Following Kate’s update on her Beantown summer, I too, would like to say hello from Boston! I had the opportunity to intern at Bain & Company, and I’ve just wrapped up an incredible ten weeks as a Summer Associate. I grew up in Troy, NY, but I have spent the past six years living in the Midwest (with five of those years in Wisconsin prior to Booth), so it has been wonderful to be back closer to home this summer.
Before I came to Booth, I worked in the logistics and transportation industry, where I got to lead a number of consulting projects in transportation procurement. With this background, I explored a variety of industries when I arrived to Booth last Fall, and quickly decided that—while I wanted to stick with this type of work—I wanted to work more fully across the spectrum of industries and functions. The internship at Bain in Boston has allowed me to begin this stage of my career with an incredibly supportive team, including a number of dedicated Booth alumni!
After a couple of days of training in the office, every Summer Associate at Bain gathers on Cape Cod for training, regardless of whether your home office is as close as Boston, or as far away as Tokyo. Training on the Cape was a great way to prepare for the summer, to reconnect with my Booth classmates who were interning in other offices, and to get to know Bainies from around the world!
Bain makes a point not to tell you which case team you will join while you are at training—so that your sole focus is on your training and your peers. But when I received my case assignment on the Sunday before Week 2, I was thrilled to learn that I would be working on the team of a Booth alumnus whom I had gotten to know through the on-campus recruiting process.
Though there isn’t space here to give a full account of the on-campus recruiting experience, one of the highlights of recruiting in any field is the opportunity to connect with alums who have followed the career paths you are interested in. There were several Booth alums at Bain Boston who were incredible supports to me throughout recruiting, and it was great to get to work alongside them this summer.
Speaking of, now back to my summer! Management consultants have a well-earned reputation for spending lots of time on the road, working directly on site with clients, and—after requesting to be placed on a travel case—I got to experience the itinerant lifestyle firsthand. Working with a company based in the Midwest, our case team would travel to the client’s office most weeks; though we did a great job of balancing the need to meet clients in person with the team’s priority of spending nights at home in Boston with family.
While your core working relationships as an intern are with your case team, Bain also creates a mentor group for each Summer Associate, to help guide you through your summer and to provide perspective on longer-term career opportunities at the firm. I was fortunate to have a mentor group of Booth alumni, from a current Consultant who is just a year out of Booth, to a Partner in the Boston office, who has supported many Boothies in their careers at Bain. I met with each of these alums several times over the course of the summer, sometimes over lunch or coffee and sometimes just to chat in their office, and they were wonderful resources as I learned the ropes at Bain. Altogether, it was incredible to see how strong the Booth connection is, even (and perhaps especially) when you are far from Chicago.
With my internship now complete, I am off for several weeks of travel before returning to Chicago. I’m still finalizing my itinerary, but as of this writing, my next stops are Kenya, Qatar, Germany, and Ireland, with maybe some others in between. I am psyched to get to travel for the next few weeks, and then it is on to Chicago to kick off Year 2! It is shaping up to be a good one…
