The 2023 Rising Stars of the Profession: Allison Mesh

Allison Mesh is a Senior Consultant for Centric Consulting's Chicago team who uses her project management and change management background to drive value for teams, projects and businesses across many industries. She's experienced at spearheading all aspects of project life cycles, from assigning resources and establishing scope/timelines to managing risks, conducting status reporting, and ensuring deliverable completion.

Allison is an influential and positive leader with a bias for action. She maintains open communication, embraces ambiguity, and identifies ways she can provide additional value for her clients. No matter the client or project scope, Allison builds strong relationships and goes above and beyond expectations. She lives in the city of Chicago and is an avid skier.

What would you say has been the biggest factor in your success so far?

"The biggest factor in my success, thus far, has been my aspiration to continuously learn and improve upon myself. Throughout my career I have continued to push myself to grow professionally and academically by taking educational courses, building my network and embracing challenging opportunities. I continuously apply my experience and new skills to my overall job, processes and the people around me.

In my current role, my client recently acquired another company and needed additional support during the merger. I was given the opportunity to help integrate new team members into the client and support my existing team with the adaption to some of the changes from the merger. I met with individuals on both sides to give some of my insight as I had previously worked in mergers and acquisitions. I was able to build relationships with the new team members by sharing my knowledge, suggesting improvements to current processes, and providing support for ongoing projects. This opportunity has been a great challenge and a way to put some of my previous M&A experience to the test. With this opportunity, I've been able to learn more about M&A outside of my previous pharmaceutical industry M&A experience."

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

"My favorite part of being in consulting is having the ability to work within different industries and learn about unique companies and their cultures. By being in consulting, you're able to provide expertise to clients and help their teams or projects overcome obstacles that they're facing. Companies can face various challenges depending on their industry. As I've worked across multiple industries, I'm able to provide different perspectives based on my experience. Not only does consulting offer experience across industries, but it also offers opportunities to continuously be challenged by helping solve different client problems."

What is your proudest achievement to date?

"My client recently acquired another company and had a key leader with years of experience and core knowledge of the company's systems and ongoing projects resign from their role. There were many concerns that critical knowledge would be lost due to the leader's departure, so I saw an opportunity to help the client integrate their new company and facilitate some knowledge transfer with the exiting leader. I volunteered to meet with engineering teams from the acquired company to understand their scope and start building relationships. I met with the outgoing leader to capture as much knowledge as possible as there were 5 integration projects in progress. As a team, we were able to successfully complete the knowledge transfer from the outgoing leader and not cause any interruption to the 5 ongoing integration projects. This is one of my proudest achievements because the client saw the value in my ability to embrace ambiguity and help problem solve."

What's the best advice you've ever been given?

"As a young professional, the best advice I've ever been given is to not let your age inhibit your ability to get involved. Early on in my career, I felt like my contributions wouldn't be helpful to a team or project due to my inexperience, so I wouldn't voice my opinion or perspective. I quickly learned that regardless of your experience level, it's important to contribute and you can have the ability to bring a fresh perspective to challenges. Once I started to become an active participant in teams and projects, I noticed that I was able to quickly build trust and open the door to getting involved in more opportunities."

What does this recognition mean to you?

"I've encountered many challenges in my current project and the recognition of my ability to navigate challenging situations and succeed is very meaningful. It makes me proud of the work that I've done and excited for what's going to come next!"