Before earning my MBA at London Business School, I spent several years as a lobbyist working with a wide range of companies. I definitely wasn’t ready to narrow my focus to just one or two industries after I graduated. In 3 years, I’ve worked in 6 different industries: Media, Health, Energy, Financial Services, Mining, Retail, Consumer Goods, with teams from across Europe and discovered BCG is a place where I can build a career that’s both entrepreneurial and fulfilling.

When sitting with any BCG team around the world, you can be certain that you’ll be with smart people who are committed to making an impact with their clients and that – despite the diversity of the individuals – they do all share a common set of values. But it goes beyond just calibre of the people. The clients we work with are second-to-none and the work we do with them is on deep strategic issues that have major impact.

I joined BCG in 2006, uncertain whether I had enough experience to face the challenges ahead.
I worried whether a young graduate like me could be a partner to more experienced colleagues in what I had thought was a “male” business environment.

What came as a positive surprise was that I was warmly received, and very soon felt I belonged to the team. After only a few days of work I realised that one of BCG’s biggest advantages is that it draws on the diverse experiences of team members to solve client problems in a creative and analytical way.

After more than two years spent with the company I am still strongly motivated by the fact that each day at work I feel that I have learnt something new, and that my work has tangible results—my ideas are appreciated and implemented, and I can often read about their impact in newspapers a couple of months later. Thanks to the fast-paced work and continuously new challenges, consulting is never boring, but at the same time is flexible enough to be reconciled with my family life.

Most important, however, is the feeling that my job remains my passion, and thanks to the friendly and always supportive atmosphere of the Warsaw office I truly enjoy being a member of the BCG team.

What excited me about joining BCG is what continues to excite me today: working with incredibly talented, down-to-earth people who share a common goal of helping the world’s best organizations improve their performance. The learning I’ve done from working with the top minds in business from around the globe has been the greatest surprise.

Working side-by-side with these top minds as we tackled some of the most challenging issues—leading enterprise-wide transformations, addressing demographic risk, developing new processes to drive performance, and shifting corporate cost-structures—I was at the rock-face of innovation, and have learned firsthand from incredible people both at our firm and with our clients.
 
I’ve always understood that our BCG culture was unique in the sense that we work so collaboratively with our clients. I realize now that not only does this afford our clients greater impact from our work, it has also provided me with an incredible platform for professional development and personal growth.

This is such a stimulating, exciting, and challenging place to work.

I first heard about BCG when I was still studying, while discussing the famous BCG matrix. At the time I thought that it was a simple tool that allows for organising analyses and drawing interesting conclusions. I have learnt a lot since then!

After graduation I worked at one of the Big Four companies in its tax advisory department. The job was interesting but after a while I felt I was losing contact with business. I often got the impression that my tax advice, although based on the interpretation of legal provisions, was very impractical from a business point of view. It was then that I got a chance to apply to BCG and I thought that it might be the change that I really needed.

The qualification interviews at BCG were a challenge. Each time I was given a case study to solve, which was usually based on one of the previous projects implemented by BCG consultants. On my way back from the interviews I wondered what it would be like to work at BCG and how interesting that would be.

And I was right! The very first day I was given my first project (implementing a strategy for a bank) with clear instructions. I had to get to work immediately. Our team consisted of ten consultants who all took an active part in implementing changes in the bank’s organisational structure. Throughout the project I had many opportunities to draw on the extensive experience of other consultants who were eager to share their knowledge. I also met many interesting people on the client side and learnt a lot.

In my opinion, a consultant’s job is a very demanding one, but it’s the best you can do for your personal and professional growth. Each day brings you an opportunity to face new challenges and develop your skills.

I studied music and engineering in college. I never imagined how quickly my career would progress once I arrived at BCG. I not only had the opportunity to work across many industries, I was also interacting with senior managers on important topics in my first months.

Within just a few years, BCG sent me to business school, assigned me to a case for a symphony orchestra, and had me flying around the globe and advising a large industrial company on how to integrate its operations. As I look back, I can’t imagine any other career taking me so far, so fast.

For me, that has meant working across industries advising CEOs, CFOs, and business-unit presidents on their top issues.

For my clients, it has meant changing the rules of the game and outperforming the market as a result. For a Fortune 500 consumer goods company, I helped develop 35 products for a critical new channel in less than six months—as opposed to the six new products they had launched in the previous year. This energized the entire organization to grow. Another one of my clients, armed with insight from our project assessing the value of their strategic plan, negotiated a sale of the company for a 40 percent premium—significantly higher than a previous offer. This created billions of dollars of value for shareholders—now that’s real impact!

One of BCG’s key strengths and, perhaps, its most significant differentiator is the way we work collaboratively with clients as we develop and implement innovative strategies. On one recent case, I had the chance to work directly with senior physicians and administrators of a large health care system to develop a long-term growth strategy. It was exciting to be part of a team that was bringing a unique and bold perspective to a tough competitive and regulatory environment. We customized our recommendations by working closely with several client teams, incorporating their extensive clinical and market expertise into the strategic plan we created.

During our final presentation, a board member commented that our work was the most robust strategic plan he had seen in his 25 years in health care. I felt this success was a direct result of our ability to collaborate with management, understand the problems they faced, and then use our expertise to find creative solutions.

At BCG, we do not simply hand recommendations to clients. Instead, we closely collaborate with clients as thought partners. Each day on a case, I spend several hours with clients, discussing and debating ideas. Our ongoing dialogue, where BCG offers out-of-the-box thinking and the client provides industry expertise, leads to unique solutions we could not develop alone.

On a recent health care project, for example, my client was attached to his “baby”—a large research investment. After jointly reassessing the opportunity, we identified a lower-risk approach not previously considered.

Closely working with the client also gives me the chance to learn from leaders in my field of interest. From each client case, I have gained mentors that I continue to turn to for advice.

My international education began early—at the age of 17, I moved to Italy and received my international baccalaureate from the United World College of the Adriatic. After that, I pursued classical studies at Oxford University, followed by a PhD in ancient history at LMU Munich.

Given my background, I have few internships to display, as I instead spent a lot of time exploring sites of the ancient world, from Italy and Greece to Syria and Uzbekistan.
I joined BCG's Frankfurt office in 1998 and have been there ever since—taking a leave of absence only to complete my MBA at INSEAD in 2001. My consulting work has focused on the financial services sector, specifically risk management and wholesale banking. I have worked on projects with many of Germany's leading banks, and I also supported the establishment of BCG's new office in Athens, where our first client was a large Greek bank.

Since I have a doctorate in history, I'm often asked why I decided to go into consulting. To be honest, I don't find my decision so strange. What I always liked about academia was the possibility of studying a topic thoroughly and understanding it inside and out. Consulting allows me to continue living this passion: at BCG, we always first consider the topic at hand from every angle, and only after we have a full and complete understanding of the situation do we recommend a solution.

Expectations in this regard are higher here than at other consulting firms, and I get a lot of satisfaction from this way of working. I even see a big advantage over academia. In business, I can influence important current issues more quickly and directly and really make a difference in the long term.

But how do you start this new role? With the many complex topics that BCG handles, you receive intense on-the-job training every day. Non-business majors like me, with little or no previous business experience, receive tailored, in-house training and coaching support for their projects. And, as I did, those who want to broaden their academic basis can pursue an MBA—sponsored by BCG—if their job performance is good.