From Idea to Reality to Unexpectedly More
When I first started building Girls Who Consult, I really didn’t think it’d last beyond the pandemic. It was an idea I had for some time, to run some sort of mentorship program and community, but the work I had to put in to get it off the ground, let alone scale it, I honestly wasn’t sure how long I’d last, or how long the spark of this would last for.
But four years later, I’m quite honestly astonished that for one, it still exists, and two, the passion that our executive leadership team drives the growth of our community with. It feels so unreal, yet so real, and I truly am stunned, yet encouraged all at the same time.
When I first launched Girls Who Consult, the mission was to empower the next generation of mission-driven females into the management consulting industry, with the vision that 2500+ participants would be sent into the consulting industry by 2025. The sentiment behind this mission and vision first spun out from stumbling upon the missoin of Girls Who Invest, and couple other women-focused organizations. In that research, I had yet to find one that was focused on women in Consulting, so there I had it, an opportunity to launch a community in this space. The hope was to provide females interested in Consulting with access to mentors, resume reviews, business cases, workshops and a network of consultants. The mission was to build up the next generation and equip them what what it took to be transformational business leaders in their mission field.
Even typing that all out, I have no clue where I even came up with that from at the time. But looking back, I really think it was deep conviction that drew that out of me. Conviction that the next generation of women would be able to experience their career development journey early-on differently than I had, and would not be excluded from resources that would allow them to be successful in their pursuits.
My career started in clinical healthcare, with an interest later on in college to pivot into Consulting, but because I was not plugged into the right major, right clubs, right network, it made it nearly impossible to pivot. Despite having attended a target school, I felt like I was on the outskirts of all the opportunities that were offered to all the students in the inner circles of business careers, such as Consulting. I couldn’t imagine what that was like for students at non-target schools, who had the potential to succeed in a career like Consulting, but simply did not have access to the resources to help them get there. It was then, that when I thought back to my own journey, and acknowledging where I was years after college, that I realized, without the mentors, alumni, case resources and community that I sought out year after year, I couldn’t have found my way in. And I realized, if these were resources I ended up scouting out, why not offer these resources to those in a similar path without them needing to put in all that work to scout it out — why not just offer it at their fingertips. Simply, why not make it accessible.
From there, I was on a personal mission to build something that would utilize my existing network to offer mentorship, connections and community to those who simply were in need of it, or even mildly interested in exploring this career. At the time, I was also part of building a startup to help early career professionals grow in their careers, and one of the biggest pain points we learned was that students wanted jobs. They simply wanted a chance to learn, to grow and know themselves more. But in a world where there are more people than jobs, it can be the single hardest process ever to find a job. We’ve all been there, done that, right?
At the time, it felt like a massive mission to build out, and I had no clue how long the interest expressed from others would sustain, and I had no clue if any of this would even take off. For all I knew at the time, it could have been a total catastrophe — nobody would be interested, or they would think it’s a scam, or they would question the validity of it. And frankly, I remember thinking to myself, was I even qualified to do this? I sure as heck was not as cool and swanky with my words and brand as all the other tech people building out their cool communities and initiatives at the time were. And could I actually reshape the Consulting world for women around me , or was this just one of the many fantasies we all had, and I was just one in a million who attempted at it — I guess I was about to find out…
Sometimes when we have the conviction to do something, or start something, all it really takes is one step forward to put ourselves out there and try it out. Even if it’s the teeniest tiniest step, it’s still worth it, because at least we can say we tried, and when we try, we get more data on what works and doesn’t work, which then informs us of how to proceed forward. Rather when we don’t try, the only thing directing us is our un-vetted speculations and fears. But, taking that teeny tiny step forward can truly be one of the hardest steps of the journey. It truly takes courage to say to the world, hey I have this idea, this mission on my heart, do you care to accept it and embrace it. And sometimes, unfortunately, the answer can be no quickly on, and then we’re back to square one, back to the drawing board of understanding why there wasn’t a fit, and understanding where we can tweak to retry and see where it might be a fit.
As I was reflecting back on the past four years of Girls Who Consult, I dug up the very first outreach email I sent out, announcing the launch of Girls Who Consult (at the time called, Girls Who Consult Initiative), and in that email, I shared about the 5 week Training program that would be offered, alongside the general mentorship program, that still is being run to this day.
This email was where it all started, along with this linkedin post, and this medium article. Sure, I could have said all I wanted, posted all I wanted, and even marketed all I wanted, but in retrospect, I really believe it’s all the people who believed in what Girls Who Consult was all about, that brought us from that step of idea to reality. All the people who gave us a chance when we were a small initiative trying to figure itself out, I’m tremendously grateful for. The mentors who stepped right in, down to help where needed, the mentees who gave this a chance, believing they themselves could see a future with it, and our founding team who helped with quite literally everything, from sourcing cases, partnerships, marketing, social media, design — the tasks and contributions are innumerable. I believe that without that initial step of having people believe in your vision, the vision itself will continue to stay as an idea, rather than become reality.
A vision is a vision because it’s something you see that hasn’t quite happened yet, but it’s something you believe that can happen, even if you don’t have all that is required quite yet to propel that vision forward, but because the vision itself is so compelling to something inside of you, you still take that step to make it a reality because you believe that one day it will come to reality. Even if that is a day that you don’t come to see, you believe a vision is something that has no end, something that continues even without you there — that’s what a true vision is. It’s something that holds no limits, even if the infrastructure propelling it no longer exists, it remains as something that exists as its own that others have experienced and now can formulate their own visions for, to carry the torch on, whether as you imagined or didn’t imagine it as.
And I think that’s the very thing that astonishes me in reflecting on the past four years of Girls Who Consult, and seeing how it has evolved as the years have past. I think specifically our leadership team and executive directors who have stepped in year after year to carry the baton and lead our community deeper into our mission with passion and inspiration, bringing to the table their own missions that have furthered the mission of Girls Who Consult, bringing their own ideas, experiences and insights that have driven forth more of what already exists — it truly has been an incredible honor to see how gracefully our executive directors have led each year, and passed on their baton so seamlessly as well. I’m amazed, and so grateful.
When I first began articulating the vision and mission of Girls Who Consult to our founding team and community members, I had no clue if anyone would get it. I knew they might resonate, but I wondered, would people truly understand the magnitude of it. Would they feel passionate about it as much as I do? I had a hard time believing that the flame would stay lit even only after a few months of launching. I feared the flame would burn out and that would be it, and the community would fizzle out on its own. Quite honestly, I had no clue how to scale, let alone find a way for the vision and mission to transpire and seep into the DNA of the community. But I think sometimes as founders, we can only drill in the vision so far, before letting go is the better option. When we let go, it can often allow space for others to hold on, in the sense where we make room for others to experience the vision in their own way, sense the future of it in their own way, and expound on it in a way that we never had thought of before. That’s the power of a vision. It has the power to speak on many volumes, and speak to many, in such a way that we cannot find the words to communicate for.
When I first defined the mission of Girls Who Consult as a community empowering the next generation of mission-driven females into the management consulting industry, I was imagining that people would come into our program and community, and leave with this deep conviction to go into the Consulting industry with a special purpose or mission they wanted to embark on. I guess in some sense, I imagined this community would send out mini missionaries into the industry to change and reform the representation of women. And I imagined that we would empower them to do so through our community offerings of mentorship, workshops etc. But honestly, it was one of those things where we could only rely on so much data and tangible results to convince ourselves that our mission was working. Early on, we actually did see tangible results that pointed towards our mission being accomplished, including a partnership with Accenture, numerous community members landing internships at top firms ,and dozens of non target schools being reached and plugged into our community. However as the years went on, the pandemic phased out, and life returned back to in-person, a lot of those initial victories for us fizzled out with it. It felt as if the infrastructure of who we were, the core offerings we had, were no longer as effective as they were. It then felt as if we were stuck as to how to scale, or even how to pivot most effectively.
Earlier in 2023, we even entertained the idea of applying as a 501(c)3, in hopes that formalizing our community would allow us to operate more and attract more talent to help us run the community. We whipped up a deck for what that vision to scale would look like, hoping to run a nation wide conference and pay our leadership team, and even have branded swag for our community. However, as we dived further into the process of applying, the logistics and paperwork and future administration overhead piled up — it suddenly felt like it would be too much work to maintain the operations of the community, in order to be able to scale up. In some ways, it felt like a dead end, one that felt like a, “this is it” moment, as in, this is as far as we can go. Eventually, we did apply for an INC, which then would allow us to apply for a 501(c)3, but a month after applying, we heard back and our application was returned due to legal paperwork being incomplete. Disappointed, we actually took it as a sign to hold off in taking next steps forward, and wait until our team had the bandwidth to continue further. But time went on, and our conviction eventually led us to not move forward with formalizing the community, and to actually keep it informal and fully student-run because we believed that was actually the spirit that kept Girls Who Consult alive. We believed it was the willingness and passion each member and leadership team member brought that kept the wheels on it going, not the formalization into something so-called legitimate on paper. What made it legitimate was the organic passion of the community.
Fast forward, several months later, that proved itself to be true, and I couldn’t be more humbled, yet grateful for how it all played out. But I also truly believe that if it wasn’t for the deep passion of our Executive Directors and leadership for the mission of Girls Who Consult, the community could not have gone on. To dedicate time to an extra curricular outside of academics, is a step above and beyond, and to choose what you dedicate your time to is one layer deeper. To say I’m moved by this would be an understatement. Each year, I’m so blown away by how the leadership team manages to recruit an entirely new team to lead for the upcoming academic year, and manages to do all the onboarding and pass it on all so smoothly — it’s incredible! I think in particular this year, with life truly having gone back to in-person, with the ways of the pandemic truly in the history books, I worried that it would be impossible for us to continue as a nation-wide, global community virtually. I worried people would no longer even have the fire to lead this community after the current leadership team stepped down, that this may just be the end days of it.
But as we welcomed our fourth leadership team to Girls Who Consult, and prepare for the onboarding process, I was deeply reminded of what keeps us going — it’s the shared mission we all are on together, to empower the next generation of women into the management consulting industry as mission-driven leaders. And it’s our leadership team living out that mission as mission-drive leaders themselves that keeps the mission itself going, and I couldn’t have had it any other way. I imagined our mission to play out one way, but it played out in an even better way, and that’s the part that I’m most astonished by. That our mission has found its way to empower our very own leadership to build their own missions to propel our mission, and empowered them to be driven by a mission, to take forward what they hope to see for the next generation of women.
Crazy to think four years later, this is where we are at. It’s far greater, far further than what I ever imagined. Sure, once upon a time, I imagined we’d be headline news and a formal 501(c)3 organization, but I believe this is far better than being famous or well-known to the media, instead our mission has been well-known by our very own, which became far more important, and far more essential for scaling the vision.
Please join me in recognizing our past executive directors, Candice Lee (2021–2023), Leah Hickman (2023–2024), Ellen Liu (2023–2024) for their leadership in carrying Girls Who Consult on, and making it more of a reality than it was when it first launched, and please join me in welcoming our new executive directors, Rishika Jain (2024–) and Chaya Sandhu (2024–) — so excited for this new team to carry it on!
