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Summer Internship Series: Mastercard

Mark Lomedico HeadshotMark Lomedico is a rising MBA2 and interning at Mastercard this summer. He is specializing in Management, Management of Technology & Operations, and Finance and is a member of the Military Veterans Club, Stern Women in Business, and the Management Consulting Association.

NYU Stern’s “Summer Internship Series” sheds light into Sternies’ internship experiences. Posts are written by rising MBA2s who are currently working at their summer internship.

I first met Dean Peter Henry at the Stern Military Veterans Summit for prospective students in the Fall of 2015. On a Saturday in October, the Dean spent his personal time answering our questions and describing Stern’s unique qualities. I vividly remember him discussing the notion that doing well and doing good were not mutually exclusive and that Stern empowers its students to create value in business and society after graduation. It was with those words in mind that I was able to develop a recruiting philosophy to help guide my journey during the Fall of 2016.

Sometime in November, I took stock of my recruiting strategy. I was interested in the consulting and technology industries and had my eye on a few rotational management programs. While I never felt unsure of my chosen recruiting tracks, I wanted to evaluate my options and decide what companies to focus on most. Remembering Dean Henry’s words helped me take stock of what I held to be important and consequently I concluded the following: I wanted to work at a company where I could do interesting work and have the opportunity to make a difference in society. After that revelation, Mastercard quickly became my top choice.

Given that 85% of all consumer transactions involve cash or check, Mastercard stands to experience incredible growth given its focus on digital payments and its vision of a world beyond cash. I saw the company as a place where I could learn about payments, be innovative, and work in a dynamic industry. Furthermore, Mastercard has a large focus on global financial inclusion. Initiatives such as 2Kuze, prepaid debit cards for refugees, and the many identity inclusion programs significantly improve many peoples’ lives around the world. Having served in the U.S. Army, I wondered whether my career after business school would have a higher purpose and serve a cause greater than myself. Mastercard’s executive leadership emphasizes and champions these financial inclusion programs and I am proud to intern for a company that focuses on generating revenue and improving the societies in which it operates.

Currently I am interning in an account management division that services customers (i.e., banks) that issue Mastercard cards. My project is to examine ways to make account management more efficient and improve the overall customer experience. This has afforded me the opportunity to learn much about Mastercard’s core products, its main revenue drivers, and customer needs. Far from busywork, my project was created out of an observed need for strategic analysis to be put towards a real problem. Empowered with executive buy-in, I know my efforts are valued and matter.

Outside of the office, I have been fortunate to contribute to Mastercard’s success on the soccer field. We face off against companies in the surrounding Westchester area and through soccer I have been able to meet many new Mastercard employees and learn about what they do.

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As we approach the end of the summer, I have my sights set on Mastercard’s full-time rotational management program for MBA graduates. Created by the CFO, the Management Associates Program exposes participants to different business units during three six-month rotations. As Mastercard has many global offices, one rotation is at an international office such as Dubai, London, or Singapore, to name a few locations. Mastercard is full of intelligent people and exciting opportunities to create business value and to assist financially excluded segments of society. I am grateful for Stern’s relationship with Mastercard and the opportunity I was afforded to intern at the firm. I look forward to the exciting opportunities ahead of me and am thankful that Dean Henry’s perspective on the possibilities after graduation guided my recruiting efforts.

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Summer Internship Series: Accenture Consulting

TJ_Headshot croppedTJ Herrle is a rising MBA2 and interning at Accenture Consulting this summer. He is specializing in Strategy and Leadership & Change Management and is a member of the Management Consulting Association, and Stern Student Government

NYU Stern’s “Summer Internship Series” sheds light into Sternies’ internship experiences. Posts are written by rising MBA2s who are currently working at their summer internship.

When I began considering an MBA, I didn’t know what management consulting even was. I came from a non-traditional professional background, with a few years of government work experience and several years working internationally at startups. But with the help of an entire ecosystem of people and resources at Stern, I’m excited to say that I’m halfway through a very successful summer internship at Accenture Consulting.

This brings me to the two big questions I want to tackle. First, back to my pre-MBA days: What even is management consulting? And secondly, how did I make that pivot to end up at Accenture this summer?

The way I see it, management consulting is all about helping clients uncover and address their most critical business needs. It always starts with a problem. Maybe a client is losing market share to a new competitor in the industry. Perhaps a firm is looking to replace an older technology system with a better product. Whatever the case may be, clients hire management consultants to help them think through the problem, structure an approach, and develop a solution to achieve meaningful, quantifiable results.

Now to bring the high-level into some day-to-day takeaways for incoming MBA students considering entering this industry. For starters, you have to love working with people. From client-side meetings to late-night project team work sessions, consulting is an incredibly interactive field. If you thrive in that type of fast-paced, collaborative environment like I do, consulting might be a great fit. Next, you should be comfortable digesting large amounts of information and developing organized, synthesized output, usually in the form of a spreadsheet or a slide. You have to prioritize the information, and learn to make decisions without having all of the data you may want. Lastly, from a practical standpoint, you have to be OK with what can at times be a demanding schedule. It’s not uncommon to be on-the-road every week during any given project, or to have to put in extra hours when a deadline is approaching. That said, those demands can be incredibly rewarding in terms of both personal and professional development.

Now for my second big question: How did I make the pivot and end up at Accenture? It was a mix of leveraging the many great people and resources at Stern, and putting in a lot of hard work. From a resources standpoint at Stern I think of three big buckets. One is the Office of Career Development (OCD). They provide a series of skills workshops through the IGNITE program, and they host companies on-campus for corporate presentations where you learn about a firm and network with consultants. An OCD-sponsored Accenture corporate presentation is where I first connected with the firm. The second bucket is the student-led Management Consulting Association (MCA). MCA partners with consulting firms to host additional networking opportunities and workshops, with events such as lunch-and-learns and a weekly casing boot camp. The third bucket is yourself and your peers. Stern provides a clear starting point for how to pursue management consulting, but you must combine them with your own efforts to position yourself for success. For me, that meant spending many-a-Saturday afternoons practicing consulting cases with friends, as well as working independently on specific skills I needed to improve. If you haven’t yet heard about the collaborative community at Stern, let me make sure it’s on your radar. I can’t say enough positive things about the availability, helpfulness, and support offered by my classmates along my own recruitment journey, and I imagine many others share that same sentiment.

It wasn’t all that long ago that I was wondering what management consulting even was, and now I’m halfway through my summer internship in that exact field. My time at Accenture has taught me a lot and I’m thrilled that I am exploring this path. If you’re considering making a change to enter management consulting, from where I sit, Stern is a great place for you to make it happen.

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Consulting Resources at Stern

Hi Everyone!

 

It seems like just a few days ago that I was finishing up my summer internship at McKinsey and getting ready for classes to begin but here we are now almost done with the first semester… It is truly amazing how quickly time flies during business school.

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Myself and Stern classmates who also worked at the New York office of McKinsey on a sunset sailboat cruise around the Statue of Liberty after work one night.

Some of the most common questions I receive from prospective students considering Stern are about how to prepare for recruiting.  One of my favorite aspects of Stern is that everyone in the Stern community works incredibly hard to make sure you are prepared for interviews.  As someone heavily involved with the recruiting process for consulting, I thought it would be helpful to share a taste of what I am currently working on to give back to first year students.

 

In my official capacity as a career mentor with the Office of Career Development, I host many helpful events for students. Before school was really underway I worked with students during the IGNITE workshops to write, practice and perfect their 30 second elevator pitch to employers. I reviewed the resumes of 12 students who are recruiting for consulting, then met with them one-on-one to help them wordsmith their points to make the strongest skills stand out. Right now I am working with other MBA2’s to host sessions on recruiting topics like how to navigate the corporate presentations and what to do during informational interviews. Before interviews start in January I’ll work with another group of students one-on-one to do practice interviews so they will be completely ready when on-campus interviews begin.

 

As a board member of the Management Consulting Association, I co-lead MCA’s weekly casing bootcamp session with another MBA2 student Michelle. Bootcamp happens every Wednesday afternoon and we teach how to do the technical part of a consulting interview, the case, from start-to-finish. From the framework, to the conclusion, with all the brainstorming, charts, and math you will ever need in-between, the eight interactive weekly sessions will get anyone ready to crush their case interview. If the promise of succeeding in the interview isn’t enough, we also provide awesome snacks like empanadas, cookies, and cannolis, to get your brain moving.

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Students enjoying the last session of bootcamp with amazing Greek pastries.

 

Over 20 MBA2’s, including myself, help prepare first year students interested in consulting through MCA’s mentorship program. Every Tuesday morning I meet with five first years to help work through the topics from bootcamp in a smaller group setting as well as answer any questions about the recruiting process.  It is an opportunity for first years to get an honest perspective on tough questions like how to request an informational interview as well as a chance to get to know their classmates better. As the application deadline approaches I’ll review their cover letters, help fine tune resumes, and give one-on-one case coaching so they’ll be as prepared as possible for their interviews.

 

There are many more examples of peer-led preparation I work on including the two for one casing initiative, corporate case competitions, informal coffee chats, and much more. Stern is really an amazing community where everyone invests in the success of their peers; feel free to reach out if you have any questions!

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Downtown New York – Why It Matters

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In the fall of 2014, on the cusp of applying to business school, I found myself frequently mulling over the many options of each institution I was considering. At the time, I was feeling quite settled in my downtown Manhattan life, yet frequently daydreamed about reliving my undergrad days at a small, rural college.

Simply put, I was torn between the competing ideas of “going back to the woods,” keeping my new urban lifestyle, or splitting the difference via a school in a small-to-medium sized city.

Adding to my decision discord was the fact that while I had a decent idea of what I wanted to do after my MBA, I still had curiosity about certain industries that I wanted to at least dip my toes into during my two years of school.

Ultimately, I decided that coming to NYU, which offered the same kind of intimate community I cherished in undergrad, as well as the power of being in downtown New York, provided me the best path to scratch my proverbial professional itches.

A semester and a half in, all I can say is that if anything, I underestimated just how impactful being in downtown New York is. I remember one week, about halfway through the fall, that illustrated this quite fully.

At the time, I was deep into the consulting recruiting track but still exploring marketing, technology, and entertainment and media. My schedule was as follows:

  • Monday
    • 12pm-1pm: Consulting firm lunch & learn
    • 6pm-8pm: Consulting firm on-campus presentation
  • Tuesday
    • 12pm-1pm: Consulting firm lunch & learn
    • 5pm-7pm: Film studio corporate presentation
  • Wednesday
    • 12pm-1:30pm: Informational interview with a top online retailer
    • 6pm-9pm: Dinner and drinks with a friend in the movie business
  • Thursday
    • 6pm-9pm: Graduate Marketing Association’s “So You Want to be a Marketer?” information session and panel
  • Friday
    • 10am-11am: Trek to a major news organization’s headquarters
    • 12pm-2pm: Informational conversations at a top tech firm’s New York headquarters
    • 3pm-5pm: Coffee chats with consultants from top-tier firms

Now you might be thinking, “well, every school arranges treks to visit these companies, so what makes your schedule so special?”

To this, I’ll answer in two different ways. First, the remarkable thing is that I was able to attend all these sessions as part of my normal, everyday routine – no flights across the country, no train rides up and down the coast. The furthest I traveled out of my way the whole week was about 15 minutes by subway.

Second, not only was all this easy for me, but easy for these companies as well. If you choose to come to NYU, I think you’ll be amazed at just how often the same firms that are making headlines in the Wall Street Journal are here at Stern, whether they are sending someone to be on a panel, recruit students, or drop into a class.

So why does this matter? By being in downtown New York I had unprecedented access to companies, their employees, Stern alumni, events not-specific to business school students, and so on. Within a week, I was able to conclusively rule out all but two industries through this constant exposure and subsequently focus on what I now know concretely I can be passionate about.

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Following Your Passions at Stern: A Case Study

I can’t even count the number of times I’ve heard a Sternie describe him- or herself as a “non-traditional” MBA. It’s a testament to the diversity at Stern, both in the backgrounds of our students as well as our post-graduation goals. For a relatively small school – there are 392 students in my class – Stern does a remarkable job at providing extracurricular opportunities for students to pursue their passions. Take my particular interest: social responsibility in the apparel and retail space. Definitely “non-traditional.” However, in the five or so months I’ve been at Stern, I’ve been able to explore this interest in a number of non-academic ways:

Consulting Projects

When I learned about the opportunity to work with West Elm through the Luxury Retail Consulting Corps, I jumped at the opportunity. I was ultimately appointed project lead on “West Elm Local,” an initiative to engage local communities by including more local “makers” into the company’s product assortment. My team worked with West Elm’s Strategy team to build out an operational scaling plan to address how the initiative would work at scale. Pretty great stuff. I learned a ton about the retail industry and the complexity of implementing social responsibility initiatives in larger companies.

Centers and Fellowships

This year, Stern announced that it was launching the first Center for Business and Human Rights at a business school, headed up by Michael Posner, founder of Human Rights First and former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. The center’s first topic area is worker safety in the Bangladesh garment industry – a subject that is obviously close to heart. At the beginning of the semester, I volunteered for a symposium that brought together stakeholders from across the garment industry, and I was recently brought on as a graduate fellow working on community engagement and research projects. I have a front-row seat as business leaders, garment factory owners, government agencies, and non-governmental organizations hash out the future of worker rights in the garment industry. It’s a lot harder than I imagined.

Funding Opportunities

Students interested in social enterprise and social responsibility often find it difficult to find paid summer internships in those fields. Enter, Stern’s Social Impact Internship Fund, a fellowship that provides up to $10,000 in funding to students pursuing low-paid or unpaid summer internships at social enterprises, B Corps, and non-profits. I applied for round one of the competition, and I was very excited to learn that I got it! Now when I’m approaching potential socially responsible employers for the summer, I don’t need to worry about how I’m going to pay my rent.

Clubs and Events

Through participation in Stern’s Social Enterprise Association and Luxury & Retail Club, I am on the planning committee for Think Social Drink Local, an annual sustainable fashion show and fundraising event for the Social Impact Internship Fund mentioned above. In addition to serving a great cause, it’s also one of the hottest social events of the spring and a great way to connect my contacts in the sustainable fashion, food, and beverage spaces with the Stern community.

Trips

In October, I traveled to California to attend the Net Impact Conference with Stern’s Social Enterprise Association. Net Impact brings together a remarkable collection of students and changemakers who are committed to using business as a force for good. I had the chance to hear candidly from senior executives at Levi’s, Patagonia, Timberland, Gap, and other companies I admire. It was a great way to step back, be inspired, and recommit myself to my chosen career path. And it was even better knowing that I would be returning to an environment that would enable me to push those goals forward.

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Courses for Consultants, Part 2

Hello again,

Now it’s time for the exciting conclusion to last week’s post on core courses, and how they may help with careers in consulting. I’ll start with the three classes that you can take in either your first or second semester, and finish with the two spring semester courses.

5. Foundations of Finance
This is our core finance course, which gives students an understanding in general of how different aspects of finance work. This includes time value of money, arbitrage, bond pricing, options pricing, and much more. In many of the case interviews I’ve done, I’ve needed to calculate perpetuity value or NPV of an investment, and I would have been completely unable to do that without having taken a finance class.
Interesting follow up courses: Futures and Options, Restructuring

6. Marketing
Clearly, this is our core marketing course. The class relies heavily on in-class discussion of the different facets of marketing, and uses a few handy frameworks (3 Cs, 4 Ps, BCG Matrix) to bring some rigor to the subject. One big bonus of taking this class is that you do in fact learn and use the frameworks, which can be very helpful when doing case interviews. I know I used the 3 Cs a good amount, and two-by-two frameworks like the BCG matrix came up quite a few times. It also helps give you a customer focus that you may not get from other classes, and can help you understand whether the recommendations you are giving will actually create value for customers, which I hear is important.
Interesting follow up courses: Brand Strategy, Competitive Strategy in the Marketplace

7. Competitive Advantage from Operations
This course is focused on giving students an overview of the different aspects of the operations of businesses. We learned everything from inventory management to queueing theory to project management to process diagramming – lots and lots of stuff that management consultants use on a regular basis. Many of the topics we discussed were things that I had actually used and had been exposed to prior to business school when I was a consultant, and having the theoretical understanding to complement the experience I had really rounded out my ability to deal with operational issues with clients.
Interesting follow up courses: Decision Models, Operations in Panama

8. Leadership in Organizations
This class helps students understand many of the interpersonal aspects of working in companies, like how to deal with internal politics, manage change, give feedback, and lead a company through growth. While most other core classes focus on “hard skills” (stats, finance, etc.), this class gives student a chance to work on their soft skills. It’s also a pre-requisite for a number of great courses in management and leadership. As a consultant, many of these skills are what make consultants really strong in the “client service” aspect of consulting. Remember, it’s not all about just doing great analysis – being a consultant is also about how you work with teams, give feedback to your colleagues, understand the organizational dynamics of your clients, and more. This class helps with that side of things.
Interesting follow up courses: Power and Politics in Organizations, Managing Change

9. Global Economy
This class serves as the introduction to macroeconomics that many students look for in business school. The course addresses topics like GDP, aggregate supply and demand, monetary policy, the interplay between interest rates and inflation, and much more. As a consultant,  you will likely serve large multinational and global companies. These firms can be greatly affected by shifts in exchange rates, changing global demographics, and domestic and international monetary policy. Having a solid grasp on these topics will allow you to think on the big picture level for your clients and help them deal with questions that have a far-reaching impact on them.
Interesting follow up courses: Growth in the Developing World, Global Poverty Alleviation

I’ve really enjoyed writing this blog, but this will be my last post, as I have recently graduated. Best of luck to all of the prospective students out there, especially our newest admits who will be starting in the fall.