MBA Consulting Club Hosts 11th Annual Consulting Forum

The MBA Consulting Club at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business organized its annual signature event, the Consulting Forum, on November 13, 2009. The forum, features representatives from top consulting firms and aims at facilitating an open dialogues between students, faculty, and the industry professionals.

This year’s forum was the 11th in the series, and had representatives from firms such as IBM, Deloitte, Accenture, Gallup, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Censeo consulting group, Talant, and Booz Allen Hamilton. This year, the forum witnessed participation by over 100 individuals including full-time, part-time, executive MBA, and MPP students, faculty, alumni, and corporate guests.

The theme of the event this year was “Positioning Oneself for a Recovering Economy.” The forum started with an opening session by Smith School Dean G. “Anand” Anandalingam, who elaborated on the increased importance of consulting in a downturn, and mentioned that consulting has been one of the most challenging, lucrative and most sought after professions. Dean Anand highlighted the placement of a large number of Smith graduates into many of the top consulting firms, historically. He also pointed out that most people in business have been in consulting at some point in their careers.

Professor Michael Lawless, a Tyser Teaching Fellow at the management and organization department at the Smith School, moderated the main panel. The session focused on the theme of the forum, with the panel responding to the questions from the audience, making it highly interactive and engaging. The insights shared by the panelists, given their extensive experience in the industry with consulting firms - big and small, provided the audience a well-rounded perspective on how they could prepare and position themselves for the time when the economy recovers and even later on as they progress in their career.

Subsequently, the participants split into two groups, based on their preference of the topics covered in the respective panels. One panel focused on the projected growth in the consulting industry as the economy recovers and on the subtleties in the government and private players in the industry. The second panel was directed at perspectives on consulting with reference to boutique firms, focusing on the challenges and opportunities one could witness being in such firms.

When asked about the theme of the forum this year, Jonathan Dichter, executive vice president for the Smith MBA Consulting Club who was actively involved in driving the planning and execution of the forum, said “The club chose the topics it did because we wanted the topics and panels to be focused on the rebounding economy. We wanted the message of this year’s forum to be positive and hopeful for the upcoming year. We felt that this would effectively build and follow up on last years forum topics.” Dichter emphasized the importance of such events and said, ”The Consulting Forum, one of the biggest Smith community events, is important to the Smith community because it is an opportunity for employers, alumni, staff, faculty, part-time, and full-time students to interact with each other. The information and networking opportunities for the students are priceless. Employers gain access to the talented community of students. Alumni have the opportunity to give back to the Smith community and interact with students, faculty, staff, and other alumni.”

The Consulting Forum closed with a networking mixer, where the participants got the opportunity to interact one-on-one with the speakers, representatives from firms, and other students and guests. The value of being able to share ideas and knowledge through such events is tremendous and the consulting club, through the forum, was able to deliver on the promise of creating value for the Smith community, once again, by bringing together thought leaders and industry experts and providing a platform to the Smith MBA community to share and collaborate.

Siddhartha Jain - MBA Candidate 2010, Smith Media Group