By Alex Rogalski T'15
Alex is a second-year student at Tuck. After receiving his BA at Connecticut College, he joined Cambridge Associates in their Boston office where he spent four years helping nonprofit institutions invest their assets. Born and raised in Hanover, NH, Alex was thrilled to be able to get back to the Upper Valley for business school. After graduation Alex will be moving back to Boston to work with L.E.K. Consulting.
When applying to the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth I knew that I wanted to get a job in management consulting, but after spending four years working with nonprofit institutions, I was also looking for a way to volunteer while at Tuck.
When skimming through the Tuck website, I came across a page for the Tuck Student Consulting Services (TSCS) which detailed how TSCS provides a platform for first years to get consulting experience by working with local businesses and nonprofits on strategic initiatives. This appeared to be the perfect opportunity to work with some of my new classmates and help out in the local community, thereby merging my career goals with my interest in helping nonprofits.
My first year project involved helping the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge source new revenue streams while reducing costs. My team and I ended up traveling to the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge and meeting with members of the Moosilauke staff so that we could get a better idea of their operations and facility. After providing a recommendation on how to improve profitability through selling excess inventory into new channels and streamline the dining operations, I decided I wanted to continue to be involved with TSCS in my second year, and applied to co-lead TSCS.
This year, as a co-leader of TSCS, I worked alongside Annu Kayastha T'15 and Josh Brough T'15 to build on the success of our first year projects. We marketed TSCS in a variety of venues, including a volunteer-themed TuckTails, the Tuck club fair, and through email, the Tuck website, and posters in order to generate awareness among both first-year students and clients. Fortunately, we had tons of potential clients, and at Tuck, there’s always a huge interest in both consulting and volunteering! Ultimately, we were able to staff almost 100 students (~40 percent of the first-year class!) on 23 clients.
Throughout the course of the fall term as our classmates worked on their projects, Annu, Josh, and I worked to drive a balance between supporting our first year classmates, while also allowing them ownership of their individual projects. We decided to hold meetings with each of the teams midway through their project, while also letting them know we could rope in any support needed. When we ultimately saw the final projects, we, and more importantly the clients, were thrilled by the high quality recommendations generated!
In January, we held an event in Stell Hall, where all 23 consulting teams could show off their work to the rest of the Tuck and local community. Two newspapers covered the event and focused on TSCS: a local newspaper called the Valley News and Dartmouth's student newspaper, the Dartmouth. Now that TSCS is winding down, the next step is deciding who will lead the team next year. I’m looking forward to seeing what they do with TSCS!
TSCS receives support from the Center for Business & Society. Watch here as two Tuckies describe their TSCS experience.
(Photo above: Students present their consulting projects in Stell Hall.)