I joined McKinsey with a PhD in neuroscience. During my doctorate I got very little help or coaching; I was expected to learn on my own. Assuming that McKinsey would be the same, I arrived thinking I needed to have all the answers. I was wrong and my first project was rough, but luckily I had a very good engagement manager. He sat me down, we had a great conversation, and I realized I was no longer the expert; I was the rookie, and I had a lot to learn.
Choosing a path
At the beginning I ventured into lots of different areas to escape what I know—the lab—and gain the business breadth a consultant needs. I did commercial and organizational work for medical device manufacturers, pricing and M&A strategy for agrochemical firms, global strategy for a fertilizer trader, higher education strategy for a country, and organization work for a food producer. There was no grand plan; I just pursued interesting things that helped me to learn.
After a while, I decided to combine the consulting experience I had gained with my content knowledge and commit myself to R&D topics within the Pharmaceuticals and Medical Products Practice. In the Swiss office we have a big group of life science specialists, and with Geneva surrounded by leading healthcare companies and institutions, we are right at the center of things.
Promoting collaboration in medical research
My science background has allowed me to contribute to some amazing projects. One I am particularly proud of was with an international organization investigating why African scientists do so little medical research on diseases that are prevalent in Africa but rare elsewhere. My research revealed that African scientists are more likely to collaborate with their peers in the US and Europe than in Africa. We had suspected as much, but the magnitude of the problem was staggering.
We traveled through Africa talking to researchers and discovered that they were interested in change, but lacked funding and equipment. So we helped create a business and operating plan for a new international organization that gives grants structured to incentivize African scientists to collaborate with each other to tackle Africa’s neglected diseases. The organization has now been launched and is giving its first grants.
Stepping up
When I became an engagement manager I found myself feeling like a rookie all over again. I thought of my first engagement manager, and even now, more than a year into the role, I try to work in the same way that he did. He taught me that McKinsey doesn’t have the individualistic atmosphere you find in a lab; here, I have a support network of people, my team.