By day, Karen Kauffman, is a pre-MBA associate at L.E.K. Consulting. But by night, and on the weekends, she leads a network of 200 consultants as the Executive Director of Inspire Inc., a non-profit team of the junior-most consultants from Bain & Company, L.E.K., Monitor and Parthenon Group.
Consulting: What is Inspire?
Kauffman: We're a volunteer-run non-profit that provides youth-education related consulting. Our consultants are spread out in 15 offices in seven cities. Teams from each office run full-on cases focused on youth education. The goal is to serve the greater good and, in the process, build on their consulting skills and bring those skills back to their host firms.
Consulting: What's a typical project?
Kauffman: We recently worked with a non-profit here in Boston that works with teenage girls, helping them build media skills. The goal is for them to use their voices for social change through their own writing and art. We conducted a membership analysis, examining who was reading and purchasing the content. And we looked at ways other non-profits do marketing, so we could determine how this non-profit could do it better.
Consulting: When do you and the rest of the Inspire consultants find the time to do even more consulting?
Kauffman: We've got inspired volunteers that routinely go above and beyond. Most of the work is done after their regular business day, though there are occasions when host firms will let us take interviews during the day. Most of the work is done virtually in teams, which isn't a big deal because we're all used to working that way. A lot of our teams work on weekends so they can have face-to-face meetings.
Consulting: What kinds of consultants does Inspire attract?
Kauffman: All of our volunteers are pre-MBA, none have more than four years of experience and the average is about two years. Once you've earned your MBA, we ask that they step away to give others an opportunity to work with us. In most of our host firms, the volunteer population is comprised of the entire pre-MBA population.
Consulting: What do volunteers get from Inspire?
Kauffman: Inspire shifts the whole experience paradigm. Consultants with two to three years of experience are doing selling and scoping for Inspire projects—well beyond the expectations of what they'd have the opportunity to do for their host firm. Consultants with one to two years of experience are managing and creating work plans and doing full presentations, again a skill no junior associate is doing in the context of their day job. But more importantly, the opportunity to do something good in their community and that is what drives their commitment to the extra hours.
—J.S.
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