Lakshmi Menon

Share your journey to Bain.

I had never really considered management consulting as a career.

Prior to Bain, I was working in a regional role at WPP Media, within a niche field of digital marketing called Programmatic Trading. I supported a broad mix of clients across consumer products, financial services, automotive, travel and the public sector and my role was primarily in running media campaigns. Beyond this, I also built programmatic capabilities and stood up teams across new markets such as Japan.

Five years in, when a Programmatic Advertising Specialist role at Bain SEA popped up on my LinkedIn feed, I remember being surprised that Bain was looking for someone with such a specific adtech background. But as I read through the role, I realized there were clear parallels with the work I was already doing. It felt like an opportunity to take the skills I had built in marketing, data and technology and apply them to a much broader set of client problems. Since joining Bain, my scope has continued to broaden - from digital marketing and the wider marketing agenda to growth, acceleration and performance improvement through a marketing lens.

How did you know that Bain was the right company for you?

Two things - Bain's values and its people.

I was drawn to Bain's values such as its commitment to working as One Team and promise that "A Bainie Never Lets Another Bainie Fail". Having joined, I've found this to be true across every case I've worked on.

I was also inspired by the people I met in my interview process - they were warm, kind, highly intelligent yet exceedingly humble. This resonated strongly with my idea of the type of mentors and team that I would want to work with.

Do you feel like you can do impactful work at Bain? What opportunities excite you?

Absolutely. One of the things I’ve loved most about being an expert at Bain is how hands-on the work can be. On my very first case, I helped build some of the original artefacts that later evolved into the Experimentation @ Scale toolkit that's been used across dozens of cases; in another case, I worked on a marketing acceleration program for an Asian retailer that reversed two years of declining store traffic within two months.

What excites me most are opportunities where we can embed closely with client teams and drive rapid acceleration together. I really enjoy the pace of that work, the ability to show tangible results quickly, and the way that progress can build confidence and energy within the client team itself. Seeing teams become more inspired about what is possible - and helping them carry that momentum forward - is one of the most rewarding parts of the job for me.