By Syontoni Hattori-Chatterjee
All photos credited to The Sundial Press, SciencesPo Reims’ campus newspaper.
SciencesPo Le Havre GRC Branch President, Aaryani Sahay, with conference speaker Álvaro Martín Sánchez, Associate at Boston Consulting Group.
From February 8th to 9th, I had the special opportunity to attend SciencesPo’s first intercampus Global Research and Consulting (GRC) conference. Fellow associates from the Le Havre, Menton, and Reims branches congregated in SciencesPo’s largest regional campus for a weekend of speakers, workshops, cases, exploring Reims, and, of course, networking. While I had some previous experience in education and nonprofit consulting, I was relatively unfamiliar with the wider field of social impact consulting before getting involved with GRC this year. Being immersed in this burgeoning consulting niche over the conference weekend helped me solidify my future career aspirations, a sentiment shared by other attendees from across the three campuses.
Viren Gemini, also a GRC Le Havre associate, commented that “The conference was quite intriguing because the guest speakers were very articulate and provided relevant and interesting insights on consulting and finance. The opportunity to ask the speakers questions and interact with them in person was very cool, and I felt like I gained a deeper understanding of consulting as a field and the lifestyle, skills and thought process of a consultant. I am excited to explore opportunities in this realm in the future!”
Indeed, Álvaro Martín Sánchez from Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Mariette Munier from McKinsey and EDF, and Bassem Snaije from Cosmos Advisors and SciencesPo each provided distinct, interesting perspectives on their work as consultants. I was surprised not just by the diversity of projects they were each able to take on, but also by their reflections on their responsibilities and purpose which showcased different mindsets and strategic thinking approaches.
Viren remarked that “Bassem Snaije’s data-centric approach was truly fascinating, as his show-don’t-tell approach revealed the importance of finance in the modern world and introduced a lot of new key terms that I was not familiar with.” I also found Professor Snaije’s technique of leading with the numbers and then explaining their importance quite engaging.
Mariette Munier had me hooked from the beginning of her talk when she boldly announced that she had just quit McKinsey the day before the conference. I agree with Viren that her emphasis on “honesty, authenticity and being open to feedback and learning as key attributes of all good consultants” and her passion for promoting economic inclusion of consultants from different income backgrounds was refreshing.
What I appreciated the most, however, was the chance to talk to Ms. Munier in between speaker sessions. As a SciencesPo Nancy campus alumna herself, she had a warm and nostalgic familiarity towards my and my friends’ experiences that made her advice on pathways beyond SciencesPo all the more salient. I was very interested in the HEC-SciencesPo dual Masters program that she pursued after obtaining her Bachelor’s degree. This was in particular because she remarked that HEC had an entirely different university culture to SciencesPo and focused more on professional development. Nevertheless, I also valued her perspective on career opportunities gained through SciencesPo’s greatest strength: our peers and friends, who form not just our emotional but also professional support network.
Lastly, Viren and I both took away the same key insight from Álvaro Martín Sánchez’ talk: “non-social consulting can also have a social goal.” Mr. Martín illustrated this by discussing his first project as a full time consultant at BCG during which he helped expand legal banking operations and access to credit cards on behalf of a bank in Venezuela, Panama, and the Dominican Republic. While the project’s intended outcomes were profit-focused and aimed principally to extend the reach of the bank’s activities, the project also had positive externalities on the local and national level. Strategizing effective ways to encourage citizens to keep their money in banks enabled said citizens to develop a credit history that they could use for loans, and also lowered the influence of the mafia and underground economy while promoting tax collection for public services. It was encouraging to hear that more consulting work is slowly but surely moving into this higher degree of interconnection between profit-based and social outcomes. Additionally, Mr. Martín’s fun story about a colleague who had to literally get into a pig sty for a consulting project amusingly showed attendees that consulting provides the unique opportunity to have a career where you get your hands into a bit of everything.
Viren Gemini (left) and Carmen Leong (right), SciencesPo Le Havre GRC Branch Associates.
The collected composure of the SciencesPo GRC team throughout the weekend masked how much effort went into making this conference a success. I talked to Aaryani Sahay, the president of our SciencesPo Le Havre GRC branch, about the preparation involved in organizing the first event of this kind between the SciencesPo campuses. She shared that the initiative for this conference began between the three presidents of the Le Havre, Menton, and Reims GRC branches all the way back in September, and the full executive boards of each campus’ branches were working on this from late October onwards. “We all started having calls on Sundays. For like three or four hours, because I had to be on every call, I would be on calls and everyone else on the [Le Havre] executive board so Noelani, Armand, Elise would also join their teams and we’ve all been working on this for three months before the conference happened.”
I was moved by Aaryani’s dedication, passion, and commitment to making the idea of an intercampus consulting conference a reality. Over winter break, in order to secure conference panelists, she “stayed up until two a.m. most nights emailing, just cold emailing, speakers” and navigated scheduling changes, cancellations, and more logistical challenges. She admitted that “at some points it did feel like, you know, I was a bit overwhelmed. But I think I just had faith: I knew that this could be a good event and I just had to keep at it.” Aaryani exhibited some of this faith by putting herself out there and messaging consultants such as Mariette Munier, with whom she had no prior connections, on LinkedIn asking if they were interested in speaking to SciencesPo students. Indeed, during a quick chat before her panel, Ms. Munier herself encouraged me and fellow attendees to boldly make the first professional move and take chances utilizing our extended networks.
Nevertheless, this GRC conference was also a success because it built on previously forged professional relationships. Álvaro Martín mentored Aaryani and other first-year GRC Le Havre associates last year during their first consulting project at SciencesPo. When Aaryani reached out to him asking if he had any connections in the Paris area that might be available for the conference date, he offered himself to come speak, despite living and working in Madrid. Aaryani and the GRC executive boards had to figure out and fund logistics, but ultimately Mr. Martín was able to fly into Paris from Madrid and go back on the same day just to talk with us. Following the conference, case competition winners earned a private mentoring session with him and another consultant, and Mr. Martín will be back as a GRC mentor this year.
Georgia Langworthy (center), SciencesPo Le Havre GRC Insights Team Head
Speaking of the case competition, Fifi Zhao, a GRC SciencesPo Reims branch associate and member of the winning team, and our own Viren from the runner-up team generously shared their reflections on trying out this new activity.
Fifi: “It was my first time doing anything like it, and I really went in with zero expectations and just the desire of getting some firsthand experience on the entire process of analyzing the prompt, conducting research, and presenting findings. I remember agreeing with my teammates that we wouldn’t cry of happiness if we won, but we wouldn’t cry if we lost either. It was a bit daunting because none of us had previous experience, so we tried interpreting the criteria to the best of our abilities. Winning was definitely unexpected but I’m so glad our hard work paid off! It did add some confidence that I can succeed in consulting, and the BCG session was a cherry on top. I’m thinking of using it to ask about skills I can develop to be more competitive in applications, as well as potential career paths and exit opportunities if I decide to change careers.”
Viren: “We started preparing for the case competition around six a.m. (two or three hours before the competition) as we had gone for dinner and then to the bar the previous night to celebrate my birthday. It was quite a productive session as we were able to work together remotely and split the work efficiently (I guess pressure can really make people thrive!). We were the second group to present, and after the first group it was clear to us that our approach was a bit unique and placed special emphasis on assessing the pre-existing conditions of fire-response in California. Fortunately, the judges took a liking to this approach and we came second! The feedback we received was that we fell short because we exceeded the given time and this was due to the last minute preparation, but overall we enjoyed the exposure and we were able to get a good experience out of the competition.”
“But I think I just had faith: I knew that this could be a good event and I just had to keep at it.”
The GRC summit was also an occasion for some to return to once-beloved activities and gain a renewed sense of purpose. As I watched Aaryani on stage in conversation with Álvaro Martín, asking thoughtful questions and cultivating an effortlessly dynamic discussion, I truly felt like this was where she was meant to be. “I was a public speaker in high school: I spoke at the UN and I spoke at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. I feel like going to conferences was a huge part of me and I genuinely enjoyed it […] I hadn’t done public speaking for almost three years by this conference so I was really nervous. Two days before the conference, I was telling my parents that maybe I should ask someone else to [moderate the discussion] with Álvaro because what if I lost it, you know? But my parents were like ‘You just take a risk and see how it goes.’ And it just felt like coming home.” Aaryani also mused warmly on the impact of having her personal and professional support network there to help her: “Tamae was there, Armand was super helpful throughout the whole thing, he helped me make the speaker questions. So I think just having everyone there, having my friends there, and being able to do something that I love, I think it’s an experience that I’m really going to cherish.”
Last but certainly not least, my favorite part of the conference was getting to know my peers from other SciencesPo campuses, something we still have too few opportunities to do. My coloc hosts were so generous and kind, and as Aaryani revealed the GRC Reims executive board worked tirelessly to ensure that us guests had a warm welcome to the city. “Eleni from Reims worked so, so hard to secure the accommodation […] Every day I would text her with two new people and she would be like, ‘Let me try to make it work.’ I would just like to say that she really played a role in accommodation and making sure that people from Le Havre could come.” As a 2A in a dual degree, I also welcomed the opportunity to meet people I would see again in the fall at Berkeley, a sentiment echoed by Fifi. “I was really happy to meet LH and Menton students, especially those also in the Columbia Dual degree! It was like a little preview of what’s to come next year :).”
I would like to end this article with Viren’s comments about celebrating his birthday during the conference weekend (the grind truly never stops):
“It was a great birthday! I got to discover a new city in France (4th French city I have been to yet) and I got to hang out with a group of friends that I truly value! They surprised me with 2 cakes that were from my family back in India and a cookie cake from them, and we went for dinner to a great Thai restaurant. Afterwards, we went for the bar night and I had some really good conversations. Later, my amazing coloc host Simona cooked pasta for us as a late night supper. Overall, an amazing day!”
A big thank you to everyone involved: the Reims, Menton, and Le Havre GRC presidents and executive boards, all of the conference speakers, the Reims students who hosted us and showed us around the city, and fellow GRC and non-GRC members who attended the summit. Here’s to the next one!
Le Dragon Déchaîné 