The 2022 Women Leaders In Consulting: Becky Gandillon

Becky Gandillon is the Practice Lead for Data & Analytics for Centric Consulting in St. Louis, and she specializes in data storytelling, data strategy and visualization. She began her career as a biomedical engineer at the Department of Veterans Affairs, where she discovered and honed her talent and passion for blending problem-solving and data analytics. Since moving over into the world of consulting, she has completed projects and certifications in fields as varied as computer vision/machine learning, data architecture, data visualization and data strategy. She is a big Disney nerd that spends some of her free time analyzing and predicting crowd patterns at Disney World, along with blogging about these analyzes and maintaining a popular YouTube channel and Instagram site with all of the information she generates. She and her husband love traveling with their two daughters (Edith – age 6, Louise – age 4), and typically have three or four vacations planned in advance at any time.

What do you consider your greatest personal or professional achievement?

My greatest personal and professional achievements are the same thing – my continued ability to integrate work and life as a young mom and rising leader in the consulting world. Within any given week, I deliver game-changing solutions to clients, hire someone into a role on my team that might not otherwise have been given a similar opportunity because of their background, take half a day off to go on a field trip with my kindergartner, and I do toddler hair every morning because "Mom does it best." This sometimes looks like working after the kids go to bed, or a sleepy 3-year-old joining me on my morning standup video call. It also looks like declining most meetings that happen after 4 pm so that I can do school pick-up and have dinner with my family. I am comfortable and delighted to call this my biggest achievement because the results of this integration speak for themselves. I have two daughters who love spending time with me and know that Mom is going to show up to the big and little things in their lives. I have a work team that knows I have their back and that I'm heavily invested in their growth and happiness. I have clients that are eager to work with me and my teams even more in the future because of the unparalleled results that we give them. And excelling in each area makes me even better in the other ones too.

What advice would you give to a female consultant just beginning her career?

For anyone entering the world of consulting, but especially for women, and double bonus for women in technical consulting roles, I would say to embrace what makes you different. The value that we bring to our companies, colleagues and clients is our uniqueness. This is true for any consultant. We are hired specifically because we can do or think about something in a different way than anyone in that company or business unit. I find that we frequently find ourselves tempted to fit in, conform, or otherwise apologize for and hide the things that make us different from the norm. We see a bunch of leaders who are typically older than us, a different gender than us, and potentially a different race or ethnicity than us … and the list goes on. And that prompts us to think "Ok, in order to advance here, I need to be more like that." That reaction couldn't be further from the truth. Find your niche – what makes you special and different. Embrace that. Invest in it. Make it your superpower. That way you don't become a cookie-cutter consultant that blends in with the masses. You become the one that's innovating and bringing something new to your clients and your organization. Being different can be hard and it can be painful, but it is ultimately the most rewarding.

What's the best advice—personal or professional—you've ever received?

The one quote that sticks with me more than any other is "Having the right answer is never as important as making sure it is the right answer for your audience." This sage piece of advice comes from someone that I looked up to in the business world – Marty Sklar, head of Walt Disney Imagineering. In school and early in my career, I was all about the right answers. Standardized tests, high grades, academic quiz bowl – I was rewarded for having these right answers. It wasn't really until I started in the world of consulting that I recognized that right answers require context, and that best practices aren't necessarily the best for every situation. Instead, the most important part of my job is my ability to listen, understand and empathize. This is a radical statement coming from someone who is a technical expert. But really I am of no value to my clients if I all I am capable of doing is picking some theoretically best-in-class solution and forcing it upon them. Lots of square-peg-round-hole situations would ensue. Instead, I need to truly understand their perspective, their limitations and their use cases before helping them to solve their problems with the right answer for them.

What does being honored as a Woman Leader in Consulting mean to you?

This recognition affirms the importance of my voice and my perspective. It would shine a light on my ability to push through difficult situations and to come out of them stronger than I was before. It would recognize that I'm already impacting lives in my role today, but am on a path to make even more of a difference as a future leader. It would give me a platform for building new relationships with women that I haven't met yet who I could speak to, mentor and encourage.