Happy Monday! Since I mentioned last week that I’m working at PwC this summer, I thought I would explain a little bit about how I got into consulting. Well, it kinda started with Will, who was one of my mentors a few years ago. He was also a ChemE major, and now works in New York City for PwC! Anyway, he encouraged me to apply for OUBC, which stands for Out for Undergrad Business Conference.
The O4U team has historically hosted two conferences a year for LGBTQ+ undergraduates: a technology conference in San Francisco and a business conference in New York City. Last year, I went to the conference, which was an all-expenses paid workshop/networking experience at the JPMorgan building! I went with a lot of other USC undergrads, and we were well represented along with UPenn, Harvard and Berkeley. It was a ton of fun! Fun fact: they are forming similar conferences for engineering and for marketing called OUEC and OUMC! It’s wonderful to see this program grow because it is certainly an amazing experience.
Anyway, I was pretty exhausted throughout the weekend, because I took a redeye flight in on Thursday night. When we arrived on Friday, we checked into the hotel at the Westin, then headed off to the JP Morgan building in NYC. We had some awesome presentations by women in finance and business. My favorite presentation was by Susie Scher, who is a partner at Goldman Sachs. She told some amazing stories about being an out lesbian and how successful she has been being out in the work place. It was so inspiring to see someone be successful as a queer woman in business!
After that, we participated in workshops, learning about communication and being successful at teamwork. I had a lot of fun discussing my strengths and weaknesses with communications, especially with a lot of other queer undergrads! Then, we split into groups to learn more about specifically Consulting, Asset Management and Investment Banking. I went to the consulting workshop, and we did a practice case interview! It was certainly helpful, and I realized that when business majors talk about “math,” it’s a very different definition from the engineering one! Luckily, the case was about a drug development company, which I had some experience with. We analyzed the case and provided some calculations to back up our analysis. It wasn’t as hard as I thought, but I definitely learned some skills for improving my presentations.
The day ended with a very important component: cocktail hour networking on the top floor! Even though I am 21, I didn’t take advantage of the drinks because I wanted to make sure I was prepared to network. It certainly paid off, because I got invited to Deloitte’s Sunday morning reception after talking to one of the consultants there! I also had a blast hanging out with Will and chatting about his work at PwC. It’s amazing to see how connections form in the consulting world over a few minutes of chatting. After an exhausting day, I got back to my hotel and went to bed. As much as I wanted to explore NYC nightlife, I was extremely tired. Check out my next blog for how the next days of the OUBC conference went!
