Question marks as starting points: how tech consulting shaped my career

As an undergrad, I thought medicine was calling my name. A summer spent working in a health care-adjacent role helped me understand how exciting it is to put something into the world that you have curated, picked apart and rebuilt six times over many late nights. Product design. System implementations. e-commerce. Changing hearts and minds through design thinking. The chance to reframe a health care leading practice curriculum and reintroduce a completely new version to market. Those projects got me excited about what the road ahead could look like. Once I was no longer evolving, I needed a new challenge. I pursued an MBA, taking advantage of co-op work experiences to try to find my next thing.

I wasn’t sure how I’d use my post-grad degree when I first embarked on that path. Balancing intense studies with a full-time co-op position at a huge enterprise helped me refine that vision. I felt the pain and constraint of day-to-day operations. I wanted not only to problem-solve big-picture issues, but to redefine the problem itself. Operating models. Enterprise systems. Innovative tools. Every team meeting and coffee chat revealed a new layer of potential that excited me. I wanted a chance to influence change on a larger scale.

I couldn’t have defined exactly what that would look like six years ago, on my first day as an EY tech consulting intern. What I do remember is falling in love with the newness that each consulting project brought. Digging deep into complex corporate structures, systems and processes to design a smarter path forward. Getting to the heart of big, beastly problems and then strategically applying technology to win. Using gamification and creativity to help leaders see their own blind spots, and then close those gaps together. Throughout, EY created a runway for me to challenge myself and progress quickly in my tech consulting career.

There is freedom and growth in acknowledging that you don’t need to know everything to start something. That’s as true in tech consulting as in any other profession. There are so many things I’ve learned on the road to right now. Be authentic. Get excited, even when something feels like a failure. Show everyone you interact with what you’re passionate about, whether facilitating a client workshop or presenting to the most senior board of directors. Seize opportunities big and small. Try new things. Make work fun.

Above all, don’t let what you don’t know hold you back. Instead, turn every question mark into a starting point for a career that changes you with every change you make in the world. That’s what my tech consulting career means to me.