Career Journey: McKinsey Bond

Discovering Deloitte

McKinsey discovered Deloitte while working as a summer camp counselor at YMCA Camp High Harbour in Alabama. A fellow counselor’s father worked at Deloitte. He took some time to meet her, explain the organization and help her see where she might fit in. “I came to find out later that he was one of our top principals,” she says. That he was willing to sit down and talk “to a college kid” impressed McKinsey and it’s why she ultimately chose to accept an offer in the Federal Practice.

It’s also ironic. McKinsey was between her junior and senior years at the University of Virginia. “Everyone's out there getting internships and I risked not having a professional internship to work at a summer camp in Alabama.” And in doing so, serendipity strikes. She finds her ideal career.

Camp leader

That said, McKinsey treated her time at camp as if it were an internship. She took a leadership role, assessed the skills she was gaining during the summer and looked for analogies between her camp experience and the role of a consultant. She explains that at camp, “The parents are dropping off their most precious gift to you, and you have to make sure that they trust you. We’re their trusted advisors.” Taking on a client’s business or idea and handing it back to them stronger and better, she says, works in much the same way.

A range of clients

At Deloitte, McKinsey works with a range of government clients in the financial sector—the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The range of work has enabled her to do everything from client interaction to coding to developing presentations to land new projects. In other words, not only is she able to produce highly technical products for clients but also to translate that technology for them and give it a business purpose. “Honestly I think that's what I enjoy most—is being able to straddle those two worlds,” she says.

Recently, she had the opportunity to work for several weeks on an oral presentation and product demonstration to win a new project for a bank regulator. She found it particularly exciting to be “diving into their headspace” and trying to understand what they wanted and needed from the product being engineered.

She says she’s been able to succeed at Deloitte for several reasons. “I'm a good fit for this job because I'm very motivated by helping others, and that's essentially what consulting is.” She adds that Deloitte also excels at supporting employees through mentoring and training. The organization treats employees like the important assets they are.

Emphasis on community

When talking about the people at Deloitte, McKinsey again compares it to her days at Camp High Harbour. “There’s a lot of spirit—a real emphasis on community.” In many ways it’s why she feels so at home at Deloitte, she says. “People treat working here as an experience, something that we want to take care of and that we’re proud of.”

Not surprising given her camp background, McKinsey loves being outdoors, particularly near water. She’s an active and enthusiastic recruiter at the University of Virginia. She reads prodigiously, alternating between “corny romance novels and nonfiction.” And she enjoys wandering the neighborhoods, parks and memorials of DC—the Potomac, Rock Creek Park, and the Jefferson Memorial. “How very UVA of me,” she jokes.