Consulting Reflection

I was a  a pro-bono consultant with AU Consulting Club and Kogod in Practice from January 2020 to December 2021. It was an amazing experience where I provided market strategy consulting for First Bridge Centre, a healthcare firm providing applied behavior analysis (ABA) led therapy services for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and related conditions located in the UK.

During one of our client meetings, one of our team members informed us that they could not make it about ten minutes before the meeting. Since my focus was UK public funding research and my team members had a focus on other, related sectors of our issues, we each had an assigned task for the client presentation. As a result, we were largely unprepared and could not explain that member’s research and findings to our client.

Although our client was not completely displeased, our engagement manager was largely disappointed. He communicated to us that he did not expect one of our team members to be missing and that we should have discussed this information with him prior to our client meeting. Our other manager also shared that we should all be familiar with each other’s information and that our presentation should be delivered with a “we” message as it will make us seem more confident and complete with our findings.

I learned that we have to engage and communicate with our managers every step of the way, especially with urgent matters such as this one. All throughout this project, I learned valuable experiences that will aid me in my consulting career and future endeavors.

Leadership Reflection

I have become a better leader and listener through the SPA Leadership Program. As I implemented my projects, I learned valuable knowledge and more about my leadership style. I learned to communicate with people more effectively and discovered some tricks to fundraising. I was able to more than $350 for Heal Da Homies, an organization based in DC that focuses on black liberation through protesting, mutual-aids, etc.

Although many people in the program struggled to fundraise, I found that fundraising with multiple people makes fundraising more effective. I designed bingo-style fundraising templates and shared them with ten people that also fundraised with me for the same cause.