Consultant Spotlight: Marina Kemper
In this edition of Consultant Spotlight, we interview Marina Kemper, Director of Operations at Nourish. A UCLA Class of 2018 graduate, Marina worked for Bain and Company for three and a half years both in their consulting and private equity arms. While at Bain she discovered a deep interest in the healthcare industry, leading her to where she is today.
1. Tell me a little about yourself.
I’m a California person born and raised. I grew up in San Diego, absolutely loved it there, and then moved to LA when I went to UCLA. I was there for four years; I graduated a little bit early, but I actually stayed on campus to just kind of enjoy life, take the GMAT, and be able to do graduation. In terms of academics, I was a business economics major and was involved in a few different clubs and groups on campus. I was in the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority, and then I also was in a couple of clubs. The biggest ones I participated in were Bruin Women in Business, during my senior year, and then I also did UConsulting for a couple of years. During my junior and senior years, I also had an internship off-campus, and then in sophomore year I worked at the Daily Bruin as well. That was kind of a fun little view into the ins and outs of UCLA.
2. Can you describe your experience in consulting as well as the current position you hold right now?
Well, out of undergrad, I went right into consulting. I worked at Bain and Company in the Los Angeles office and stayed there for about three and a half years, which was really awesome. I feel like it really opened me up to a whole new world of different skill sets and learning opportunities about just what it means to work and succeed in the business world. I honestly loved it there. While I said that I stayed there for a little more than three years, I technically stayed at Bain for 4 years in terms of the levels I was because I stayed for the post-MBA level, but you can get there without doing an MBA. While I was there, I worked on a variety of different projects both in our general practice at Bain and then in the private equity arm that Bain has, which I did a year in. I worked on a variety of different projects among different clients, for instance, I worked with different hotels and hospitality companies, utility companies, and some major car manufacturers. However, on the private equity side of things, I was doing a variety of different diligences on the various assets that PE firms were thinking about acquiring. I think I did around 12 or 13 of those in the year for all sorts of different companies, which was a big learning curve, but it helped me to understand a variety of sectors in the business world. When I reached the three-and-a-half-year mark, I felt I was ready to leave Bain. However, I had different options because Bain offers the opportunity to do an externship where you can leave for six months during your third year and work at another company or you can transfer to an international Bain office. I was planning on transferring to an international office, but this was during 2020, so that got taken off the table. So, instead, I worked in an externship with a healthcare company in Los Angeles focused on autism therapy, which I really loved. The corporate team in the company was smaller and I enjoyed that environment. Then, once that was done, I came back to Bain to finish off the end of my year, and I decided that I was ready for the next move. That’s when I left to go work at Nourish, the healthcare startup that I currently work at doing operations. It’s basically a digital telehealth company in the nutrition space, and it’s very small. So, it’s totally different from consulting, but, honestly, so much fun.
3. What led you to pursue consulting?
Honestly, I think the biggest reason was that I just did not know what I wanted to do specifically, and I thought consulting would be a good way to try a variety of different things. Honestly, I was not someone who was set on consulting my whole life or anything. I don’t think I even knew what consulting was until my junior year of college. I didn’t know anything to the point that I missed the boat for getting an internship and I also missed the recruitment process, so I was basically going into senior year doing full-time recruitment and that was my first time doing it. So, as I said, I was really struggling to figure out what I wanted to do and I felt like I had broad interests and there was not one thing I could hone in on. I’m also someone who likes variety and change, so the whole project-based nature of it was really appealing to me. Once I started doing the cases, I felt, “Oh, this is actually pretty fun.” Plus, being able to learn a lot of different aspects about different industries just solidified it for me.
4. Being a person that did not even know what consulting was in your junior year, what would you say to those who feel behind?
When someone tells me, “I’m so behind,” I always say that there is no reason to worry. We are all behind to some extent and that’s ok! You don’t need to be someone who’s known it since you were in high school or that has been prepping for so long. I was the very last person to prep with a lot of other things going on in my life, and it worked out. It just works out sometimes, even when we don’t expect it to.
5. What does a typical workday look like for you? Feel free to answer that question in terms of when you were at Bain and now.
Both are going to be hard to answer because both were not standardized. Your days shift so much, but I would say that a typical work at Bain could start with a morning check-in with your team where you align the priorities for the day. You also chat about anything that’s cross-functional for the team because usually you’re split into a few work streams, so you discuss anything that overlaps. Then you would usually dive into whatever you’re doing for the day which could range from a very analytical work stream, such as building a model on Excel or analyzing various data sets, to client workshops and presentations where you get to learn things from them that will be useful for the project. You would work on that all day with varying levels and schedule meetings throughout the day with your team, other people in the workstream, clients, or outsiders. Finally, an end-of-day meeting is usually held at 4:00 PM which is used to align the priorities for the rest of the day, what needs to get done by that night, and what can be pushed to the next day. Sometimes you would even have fun team dinners on special occasions after that, but that is pretty much what a day could look like. Working operations at Nourish, which is basically everything in the startup except for the clinical side of things, my days are so different from each other. It’s hard to describe, but it’s very similar to consulting where I do very project-based work. The projects are a few months long and we usually do whatever is our highest priority. We attack high-priority tasks and then move on to the next project once it’s in a good spot. The meetings are a lot more ad hoc, and I get to design my schedule a lot more than in consulting because in a startup you get to make more decisions.
6. When you say that, at Bain, things needed to be done “by that night or pushed to the next day,” were you required to work on that from the office or could you work from home?
It depends so much on your project, and I think it probably has changed a lot since COVID, to be honest. But, in my case, I would always stay in the office with whatever work needed to be done. So, I could be getting off pretty late because consulting is very fast-paced. That’s just one of the things I don’t want to ever scare people off with, but I also don’t want to sugarcoat it and tell you that you’re going to have a perfect nine to five, always be off in time for dinner, and have time to hang out because it’s not true for most places. That’s just like the nature of the industry. However, especially during COVID and coming back to work post-COVID, I would say there was like a lot of flexibility in terms of where you worked. I left Bain on the tail end of coming back into the office, so I can’t speak as to what it is like now. Friends that still work in consulting have told me that it is very flexible, and I think that consulting firms really do care about the workload, and they try to make it as sustainable as possible for you. For instance, every single week, your team would have this meeting, where you speak about how you all feel about the case, and you fill out a survey about it, which ensures that they know about how you feel. So, I do feel that they are trying their best to make sure that everyone has a good experience.
7. What was the thing you liked most about being a consultant?
I feel like the biggest thing I loved about consulting and still to this day has been the people, which is very cheesy to say, but it’s so true. I have met so many of my best friends from consulting, which was very unexpected, especially since I came from UCLA and stayed in the LA office, so I already had a big college crew. Nonetheless, I was still able to meet a lot of people at Bain that became the greatest of friends. I think this is because of the nature of it since you are working so closely with your team day in, day out. The fact that you do projects with different teams just means that you end up getting to know a lot of people really well. Bain also had so many extracurriculars that you could be involved in; for instance, I did the Bain Run Club and the soccer team. I also did lots of volunteering and helped to organize the events. So, there are just so many opportunities to get to know people outside of your casework. It was such a great atmosphere that even if I’d never met someone before I just knew they were going to be like a cool person and that I was going to like them.
8. What skills do you consider to be most important for a consulting career?
I would say a couple of things. Critical thinking and problem solving are big, because the nature of consulting is that you’re tackling a brand-new question with each project, and maybe it’s something you’ve never worked on before. Thus, you must be able to take something ambiguous and come up with a good framework for how to solve it. You’re always solving challenging problems in consulting because if it was easy, the client would not have hired you in the first place. Ownership is another big piece, you have to own the work you do. If you promise the client that you will do something, you have to deliver on that promise. Setting and getting those results is an important mindset to have. It’s the same with any job; there are going to be days when things go wrong, and you need to be able to respond to that and find a way to persevere. Another trait that is very important is the ability to be able to learn on the go. I feel like in the beginning I was very nervous because I didn’t know what consulting was, so something that helped is being open to learning, as I often found myself having to learn concepts while doing a project by doing the research myself. Aside from that, other aspects such as professionalism, public speaking, and being able to get your ideas across are important as well.
9. What was the biggest challenge you had to face as a consultant?
Personally, the biggest challenge for me was just work-life balance or sustainability. Probably a lot of people who go into consulting, like me, are perfectionists, and it’s difficult for us to strike a balance between work and everything else. But you have to learn to. You have to learn to do the job and do a really good job while you’re at it, but also not burn yourself out doing that. Especially since in a client service job like consulting there’s always a lot of work to be done where you are continuously pushed to do more and more in a shorter time frame. So, you need to be able to find that balance if you want to succeed in the industry. I felt this throughout the transition from school to work as in school you have breaks throughout the day, but once you graduate you have to learn to work full time, which can be difficult and can push you to overdo yourself. So, I would recommend trying to find opportunities, such as having fun lunches with your coworkers, to try and find that balance and make things sustainable for yourself.
10. What surprised you about your role or the industry when you first started?
What surprised me? I feel like because I didn’t know what to expect, everything was a surprise. Or maybe nothing was a surprise because of it. I guess I’ll back to what I said, which is that I came in with a bit of impostor syndrome. I remember thinking that I didn’t know whether I was qualified or cut out for this and that. I think the real surprise then is that everyone feels that way at the start and no one really knows what they’re doing. In consequence, people are so willing to help others not feel like they once felt. So, I think that was kind of a pleasant surprise in the way that I was like, “Ok, everyone is starting out on the same foot here, none of us really know what we’re doing.” That helped me to not feel alone, as I found that older people in the company were so understanding and willing to jump in and help.
11. What are some resources that you suggest students interested in consulting take advantage of at UCLA?
For those who are looking for prepping resources, for consulting cases I would say that I read “Case Interview Secrets” and did a lot of practice cases, which I highly recommend. Just doing that was very helpful because I realized that doing the practice cases was like building muscle, in the sense that you learn and become better as you go through cases and problem-solve. This also helped to reduce my nerves a lot because, once I felt like I had done enough cases, I felt confident going into the interview. So, for casing, I would recommend that. Generally, at UCLA, one thing I regret is just not reaching out more to my professors. I feel that I didn’t go to the optional office hours enough and failed to ask questions about the course and just their careers in general. I wish I had asked more about that and their thoughts on the business world because just to hear about the professors’ career and their opinions is so insightful. I had some professors who were very interesting people that had worked in the industries that I am interested in, so I wish that I just had sat down and talked about these things with them. One specific instance I remember is when I took a class in social entrepreneurship, which I absolutely loved, as I think I’d love to go into that one day. The professor was a consultant for different social enterprises, and I just wish that I had talked to her about her career and what it’s like to work with social enterprises and their inner workings. In short, just reach out to your professors.
11. What is one piece of advice you give to students recruiting for consulting at UCLA?
The advice I always say is to not take it super seriously and get yourself nervous. At the end of the day, you’re still in college and it is such a special time. You only have 4 years of it, for most people, and if it doesn’t work out in consulting, it’s going to work out with something else. You are going to find another cool job, or you can always do consulting later. So, I guess my biggest advice is that, don’t spend all day prepping for consulting and just enjoy the college experience. If you do that, you’re probably going to be a little calmer and more comfortable going into the interviews, which, I think, is the key to interviews as a calmer mind will perform better. Consulting is great. It teaches you a lot of skillsets. I’m very grateful for the opportunity 100%, but it’s not the only job that’s going to teach you those skill sets. So don’t assume if you don’t get a consulting job that your life is over or that you’re going to have a bad career. There are plenty of other good career paths, so, enjoy college and have fun while you’re there.
