that you need is good interpersonal relationship and rapport building. And so what does that really mean I think it means communication you have to be willing and comfortable to talk to all different kinds of people at all different levels and be able to get not just your message across but be able to actively listening, active So actively listening is really, really important, especially if you're doing anything client facing. Because that also shows that you are absorbing what is important for for for your clients and able to relay that back to your team members to your superiors whomever you're working with. And communication is of course like the number one tool of a consultant. So also your written communication and I think probably by now, if you're graduating anytime soon. Make sure you take all of those classes of class projects like seriously and test out your PowerPoint skills and your Excel skills and all of those things I mean you learn that on the job for sure and especially in firms like Deloitte. There's a lot of great training out there. But sort of nothing beats having familiarity with it coming in, or at least familiarity and knowing that you will have to spend a lot of time in making succinct messages and communicating succinctly and concisely and precisely to all different kinds of people. And I think Amy was saying that the importance of networks as well so that again goes back to communication rapport building interpersonal relationships. It's, it's really, really important that you, you know how to make those connections, keep them healthy nurture them, because you never know. And it should be it never know when it comes in handy or when something comes up in a project and you're the one that's like, oh hey I actually know this other person and this other team and they'd be perfect to for this small thing. And that happens a lot. I mean, in the project that I was talking about that happened a lot of some small thing would arise and there's somebody else in the firm that is an expert in it. You call them up, you know, you ask them the question you get what you need and that is really what clients what clients are actually hiring us for that we have networks we have expertise and we're able to draw on networks and expertise. And I think the IGL makes a really good effort to enable us to do that as students, even while we are students so whether it's finding internships or connecting what we're learning with Epic with other courses we're taking making those connections and synergies is, is something you're doing already whether you realize it or not. And I would say that's the soft skill that I use the most as a consultant right off the bat. And it's a muscle so like the more you do it the more you're conscious of it the better you get at it. So yeah, I would say those are the, those are the hardened soft skills, we can talk more I mean people are asking about hiring so we can talk more about that. Also in terms of what recruiters may be looking for in terms of hard and soft skills because I think of what I'm saying now and maybe what a partner was saying when you're on the job, what is really important. Yeah, yeah, no definitely will get to that. I would say one of the biggest hard skills that I feel like I see like organizations and consulting firms looking for right now is around data science and analytics. So if you have some sort of a background in that area. That's a great thing to play up in terms of hiring on because that's, that's a place where all of these consulting firms are trying to beef up their capabilities because especially public sector organizations have a lot of data and don't know how to analyze it or use it or apply it to be better at what they're doing in the future. So that would be I think one hard skill that like if I was in college and was like I wanted to take a summer course and something 100% it would be a little bit of data science. Some folks in the IR econ world already get econometrics, but I think like the extent to which you actually use econometrics and like a consulting context is pretty minimal. So if there was one place to sort of push I would say that could be one the other one could be Tableau and data visualization. So even if you're not great at the data science side if you can visualize it that's a tool that that I see a lot of consulting firms on really heavily especially when you come in as an analyst or a consultant you'd be expected to do that kind of work. So that skill sets also really attractive. I don't know how to do either of those things, but you know I'm just saying if I was trying it again I might lean in there. Well let's why don't we go to while he figures that out why don't we go to how do you get started in the field of consulting how do you get started. And what are your recommendations for students who are either going to be graduating soon or students who may have graduated in the last one to two years. I can start and so I didn't join consulting out of undergrad I didn't go through campus recruiting and while that is a large part of the way new hires come into big firms. It is by no means the only and I did a lot of recruiting when I was in both PwC and Deloitte so I've seen it from the other side, you can apply at any time to be an analyst or a consultant. And I would say, and I think Amy already put it in the chat that if you are going on a non traditional route like that it's important to talk to somebody in the firm. You can network with people as much as you can so go go on the link and see if you have shared connections and just try to talk to people that are working for the firms that you're interested in and use that sort of informational interview as a way to build before and and and with the objective of maybe trying to talk to or get connected to somebody that's in the part of the firm that you want to be in so the team so whether that's public sector consulting or any other smaller subdivision of that. I mean, most of these big firms certainly Deloitte PwC but also all the others. I mean there's a whole process of interviewing and you will be well served by taking that process really seriously and doing case case studies, knowing what a case is, all of that stuff but you, I trust that anyone in perhaps an IDL is on top of those kinds of things. And practice you mean practice your cases practice with people that are current consultants, former consultants, etc. Because that's how you get good at doing cases, and that is again to demonstrate that you can think structured, and you can think critically and even if you can't get to the right answer, the process you're taking makes sense. So you don't have to go through campus recruiting and I'll always be an advocate for if something else calls to you after undergrad and you're passionate about it, go and do it and do a really good job. And that is always welcome in all the consulting firms and teams I've worked in and the partners I've worked with that doing something and doing it well in a job and being able to say why you chose that I mean it's perfectly fine to come two years out of college into a consultant role. Can I speak to you? Yep, you can. Yeah, sorry about that. So, on this topic, I'll start here. So, you know, it is challenging to get into consulting from Tufts, though it's changed a lot the last few years. There's kind of the dual challenge I think people talk about it like getting an interview and then once you're interviewing doing case studies and so as everyone said you need to practice to find a partner. You know, for me it was helpful to start and then do the pro bono consulting at Tufts through groups like 180 degrees consulting. But then also realize why do case prep it's going to be a little bit different for public sector case interviews than you know, traditional commercial case interviews so it's not going to be, you know, profit loss, you know, acquire a company which a lot of the case studies are, it's going to be more around, you know, how would you approach, you know, selecting a TSA, you know, technology vendor, or, you know, how would you, you know, fix a problem for the head of an agency something like that, right. That's the kind of questions will be asked. So, you know, it's good to be informed about, you know, what are the different agencies that exist right, you can do that on your own research that things like that. You might, you guys can still hear me quickly just do example of online and how to IDL. So, when I do strategy projects, a lot of it is, you know, in the case where I worked, new administration, new leadership, and they try to understand, you know, what's working what's not working and so they hire third party to kind of do that assessment. And so you do a little research on kind of first understanding your organization and the history of like past strategies and stuff that's public research. Then you get to the challenge of, all right, you interview the leadership team, and really it's, it's no different than any research project you do at Tufts. So I did, I did epic research in Tunisia on, you know, the idea, the policy of, you know, is entrepreneurship as a foreign policy effective. And went to Tunisia, we interviewed, you know, about 20, 25 people from different organizations and then kind of did analysis. And so we're kind of the same way where you, you know, you do interviews with leadership team or people from across the organization. And once you start interviewing, you realize you understand what the problems are. So what was different, I would say in a strategy versus, you know, research is, while you might know the answers, it's not really your place to kind of dictate necessarily what they should do. So what we would do a lot of times is you hold a workshop where you kind of help facilitate activities where the leadership team can kind of interact with what we found in the interviews, what like best practices of other organizations, whether it's commercial or private. And then you kind of facilitate them for them to recognize and kind of really determine what they want to be, how they want a project going forward, if that makes sense. But in the case of the IGL, that was really helpful, like having done interviews, and then in Greater Tufts, you know, doing consulting projects where I was, you know, both having to kind of pitch pro bono projects and then kind of the project teams and things like that. You know, and as everyone mentioned, you know, PowerPoint communications are probably the two most important skills. So really, it's how you communicate information in different formats, whether it's speaking on a team, presenting a PowerPoint, writing, you know, there, you have to really assess in the moment, constantly, like, what's the best way to communicate something. We might have lost. Lost them again. So, I'm just going to go to some of the questions in the Q&A. Real quick. One is I already work in the federal government in DC and have a security clearance. Do you think having this would offer a leg up potential for higher starting salary. If he was looking to switch or she was looking to switch to consulting. I was definitely happy was on so I kind of found that there was this community around drones, which was Bradley, Bradley. Oh, you're back. Tell us about the drone project. Real quick. So, um, you know, about a few years ago, a few practitioners were interested in kind of, you know, there's no one advising government agencies around drugs. We had never really done it ourselves. We decided to start pro bono advising different organizations that were on the ground in Africa about it. And eventually it became, there's a bigger project, which was around the Africa drone forum, which was this year in Rwanda, and it was all about kind of celebrating and convening and getting all sorts of it was kind of like the moment for drones in Africa. And that's because there's been actually a large company that have been delivering blood by drone for, for several years called Zipline. And now that they have been publicly successful, there was kind of like, let's get other parts of Africa, not just Rwanda involved, you know, World Bank donor organizations like Gates, USC ID coming. And so what my team was doing was, you know, there wasn't any way for organizations that were going to fund pilots to really assess whether it's worth it. So we built this tool in Excel that allowed you to kind of based on your needs in terms of like, let's say you're serving 50,000 people, and you can then put in the types of problems you're solving and the drugs accordingly, and kind of estimate. And if you were to invest in 10 drones, or spend, how many drones you would need, and how much that would cost, but then conversely, what are you getting in terms of health outcomes so if I'm going to fund a drones, how many more lives is that saved then just traditional transit and what are the trade offs and things like that. So that was kind of what the, what we were building. We actually went to Rwanda, and kind of engaged with that and now we're, you know, I was able to kind of create a relationship with the World Economic Forum, and we're going to actually write a white paper of kind of about this topic. And that's kind of example where this was a small initiative, I kind of took the lead, and then it gradually with patients, I had to get, you know, pro bono funding, pitch to partners, pitch the pro bono board, get a team, and then kind of figure out what is a project actually look like kind of develop that skill set and kind of pitch what that project look like and then kind of, you know, operating internationally is like eight hours a day, eight hours away, you know, for weeks and then eventually came it came to fruition. So that was kind of a cool experience. It was very IGL, very tough. And as you know, having gone through all this kind of stuff in Epic, it was kind of familiar with to a degree. Yeah. Great. Great. Thank you. All right, so I'm going to throw. So, Aparna said thumbs up for the security clearance rate and engaging. Yep. Yep. Security clearance is always a wanted thing, particularly in public sector consulting. You will probably get a higher salary than you previously did. And I would just say that the pace of work is slightly different. Federal government is a little bit slower. I think the ways in which you communicate intelligence and expertise can be slightly different in consulting. So I just wouldn't assume that it's a one to one conversion, not all federal government employees would make good consultants and vice versa. Great. Great. Okay. Anyone else want to add to that or in terms of security clearance or anything? Yeah, I would say it's a trade off. Like if you come in with a top secret clearance, it's high demand. So you'll be put in a role for one to many years. It may not be, it may be more like you're fulfilling a gap versus you're doing consulting where you're like actively solving problems and moving. You might be there for a longer term in a skiff, right? So it's a trade off. I would say maybe if that's what you want, if you want to do intelligence, then you should pursue that. If you don't, I would be, I would wait and see my opinion. Great. Great. Okay. And then we have a question. Can you discuss more about case interviews and how to prepare for public sector case interviews? I was thinking for Deloitte campus hires, they don't ask, like Amy said, they don't ask about profit loss. There is a quantitative component because that's obviously important. And that's, you know, and they're definitely hiring more. And then like, so, I mean, there's been in the last few years, I think about five or six Tufts undergrads that have come to join Deloitte federal. I was coaching one where it was into the strategy operations side, and that was more typical what we've talked about. There are a lot of people that are coming in on the technical side with data science skillsets. So I can't really speak to that. But yeah, I would encourage you to talk to the most recent hires. So like, Jacqueline Chen, Evan Cook, Eva Sachar, you know, they, they kind of all actually had three different paths. One was through partnership, I mean, through networking, one was through the, we definitely apply through the Tufts jungle jobs, whatever it's called channel. That would be, and also Tufts career services that they used to do case studies. So I did a practice one there. And I would just recommend recruiting at all the consulting things because you want the practice. So like, when I got to Deloitte case in my interview, I had already done like 25 cases, a combination of interviewing prior as well as with peers so that, you know, I was finally in a comfortable spot. Whereas the first one I did, I wasn't. So yeah, I would just recommend kind of interviewing everywhere. Yeah. And I will say, sorry, I was just gonna say check the websites. I'm pretty sure Deloitte has two cases on its website. And so any company that you're looking at with public sector, like consulting, you could use things like that too. So just a little bit of research will go a long way. And just put the case in point link in the chat. And I know we're, we're all from like Deloitte before consulting but I do want to say, so MBV, McKinsey, Bain and BCG, and the smaller boutique public sector firm, so like a Dahlberg. Their, their case interviews are different. So like we are talking from like a big four point of view. I do know for example that Dahlberg which is a boutique public sector firm. So I would say that the cases do tend, they do want to see quantitative thinking. They want to, they want to see quantitative answers. So, depending on what firm you're looking at, something like case in point, which covers all sorts of cases. You might want to focus more on, more or less on quantitative based on where you're going to join. And I would say, if you are in the recruitment process, never be afraid to email the recruiter and say, give me guidance on cases, or what are you looking for. It's not bad to ask that question. In fact, it actually shows that you know what's coming and you're thinking about it intentionally and they'll give you the answer and that's always going to be a resource for you. Another piece of advice. It's clear when you're communicating to government consulting that it's, you're not don't conflate it with commercial consulting right so one of the pitfalls of a typical Deloitte rejection for federal be you don't understand the difference between public sector and commercial. And, you know, they want you to have that private skills set but they want you to demonstrate interest in government. So, you know, be sure you, you know, in your cover letter that you're very you're distinguishing between the two because that is the easiest way to get dinged, I would say, is to not communicate that. The, I would say all the opposite to what Bradley said from an MBB perspective, within Deloitte, applying to public sector consulting is a discrete part of the firm. In other firms that's not the case. So like when you apply to McKinsey Bay and BCG you're applying as a generalist, you may get the opportunity to do some social sector work, once you're in, but all of their recruiting is the same and the expectations that people, you know, move fluidly. There was a question I think that trends nicely with the surround is there a difference between the core skill sets of public sector consulting and private sector. I don't think there largely is I think the big difference though is in terms of the mission of the organization that you're serving. And so I think Amy spoke to this earlier right where like in in a commercial consulting context you may be asked to do more that affects the bottom line of a company and helping them you know, what's it called to come up with a new product offering or expand into like expand market share but in a public sector context that's going to look different right it's how can you deliver services better to your constituents how can you spend the money more responsibly right so similar types of concepts but slightly different application and the values of the organization might be differently weighted. Yeah, can I actually pull up on that. Yeah, so one of the things where you're thinking obviously about your first job and consulting but if you think that consulting is kind of a path to another job let's say corporate strategy. They tend to prior you're going to have to sell like why your public sector consulting applies whereas you know if you worked as part of said MVP you're doing more M&A stuff more finance more Excel they might kind of assume you have the skill set you they need. So, you know as you're doing if you go into public sector consulting you kind of have to go out of your way if you want to get that Excel skill set or kind of like find a way to key about how you're picking your project so you can communicate that more commercial skill set if that's your goal long term, because it could be challenging like as I've kind of experienced that myself so that way. I have a question for you guys here because you work for public sector consulting in Deloitte is that all government work or do you also work with other social sector organizations that aren't government but are would fall under public sector as it does in other partner firms not in the US. I would add, you know, sometimes there's skill sets or products that are built for government that we then sell to private companies. So for example, you know, in COVID times of COVID like a big question is about, you know, how can you safely return your employees to work. So we have a product called my path that's about kind of an app that does contact tracing and whatnot and we initially was for government health care workers we're now selling that I'm on a project actually we're we're building an app for a studio so they can resume production. So that's kind of an example. And then also, you know, on the other types of government I was on a public transit. A local public transit planning agency, which will want to like help with, you know, how do we be more innovative and kind of think of like a strategy around what is the future of transit in their metro region. So, you know, it can really differ. Yeah, and I think that answers the question that somebody had in the Q&A of what are the scope of engagement for international students that don't want to work with or cannot get security clearance let's say with the federal government so the scope of public sector is beyond just government and I would say most of my work was not with government. It was with international agencies it was with higher education and it was with adjacent sort of public sector organizations. So there's quite a lot that you can do. And again that goes back to then the skill set of quantitative not quantitative depending on what you're doing you could be doing quite a bit of quantitative work I know that I did with my economics background. So a lot of costing studies a lot of using Excel to project things out of how things will change or grow. It all depends on what you're interested in what the project that you are aligned on with. It also a lot of human capital stuff so organizational design and development and things like that. Great, great. I think we have a couple maybe quick questions. Do you see Alteryx being used along with Tableau as a data visualization tool. There are all these cool tools but you have to remember you might be working with a government employee who doesn't know how to use Excel or Tableau. So some often you know you have to actually simplify the product or whatever using and so it could be word is all you're allowed to present. So you need to also not just know like the software but think about how does someone who doesn't know how to use this going to read it. And I would just add that. Yes, a good point. The realities of being on client site right Bradley. Yeah. The familiarity that you can bring in was going to be helpful in the hiring process. Yeah. And the other thing I would add to what Bradley said is that agencies are also particularly picky about what applications they allow you to use because of increased security on their IT, as well as like the different types of data that they work with. So even if you know one system really well you might be asked to work with another system. So I'll give you one really fun example. All of our Deloitte computers use zoom. Our client uses WebEx. So, you know that's like a very basic application thing but it but it definitely applies to different kinds of software across the board. Great. Great. And then a question about is salary or pay different between government and commercial work. Yeah. So if you're looking at the firm, you kind of have to look it up. Actually, I would say the really beautiful thing about consulting is that salaries are very well published online. I will say at Deloitte there is a difference for sure. But I think that's also because of a little bit more of the separation between the firm. But again, it depends every place you are. Yeah. Great. All right. Well, is there anything you guys would add that everybody should be thinking about in terms of pursuing pursuing consulting? Like, would you recommend going to one of the larger agencies? Do you start in boutique? Does it matter? You know, and the differences kind of between, you know, you all seem to have chosen public sector but you know, between private consulting. One of the biggest tradeoffs would be travel. So in federal, you don't travel for the most part. Whereas if you're working commercial, you could be traveling every week for the entire time you work there. And you know, there's serious tradeoffs to that. But tell them what you mean by travel. Like a four day a week to wherever your client site is, whether that's Atlanta or Nebraska or Chicago. You would probably fly out Monday morning at 6am and you fly back Thursday evening. There's no, it's all up in the air with work from home, for sure. But traditionally, that's, you know, what management consultants do right in commercial. I was on a project in California for three months, because I was working with a California state agency. But I think to Bradley's point, it depends right the travel is different. It could be like, I knew someone who was working on like a CDC staff project and so they were traveling to the Midwest to deal with, you know, various like interviewing in that area. Like Amy said that we have a bunch of international contracts where people will fly and spend months at a time in Nigeria or in various other international locations. Some of that sounds sexier than it actually is in practice. But the other thing is that, you know, COVID I think will fundamentally also change the way that a lot of the travel schedule operates. So I think a lot of consulting firms now are reassessing very heavily that even if you are a commercial consultant isn't necessary for you to be on client site for days a week and pay for hotels and flights and all of that. So and clients are thinking the same of whether they want to pay a ton of money to hire consultants to sit at their offices when they can do the same from home or from elsewhere. I would say like there's choice right so if you do government consulting. Generally you have the choice to not travel if you want to, whereas you may not have that choice in commercial consulting. There's thousands of people in the. There's more people in DC because more concentrated so you kind of have I think a richer like extracurricular community per se. Yeah. Just to go back to what you were saying Heather between commercial and public sector so I mean by the time I left Deloitte I was a manager most of my projects were commercial so it was in healthcare. I think there is a big difference in terms of the clients you're obviously with the clients you're working with with the client in projects that you're working on with commercial that it is a lot more profit loss related stuff. New market entry. I mean I was also in strategy at Deloitte so from the strategy work point of view it was always about how do we make more money doing something. It's a bit different from doing public sector strategy which is more solving internal organizational problems or how they configure or how they deliver their service better. So it's a different orientation but I think Amy you said this way back already an hour ago that once you're in the firm where you choose to go is, you know your career is in your own hands it's up to you and especially if you do a good job with networking and finding some managers or some partners that you can connect with or senior managers whatever, you can move around. You don't have to stay in the thing that you were hired for and also these firms change a lot so Deloitte has gone through its own restructuring several times. Things change. And if you stick with it past, you know, a certain level, you have a lot more autonomy as well. When you become a manager or senior manager and well not maybe not senior manager but before manager, you have a lot more latitude to switch things around and then once you're a manager then you kind of have to pick something that you become more of a specialist. So yeah, there's there's growth and development that is, I think probably unparalleled to any other industry. Okay, and then we just have two more questions. Can you get hired at Deloitte in other countries as a US citizen. Yes, you can another. He's working in Deloitte UK, but you have to apply through Deloitte UK you can't apply through Deloitte US. He had to like separately apply to Deloitte UK and get hired there so they're all like separate firms, but I think he was part of the US firm first. But then he like separately had to apply like to change. Yeah, but you can do sabbaticals too right where you like get a two year turn in like Deloitte Australia. And like a like a global succumbent yeah you can it's very network heavy though so I would say one thing with all of these opportunities is that they tend to be very at least at Deloitte they're very network driven so you have to really go out of your way to like make those connections have those conversations that step up. I think it other firms it depends. Some of them can be more networky if they're I think other big four MPLE you can chime in here may also be more networky. But the smaller your firm is, it may be possible that you could go through like some sort of a central staffing process to get assigned to something like that. Yeah, I mean, when you work at a big four because we also have audit everything's a bit more complicated. Whereas other firms, you know it's one company like legally everywhere so they kind of just move more seamlessly whereas Deloitte it's it's not so I did a second but I did internally. I tried to do one broad it gets more complicated and heavy things like that, for sure. Great. And then we have a question can you discuss getting sponsored for an MBA while at the firm and the process to make that happen. I'm also interested in the benefits of that versus doing your masters beforehand. Yep, there's something called a graduate school assistance program that Deloitte has. And there's another program called end tap like extended graduate. I don't know what end tap stands for but basically is when you leave Deloitte and you full time become a student at your MBA, and then the agreement is you would return to Deloitte for two years. And after the two years there would be repayment installments every year after your first year and after your second year and then end tap is where you stay at Deloitte in part time you can go to school in the evening. But the first one is pretty competitive. You have to make a business case about what your return on investment would be coming back to Deloitte and then you have to present your business case in front of the leaders about who you are what you've done and why they should invest in you. And then you have like a signed offer upon return. And I think some people do that people choose to go to business school and they don't have to come back to Deloitte so you can like do GSEP and then decide at business school I want to take a different path. I'm curious like Bradley or part of what you guys think of that compared to like doing grad school before The one thing I'll add about doing grad school before. So I think most firms function like what Amy was saying which is that if you're there for like a sufficient amount of time you make a case they're willing to sponsor you the benefit there being that you have your entire grad school paid for but you come back and you have a commitment like a service commitment. When you when you come out of grad school there's two ways that you could do it one would be if you're a summer associate which which I think is how many firms do it. You're a summer associate you translate that into an offer. Usually that comes with a certain amount of cash that you could put towards your tuition or in Deloitte's case your entire second year tuition is paid for. There's a minimum commitment associated with that so that they're you know that they're getting back on their investment in you. I would say the only difference from my perspective is like whether or not your grad school is paid off to be totally frank like I didn't have any part of my grad school paid off like I came and I make loan payments every single month. And I can more than afford them based on my salary so it's. It's just a question of you know yourself and your financial choices and how you want to plan things out I think I it's very rare for somebody to come to a consulting firm out of grad school and not be able to pay what they need to pay off. It's just a difference of timeframe and and the extent to which like you feel strongly enough about the firm that you want to come back and make that commitment for an additional two years. Because it could be that like you do four or five years at the firm you're like this is great but like actually I'm really interested in this particular industry and I want to do more in that space. And so you don't want to be locked into a commitment. So, again that goes back to like how do you see your master's is your master's an opportunity for you to pivot to a new part of your career or go deeper in a particular area, make a jump in terms of like leadership positions. But again, you know you just it's a personal decision how you weigh that against the money. Okay, and just a quick question there, it was came up a couple times the impact of coven on both hiring and the amount of work that say Deloitte or another organization has had. With covid the government sector has continued to be really busy and performing very well in terms of sales and delivery impact through covid because state governments are getting funding for code response and they're under a lot of pressure to deliver benefits and services for citizens through covid. The commercial part of Deloitte where we have like, hotelling industries or oil and gas or other areas where the economy has fluxed for that I think it's a little bit harder in terms of seeing the growth or the business results I mean, it's kind of what you would read in the news like if the companies having to lay off, 10s of thousands of their employees is probably going to affect the consulting side as well. So, that's what I would say I think we're still higher, I mean hiring in government public services we have summer interns this year but they're only doing a two week virtual experience versus like coming to client site all summer. But they have I think full time offers to return. So it's a little bit different with the interns this year but I think everything's trying to continue and I think we're still on. Let's see how it goes ground. What do you, what does everyone else think. Yeah, I think that I think you touched on the most important aspects I mean if the industry is most affected by the economy are also going to have the consulting side affected and public sector in that way is differently oriented. I would also say that people looking into consulting, especially public sector I mean should also think about their own career trajectory of what they want to do in consulting because it's an it's an industry where there's a lot of churn so like I left after I made manager which is a pretty natural time to leave. I would also leave right before that MBA point people leave after that MBA point so that there's a pretty natural churning that happens in consulting, so hiring will not be frozen the way they are in other industries right now so you will. I would say it's still worth it to right now be going through that recruitment process because I would I would be safe to say that the big four MBB they're still hiring their entry level classes because they need to in order to continue their the way their model is and their pyramid of hires are because people believe naturally in the you know as they progress as they always do. Great. Great. Well, thank you guys. Well, thank Bradley. I mean feel free to share our emails if people are at least. People have other questions and things they want to follow up on. Yeah, definitely. Thank you for taking the time today. You're welcome. Thanks for including us and good luck to all the students. I hope this was helpful to everybody. Yeah, I think I think it will be and it was great to see you guys. You too. IGL for life. I will say I will say yeah please share my email address I got my first job through the IGL so I'm very happy to pass it forward. Thank you.