Pre-MBA industry: Consulting
Post-MBA industry: Healthcare/Pharmaceuticals
2 years ago
19 Sep 2023 05:09
After 5+ years in management consulting across the public and private sector, excited to attend a high caliber MBA program to prepare me for a career in enterprise leadership in the field of pharmaceutical and life sciences or technology. Very interested in a capability focus in technology to improve my understanding and utilization of advanced decision making technologies and supplemental applications. I’m passionate about solving complex challenges through collective ingenuity and fostering a community through which all feel inspired and comfortable to push the boundaries and grow to improve those around them and their selves in the process.
I’m passionate about helping others both professionally and personally and giving back to the community. This has been a guiding light throughout my life from participating in Boy Scouts my entire life through age 18, attaining the role of Eagle Scout, and also volunteering through other pathways such as a mission trip to Cochabamba, Bolivia, helping to construct a new church and lead a sermon. In college, I supported Listen and Habitat for Humanity Centers, a food pantry and participated in youth give back days for the lacrosse team.
This passion has informed my double major of International Relations and Economics from a NESCAC, my obtainment of a consulting role at Booz Allen solving the toughest challenges of our nationals Defense and Intelligence Agencies (2 years, Awarded First Year High Impact Award for National Security Group at BAH), and ultimately pursuing my current career as a management consultant supporting both Fortune 50 and small, rapidly scaling companies. From presenting to the Office of Secretary of Defense its optimal strategy for securing a mission-critical space capability to being individually client-selected to lead the financial and physical operationalization of COVID IV and Solid Oral Dose treament supply chains in 2020-2022, everything that inspires me at its core is world-impacting, improving someone’s life or safekeeping in some capacity. As a Manager at PwC in Pharmaceutical Life Sciences, I’ve had the fortune of leading large teams both internal and external for large, organization wide transformations for some of the largest pharmaceutical and med device companies in the world. In the process, I’ve been awarded the highest performance rating (top 10%) for the last two years with two promotions in less than three years. Outside of my project teams, Im a career manager for 6 interns each summer and the career manager of an MBA Senior Associate, a Senior Associate, as well as a first year Associate—one of the best parts of my job!! I also chair an international roundtable of the Chief Quality and Regulatory Officers of the worlds 10 largest Animal Health (e.g., veterinary products), which includes the largest pharmaceutical companies in the word. This roundtable brings together these leaders to tackle critical quality and regulatory challenges and opportunities to improve patient outcomes and organizational success.
Outside of this, I've continued this focus through hosting discussing panels through Woman’s Advisory Network Affinity group, communicating and highlighting opportunities for volunteering through the DEI Affinity group, and chairing/planning all social events for the entire Operations Transformation practice in NYC. I also have led the standup of the firms Digital Supply Chain and Analytics pillar offering to position the firm to capture this burgeoning market. Lastly and most important to me, is my multi-year participation as a Mentor in the iMentor program. This program connects working professionals with first or second generation, low income high school students to provide close mentoring and support of a student from his or her sophomore fall to graduation senior year. The purpose of this relationship is to provide guidance and preparation for life after high school as continuing education or other non-typical pathways from the students perspective is daunting, ambiguous and often unprecedented in their families. I’ve been mentoring my mentee for 3 years now. We’ve communicated and or met in person in Queens for a minimum of once per week on average for three years. When he and I first started, he was an extremely quiet and reserved student who had no interest or self confidence in pursuing education after high school because it wasn’t something that he felt equipped for nor had a lot of examples of friends and family doing so to guide him. Over the course of our time together, we developed a special bond, exploring his interests and passions in life and the classroom, dipping our toes into the concept of college and careers after college, virtually touring colleges, developing a financial plan, getting letters of recommendations in order, crafting college essays and ultimately submitting applications!! Ultimately, I’m so proud of Alan and his family and school to say that we got Alan into the best CUNY available, Baruch College, with almost zero tuition responsibility. Having been able to support Alan in this journey has been one of my greatest joys and a beautiful reminder of the power of interpersonal connection and giving someone confidence and self appreciation when they don’t necessarily feel that at the outset. The program is typically two years through graduation of high school, but Ive worked with the program to formalize continued mentoring through college.
My resume highlights examples of significant quantitative and qualitative aptitude from identifying for the COO corporate revenue capturing opportunities yielding a 20% growth supplemented by significant cost reduction solutions (ultimately presented in Annual Meeting to Board and Investors) to leading the overhaul and globalization of fortune 50’s quality and manufacturing processes impacting 50k employees, collaborating with the Chief Quality Officer and personally requested to continue leading the multi year after the initial Assessment Phase.
Currently preparing to take the GRE. ETA Practice Test Score: 324 (160Q,164V)
I’m also incredibly passionate about outdoor and social activities! I played soccer, hockey and lacrosse my whole life, now picking up tennis and golf, and I’m also an avid big mountain back country skier in Montana, Colorado, and California.
I come from the small town of Cornish, NH. I have four sisters and no brothers (youngest child and a twin with my sister!). My parents attended Dartmouth as undergrads and my dad continues to work there today in procurement/contracts after a long career in consulting, also now teaching a business leadership course at Dartmouths medical school (Geisel) and volunteers some with Tuck students. My second eldest sister graduated from Tuck in 2019 (their dual MBA/MPH program) and now works in strategy at Dartmouth Hitchcock. Living 25 minutes south of Dartmouth, it’s been a huge part of my life growing up—I even took a course there in high school as a senior and then in my second summer/third winter of college, I did research under the colleges office of general counsel and did market analysis, monetization assessment for the colleges IP office to identify opportunities for college research yielded products.
In terms of regions, ultimately want to settle in the east coast! Very interested in enterprise leadership at a large pharmaceutical company with a tech-integrated focus as this is critical to future tooling and decision making of a leader of any organization. Alternatively, I am interested in and enterprise leadership role for a large tech company, perhaps with a focus on its healthcare solution offerings, given the innovation and agility these organizations display and global impact of products.
Obviously it seems Tuck is in your blood and a great option to target. I have a feeling you have a really good chance of getting in three
I think In terms of your other chances and opportunities, you can expect to be evaluated against your peers and your accomplishments against your peer set. Your score is not as critical for the Top programs but it would be nice to hit the average so that would not be a concern on the back of your mind but GRE is more forgiving and schools have been willing to take bigger risks with low GRE than GMAT.
If you are considering healthcare, I would add Fuqua to the list. It is a Yale peer school, so I see why not while it has a strong healthcare connection with the Fuqua highly successful med program and employers.
P.S. Helping others is an amazing and a very rewarding aspect. That's what keeps me around GMAT Club seeing folks succeed and reducing collective pain among the applicants. If you are going to pick that as a theme, would consider putting this through the essay and how you have been doing it, and can do more of it after bschool. However, nobody is going to judge too much if you are going to say that you want to become super rich and run the world (I would not say it so bluntly but you get the idea). That's totally find as you are about to pay $200K for your degree. People understand you want to further your career and you are motivated to improve your current position/situation.
Good luck with the test prep!
BB
The details I wasn’t able to easily find was how many times you’ve been promoted, how many times you received a raise or comp increases beyond the average. Also, I have not seen it all why you’re trying to go into healthcare. This is priority #1 to have clearly articulated.
In terms of the extracurricular items, those are usually things that go on top of your professional achievements. They’re not as critical unless they have significant accomplishments or have a significant time commitment that would elevate your performance professionally. Some people have very few extra extracurriculars just because the work is so demanding.
And why would you be successful in the healthcare career. Why would you get hired after business school into healthcare and why do you want to do it?
Performance
(Graduated: May 2018)
Booz Allen (2018-2020)
- Promotion: 1 (Promoted after 1 year, left at 2 years)
- Pay Increase: $72k-83k
- Award: First Year High Impact Award for the National Security Group at BAH (Clients: Defense and Intelligence Agencies)
- Resume captures critical influence on large scale, mission-critical strategies
PwC (2020-Present)
- Promotion: 2 (1 and 2 Year Mark
- Year One: $94k, $7k Bonus
- Year Two: $128k, $23k Performance Bonus (Tier 1: Top 10% of performers), $5k off-cycle performance bonus mid-year
- Year Three $162k, $21k Performance Bonus (Tier 1: Top 10% of performers) plus a $25k Manager Milestone Bonus
I consider myself a very strong writer and therefore have confidence in the quality of my future essays in terms of effectively marrying my core quantitative, qualitative, and leadership experiences in driving massive organizational change and improvement from value identification through capture, with my "Why" which will detail why healthcare/pharma, why I'm a good fit for the industry and a leadership role, how the school will prepare me for this, and how I will contribute to the school in the process. I work 80 hour weeks so while there is little free time, Im deeply involved in volunteering through iMentor, leading firm initiatives and social events, as well as personal "fun" extra curriculars.
I guess my question around reach vs target reach was a very basic directional sense of holding my essays, recommendations, constant, given what else I've captured including the content in this message, what would be a directionally-accurate grouping--at a high-level-- of the other schools relative to the categories of reach vs competitive/reach.
Wharton is a reach just because it is Wharton, I would put Harvard and Stanford into that category as well.
Hope this helps and hopefully I’m not horribly wrong 😂😇
PS. The only other data point to consider would be your undergraduate institution and reputation. I’m guessing it was competitive based on your job but prestige of your undergrad seems to play a role.
PPS. Your GPA is pretty solid. I had a very similar GPA and it’s highly respectable though among the top 10, the average GPA is about 3.5 so you just look average, see if you have some really strong accomplishments or other time intensive activities you were involved in undergrad, mentioned them on your application to indicate that 3.6 is not your limit though again, this is a minor aspect. This is probably lowest priority. You don’t need to worry about it at all if you get a solid Jerry score but if Jerry score is a little weak then you want to play up your undergraduate GPA.