---

You recently stepped into a new role as the global social impact lead for Bain. Can you tell me more about your background and your personal “why”?

I started my career in education and have always had a drive to work for social change. After college, I enlisted in Teach for America and taught on the South Side of Chicago. I went on to get my master’s in education policy from Stanford and worked there for a few years on topics like closing education gaps.

When I joined Bain, my goal was to build a toolkit that would allow me one day to lead and scale an impact-first organization. In joining Bain, I discovered how much I love problem-solving across many different types of challenges and industries, and over time, I have found a way to do social-impact-oriented work and drive change as part of my Bain career.  I’ve been at Bain for 12 years and recently took on the role of global practice lead for social impact. In this role, I oversee our social impact commitments, including how we think about our key priorities and areas in which we are investing our pro bono work.

What are your firm’s strategic values and goals? How do you identify potential pro bono opportunities that align with those goals?

Bain’s social impact mission is to partner with the most innovative and high-impact organizations to develop and scale transformative solutions to the world’s most important challenges. We are intentional about what projects we take on and focus on where we believe we can add the most value based on our areas of expertise and strengths. More and more, we believe that partnerships with organizations like Civic Consulting Alliance- that bring stakeholders across the eco-system together- are key to addressing many of the complex challenges we see in this space. 

I think what Civic Consulting Alliance does is powerful, and we’ve been seeking out similar types of organizations in other cities where Bain has offices. Civic Consulting Alliance is our coordinator, connector, supporter, and advisor for pro bono impact opportunities in the Chicago region. I deeply appreciate that Civic Consulting Alliance consultants make sure that we’re bringing our best experts to the table, and we trust them to guide us in figuring out the places where we can make a large-scale impact.

---

“Civic Consulting Alliance is our coordinator, connector, supporter, and advisor for pro bono impact opportunities in the Chicago region.”

---

Can you share examples of the challenges or systemic issues that your firm helps to address? Why does the public sector benefit from private sector expertise?

We work primarily within Civic Consulting Alliance’s Safety & Justice focus area, which touches on multiple root causes like disparities in education, wealth, and health. This aligns well with key areas of focus within Bain’s Racial Equity & Social Justice Pillar on the wealth gap, health outcome disparities, and advancing civil rights.

The challenge for the public sector – particularly within our work on community safety projects – is that one person cannot drive a solution. It’s the public sector working with the business community, community-based organizations, and impacted populations that drive transformation.

Our expertise is transforming companies by bringing people together to create a coordinated vision for the future. So, while we are not going to drive public policy, we can help build these ecosystems of partners who can come together and drive change on very complex issues.

How do you measure the impact of your pro bono work?

As a leader within the practice, I want to make sure that we are dedicating our resources towards high-impact work. What we’ve realized is that we must be thoughtful about the nature of the work that we’re doing. We take some time early on in a project to think about what metrics we’re trying to drive and try to be nuanced about the situation that is at hand. When we understand what results we want to see, we then make sure to hold ourselves and our clients to those results, so that we have clear missions and targets.

How do you ensure that your recommendations are practical and feasible to implement within the constraints of local government?

The most important thing is to work hand in hand with people. Our solutions are practical because we get feedback every step of the way. It is not effective for our team to just do an analysis and come back with an answer.

We are also believers in the power of prioritization, which can be hard because often these topics are urgent and so critical, but we cannot tackle everything at the same time. The reality of budgeting and resource constraints in local government requires prioritization and focus. We try to bring that lens in as well right from the start.

A lot of projects that Civic Consulting Alliance takes on have a community engagement component. Why do you think that is important?

Understanding people’s lived experiences is critical to inform not only the practical solution, but also prioritize the solution that people will use. Community engagement is the best way to know what’s going to move the needle.

When you think about this work and some of the challenges that we’re trying to tackle, if you don’t center the voices of the lived individuals, you will create lots of great ideas that don’t gain traction. You need the impacted community to buy into the idea, engage with it, and push it forward. Otherwise, initiatives stall.

How does public-private collaboration help to create meaningful change?

I recently asked one of our clients through Civic Consulting Alliance, what does the Bain team bring to the table that is most helpful or transformative? His answer was our ability to take big, challenging questions and create the structure to drive an answer forward. Our clients are smart people with all the expertise needed, but sometimes they just need a structure to move forward, coordinate with the right people, or overcome obstacles.

Civic Consulting Alliance 2024 Pro Bono Partners