Q&A with Sabrina
A true global citizen, Sabrina was born in Singapore and grew up in Indonesia. Sabrina has had business cards from three different McKinsey offices—Boston, Brussels, and finally back home in Singapore. When asked for three adjectives that describe McKinsey, she didn't hesitate: fast-paced, connected, and challenging. Sabrina’s focus has been on climate change and sustainability, a personal and a professional mission.
Interviewer: Boston is a long way from Indonesia. How did you wind up there?
Sabrina: I started at the Boston office directly after my undergraduate program in international agriculture and rural development at Cornell University.
Interviewer: Was it always agriculture for you?
Sabrina: I started as a junior research analyst, focusing on the agriculture sector, and was in the research arm of McKinsey for 3 years before switching to the consulting track, where I have continued to focus on agriculture topics.
Interviewer: Tell me about your most memorable project at McKinsey. What made it different?
Sabrina: It was a climate change project in Papua New Guinea. Being in the exotic location with no access to the Internet while trying to address the most challenging issues in the country—including greenhouse-gas-emissions abatement—and building the skills of our Paupuan New Guinean client-team members was extremely challenging and rewarding. Living in apartments with our teammates—sharing a living room and kitchen with your project manager for several months! —took team bonding to a new level. Working together and living together, we made friends for life.
Interviewer: McKinsey is known for its world-changing work. Do you have your own personal examples?
Sabrina: As a sustainability and resource productivity fellow in 2010–11, I feel fortunate to have worked on issues that I care deeply about, such as deforestation mitigation, climate change adaptation, and agriculture development, in amazing locations, including Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Malaysia. But the work I am proudest of is the McKinsey Global Institute report, The Archipelago Economy: Unleashing Indonesia’s Potential, that we did for the Indonesian National Economic Council. We were lucky enough to present it in a meeting with President Yudhoyono and 2,000 of the country’s most important politicians, civil servants, ambassadors, and business leaders in the audience!
Interviewer: If desired, traveling the world is just one of many possibilities at McKinsey. Do you have a favorite time when you collaborated with McKinsey people from around the world to pursue a common goal?
Sabrina: Without question, it was my recent study in Tanzania, when our team consisted of people from Canada, the US, Germany, the Netherlands, London, South Africa, Dubai, Malaysia, and Instanbul. We worked in Dar es Salaam for 8 weeks, conducting a series of high-intensity workshops, or “labs,” that touched on all the priority sectors of Tanzania in order to transform the country into a middle-class economy. We all had very diverse backgrounds and different topic expertise but shared a common passion for economic development.
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