BGCC

This past semester, the Brown Graduate Consulting Club has successfully brought in Brown alumni and other notable businesspeople from different consulting firms and backgrounds to Brown’s CareerLAB to share their career experiences with club members and the wider Brown community. These guest speaker events provide graduate and undergraduate students with valuable insight into the diverse branches of consulting and other business professions. Bringing in speakers who did not necessarily follow the “traditional” path to consultancy make the events particularly helpful to graduate students seeking careers in business and consulting. In the past month, the club has invited professionals with varying experiences, ranging from journalism to backgrounds in healthcare consulting, economic consulting, and management consulting.

One of the earlier guest speaker events of the semester was Faulkner Consulting Group, a local health policy consulting firm focused on the intersection of public and private programs. FCG has expertise in national and local trends in health policy, including ACA implementation, Medicaid program implementation, and state regulatory policy.

Another group of speakers included Brown history alums Stephen Chambers PhD ’13 and John Landry PhD ’94. Currently Senior Consultant, Deputy Manager, History Division at the Winthrop Group, Stephen previously worked with management consulting firm Monitor Group and economic consulting firm Analysis Group. John was an editor at the Harvard Business Review and is currently a freelance ghostwriter for business. The two shared insight on how they took their analytical, writing, and research skills to the business world.

A common theme speakers touched on was the power of building a professional network. Specifically for Faulkner Consulting Group, a relatively small firm in the consulting industry, the power of building a reputation has been essential to their survival and success in the competitive landscape. Similarly, Brown alum John Landry PhD ’94 advised students to reach out and meet as many people as possible when seeking opportunities. Appropriately, the Brown Graduate Consulting Club’s guest speaker events serve exactly this purpose.