Rising Stars of the Profession 2021: Laura Brookhiser

Laura Brookhiser's career has been characterized by her ability to bring strategic clarity, backed by rigorous analysis, to organizations at multiple stages of growth and across sectors. She joined L.E.K. in 2008 as an associate and left in 2013, pursuing a joint M.B.A and master's degree in education. She then worked for The Bridgespan Group, a consulting firm that advises nonprofits and foundations, before rejoining L.E.K. as a Senior Manager in 2019. At L.E.K., Laura is dedicated to the Retail & Consumer Products practice, focusing on the home goods, footwear and apparel industries.

She has been involved in more than 50 client engagements at L.E.K. and has advised 40% of the top 10 U.S.-based footwear companies on topics ranging from digital transformation to consumer segmentation to category expansion. In an increasingly difficult retail landscape, she developed growth strategies for the leading specialty retailer in several categories, including bedding, flooring and the motorcycle aftermarket. Clients praise Laura for quickly grasping their needs and skillfully synthesizing complex, diverse ideas into clear, coherent plans of action. Laura is also passionate about social justice and education, which manifests in both her casework and her firm pursuits.

Laura comments, "I'm honored to have been nominated, as every day at L.E.K. I work with teams of incredibly smart, driven colleagues. Winning this award would be validation of the hard work that my teams and I have put into helping our clients with their toughest strategic questions." And attributes her success to,  "The incredible role models and mentors I've had along the way, a balance of confidence and humility, and a healthy dose of perfectionism."

She also adds that the best advice she has been given came early, "As a young consultant, the prospect of advising clients can initially feel overwhelming: How could I know more about this person's business than they do? How can I be an "expert" relative to someone who has decades of experience in the field? But a mentor of mine once said, 'It's not what you know, it's how you think.' This helped me realize that while I was still building my knowledge of specific industries, the skill set I'd already developed was the ability to interrogate a problem and draw logical conclusions from the information available. I also realized that being an 'outsider' can actually be helpful, as you can bring a fresh perspective to an issue, rather than being entrenched in the ways things have always been done."

"While I endeavor to bring my best to every engagement, the work I'm most proud of is when a client progresses onto a fundamentally different trajectory after our work together. Two particular instances come to mind. One of these involved a non-profit organization with a unique digital education program aimed at bringing high-quality early learning to the 2.2 million children in the U.S. without access to publicly funded preschool. I worked with the program director to develop measures of program impact, create a plan to scale from a single state to a nationwide offering, and design a catalytic funding model using pilots funded by private philanthropy to generate the proof of impact required to secure public implementation and funding. Ultimately, through our work together, the organization raised over $40M in grants in a single year to support their efforts (over 3x anything they'd been able to garner previously).

At L.E.K., I worked with a mattress brand, helping them to develop a new product line that would allow them to regain market share from an emerging competitive brand. We brought in-depth consumer research to bear to design, price, and market the new hybrid mattress offering – supporting the client from product conception to launch execution. The new line quickly grew to over $400M in annual sales and spurred a number of competitive offerings, with hybrid mattresses now representing a sizable portion of overall industry sales."

What do you enjoy most about your career in the consulting industry?

"I enjoy breaking down problems – taking questions that are complex and amorphous, identifying their component parts, and bringing data to bear to identify the best path forward. I love viewing issues from others' perspectives, through strategic conversations with management, consumer research, or understanding the needs of investors. But, most importantly, I enjoy client service – helping others meet the challenges they face, whether it's the company I'm advising, the nonprofit I'm serving, or the junior employee I'm mentoring."