Making the call to leave a firm like McKinsey must have been hard! How did Pom make the choice to switch over?
Hello; thanks for the question.
It certainly wasn’t an easy choice after all the hard work that went into getting into a firm like McKinsey, not to mention the countless hours spent at the client sites and the travels back-and-forth. I learned a ton while there, but there were two main factors behind the decision. First, I felt that I had already built a good foundation from my experience as management consultant. Not that one can learn everything there is to learn at McKinsey; the firm’s knowledge is so vast, but I did get all the basics down. I did my fair share of PowerPoint presentations and also had a great variety of experiences working in different industries and with different professionals. At the core of it, management consulting is a project based business where once a project ends there is not much follow through. I was at a point of my career where I was ready to devote more time to focus on a field that was interesting and challenging to me, instead of constantly being moved from one place to the next. To that point, I found Private Equity fascinating because I still had to put on my management consulting hat a lot of time to think about value proposition of a private company, but at the same time, Private Equity was also a platform for me to really deep dive into one field that I found exciting. Secondly, it was a personal decision as well. My then boyfriend / now husband was working full time in London and I was traveling case to case in middle America which made it hard for both of us. Looking back, I believed it was certainly the right decision for me both professionally and personally. Hope this helps 