Future Leader Award
Sarah Duffy
Practice Lead, San Francisco
Slalom Consulting
There are many ways women get into the consulting profession, but Slalom Consulting's Sarah Duffy's might be one of the most unusual. "I got into consulting because I could speak Portuguese fluently," she says. "I studied abroad in Sao Paulo, Brazil my senior year of college and became fluent in Portuguese fairly quickly. At the end of that year, I took a job as translator for a large sugar mill that undertook a number of improvement initiatives—SAP implementation, manufacturing improvements and fleet optimization."
Her job was to provide language support to a small consulting group from the U.S. during a two-year period. "When I started, I knew nothing about business, agriculture or consulting! By the second year, consultants and clients were asking for her opinion and she was contributing to presentations. "When the project was over, the lead referred me directly to a U.S. consultancy that was opening its Brazilian office," Duffy says. "I haven't left consulting since."
Today, Duffy leads Slalom Consulting's Organizational Effectiveness practice in San Francisco, the largest OE practice at Slalom. "On my best days, I really think that what we do has the ability to make the world a better place," Duffy says.
"In consulting, we deliver outcomes that make a difference to an organization, but we also make a lasting impact on the lives of the people we work with. It is our responsibility to make the experience with us an impactful one on both levels," Duffy says. "There is nothing more fulfilling than working with a group of growing consultants to help a client organization sustainably solve their most difficult problems and doing it in a humble, generative way."
When it comes to accomplishments, Duffy says she hopes her best years are yet to come. "My dream is to be able to take everything I have learned about people, client work, organizations and consulting—the learning from all of my failures and successes—and work with my colleagues and consultants to build an organization that is hugely impactful in the world."
As far as winning a Women Leader in Consulting award, Duffy says it's humbling. "It certainly reinforces how much I would like to live up to the incredible accomplishments of the best consultants in my organization and in the industry," she says.
"My career is a compilation of all of the influential people who have been my colleagues, clients, managers, professors, mentors, friends and family over the years. The most important thing I can do is to pay it forward."
What advice would you give to a female consultant just beginning her career?
"First off, know that it's okay if you don't know the answer to something right off the bat. This does not make you a fraud. You are likely not the only one in the room that doesn't know the answer. What you do have are the resources, critical thinking and the capability to analyze the situation. A great consulting career is made of figuring out the answer to enormously difficult problems. Work to assemble the answers you don't know. Be humble while you do it. Be creative about how you think about the problem and be tenacious in the pursuit of the solution. This pursuit is what is going to make you great—not knowing the right answer."
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