What is your background pre-Bain? And what is your current role at Bain/how long have you been here?
After graduating from Cambridge with a degree in Natural Sciences I joined ExxonMobil working for them in a variety of roles, including sales and supply chain management. While ExxonMobil is a fantastic company to work for, I found the bureaucracy associated with a large multinational company frustrating and decided to pursue a MBA in the US as a means of transitioning my career. I decided early on into my MBA that consulting interested me and after talking to several firms decided to spend my summer between first year and second year as a summer associate at Bain in London. I loved the summer, enjoying the consulting work more than I had expected and enjoying my Bain team as much as I had hoped. On my last day I was offered a full time contract and I signed it there and then. I returned to Bain in September 2005 as a consultant and was promoted to manager in 2007. After working on a wide range of different cases across the full spectrum of industries, I realised the area I was most passionate about was financial services, and in particular banking, so I have spent the last couple of years predominately working in that sector.
How would you describe your role at Bain? What have been your most memorable case experiences? What were the results of which you were most proud?
As a senior manager my time is split between working with the team to crack the specific problem we’re currently focused on and working with the account leadership team to provide broader advice and support to the senior client executive team.
I think each case has its memorable moments, but the ones which stand out most to me include my first Bain case which was developing a full potential strategy for a Belgium based, private equity owned, rug manufacturer. The case was great for a couple of reasons: Firstly, I had never spent much time thinking about the rug industry and immersing myself into it was great fun; secondly, the amount of support and encouragement I received from the rest of the Bain team was incredible and I learnt so much and thirdly I realised that I enjoyed consulting and wanted to make a career out of it. These reasons have genuinely held true on all subsequent cases too: learning about new industries and cracking complex problems remain fantastically good fun, I love working with my Bain colleagues and the learning curve remains steep and enjoyable.
Tell us three interesting facts about yourself/ your interests outside work.
- I love to cook and spend most of my weekend in the kitchen
- I relax by running
- I have a son who joins me in making a mess in the kitchen and sits in the jogging stroller for the weekend runs
