Maddie Turner
Rice University
Houston (29.7° N, 95.3° W)

featuring Ellie Weeks, Senior Digital Product Consultant, Deloitte Digital, Chicago (41.8781° N, 87.6298° W)

Ellie Weeks is a senior digital product consultant at Deloitte Digital. In 2014, she graduated from Rice University, where she majored in sociology and health sciences, as well as participated in dance theater and served as executive ambassador for the study abroad office. Upon graduation, she worked as a business analyst and consultant at Infosys Consulting before moving to Deloitte Digital.

As I interviewed Ellie, who lives in Chicago, from my home in Atlanta, we discussed her time at Rice, and how a major change unexpectedly led her to consulting. Originally a sociology major with plans to go to medical school, Ellie realized that the pre-med culture wasn’t for her. She switched to a health sciences major in order to continue pursuing her interest in healthcare, but she wasn’t sure where the path would lead her. As the job search began senior year, she decided to interview at a few different consulting firms. She recalls that even though she had a lack of specific experience in the field coming out of college, “in general, consulting companies are looking for smart people who learn quickly and can be passionate about whatever area they land in.” Her openness to new experiences landed her a job at Infosys in management consulting.

After accepting the position, Ellie moved to Chicago and started working for Infosys right after graduation. She explains that the move was intentional because she “wanted a new place.” Along with living in a new and exciting city, working in consulting gave Ellie the opportunity to travel all over the country, gaining exposure to multiple different industries and clients. After three years at Infosys, however, she decided to move to Deloitte, where she would have more flexibility in choosing an industry outside of retail.

One of the main points of my conversation with Ellie was the value in making and maintaining connections with coworkers. Ellie’s transition to Deloitte was made possible by one of these connections: she was referred to Deloitte by a senior manager who had previously worked at Infosys. The same manager staffed Ellie on her first project, a position in retail. Ellie’s previous experience in retail at Infosys allowed her to excel at Deloitte, earning the trust and respect of the senior manager and her coworkers. Networking continued to play an important role in the advancement of Ellie’s career as she met new people over coffee, discussed similar interests, and eventually transitioned to a new project on product development in financial services based in New York City. This project gave her the opportunity to work with a design team and follow through the development of the product—a mobile banking application—from beginning to end. The experience showed her that she had both a passion and an aptitude for product management, and this guided her career path going forward. “It’s really like making your own destiny,” she says, “just by getting to know people and understanding what they’re interested in.”

Through involvement in a healthcare initiative at Deloitte, along with more networking, Ellie met a manager who offered her a new position working alongside healthcare practitioners to develop a suite of healthcare platforms for insurance companies, hospitals, and physicians. In her current role, Ellie works in a digital products group within Deloitte as a product manager, acting as a liaison between the development team and designers. Her role involves connecting people all over the world—early morning phone calls with Bangalore and Mumbai, meetings with the design team in Chicago, and demos for potential clients. Out of her many responsibilities, Ellie says that her favorite part of her job is the exposure to so many passionate and creative people, both within her design team and in the healthcare industry, as well as having the opportunity to develop products that will make a real difference in patients’ lives. “The product that I’m working on is not only going to be good for business, but it’s also improving healthcare and the health outcomes of the patients that these clients are serving,” she says. “Being able to understand healthcare a little more and see where the opportunity areas are for improving it and for how I can make a difference and making healthcare a little easier for people to consume and easier for them to access, I think, is a highlight.”

Though she started out in retail consulting unsure of where she wanted to take her career, Ellie was able to work her way back to her underlying interest in healthcare by maintaining a strong network and learning on the job. She emphasizes that consulting is a great option for students who aren’t sure what they want to do with their careers, but who are open to experiences in multiple different industries and locations. Consulting also provides countless opportunities for mentorship and professional development. Her advice to students, above all else, is that “people are at the core of everything.” Intentionally making connections with others that have similar interests while still remaining genuine is the best way to advance in any field. 

Highlights from the interview:

Could we start by you telling me a little about yourself, where and how you grew up and what you saw yourself doing in the future when you were in undergrad?

I am from a very small town in South Georgia. I found Rice through the Princeton Review; I had never heard of the school. I visited and loved it. Everyone was super friendly, I loved the culture, and just the opportunity it gave me, and they had great financial aid, obviously.

So, I got to go, and when I went, I was planning on doing pre-med. I think I was pre-med for one semester. I wanted to be a pediatrician, so I was pursuing sociology major with the pre-med requirements, but physics and chemistry were really hard. I’m sure you can relate to that…I tried to do that, but I realized with the grades and the environment around it, I didn’t love the pre-med culture for me.

I changed courses a little bit and switched to health sciences major in the kinesiology department. I envisioned possibly working in health education or some realm of public health. I really didn’t have any idea, to be honest, of what I was going to do when the pre-med thing didn’t pan out. But then senior year, the first companies that were recruiting on campus were consulting companies. And I thought it would be nice to have a job pretty much out of the gate, so I decided to interview for consulting. I interviewed with all of those [consulting] companies. I didn’t get any of them, so I thought I would try again spring semester. But right at the tail end, this company I hadn’t heard of yet, Infosys, was recruiting and I got hired. They said I could work anywhere, and I wanted a new place, so I moved to Chicago.

The position was advertised more as management consulting, which I didn’t know anything about that either, but I think, in general, consulting companies are looking for smart people who learn quickly and can be passionate about whatever area they land in. I started there and quickly realized it was more technology consulting, but I found I landed in the digital retail practice, like customer experience stuff, like website design and things like that. And that was pretty fun because you just put your customer hat on—what would I want when I’m shopping online versus when I go into a store?

I was there for three years doing this digital consulting in retail. Learned a ton, got to work with some really cool clients, but I still wanted to make my way back to the consulting brands that I knew and the companies that I heard amazing things about. I had a contact at Deloitte, and I ended up changing jobs into Deloitte Digital. Deloitte offers a lot more flexibility in industry, so I knew if I worked there, I’d be able to work my way back to healthcare. And after a while I was able to.

Was there anything that first sparked your interest in consulting?

Yeah, I think it offers a ton of benefits that are especially good for a recent graduate who doesn’t necessarily know what they want to do yet. Every single project I was on at Infosys, even though it was all retail, every single one was different in the technology that we were working with. I was on some projects that weren’t really technology based, they were more strategy; they would lead to technology later on. In consulting, you’re able to sample many types of industries, many types of projects and types of work, as well as other companies. You’re working for different clients, and you’re in different locations all the time.

How did your time at Rice prepare you for the position you have at Deloitte?

I would say with consulting, most of it is on the job learning. But I would say the things I learned at Rice…The first one is…just the diversity of the student population and being able to live and work with such diverse and super smart and cool people…That’s one of the things I really loved at Deloitte. The people reminded me a lot of Rice students, so being able to get back to that super intelligent, super interested in your work, and super passionate about whatever subject you chose to major in or whatever industry you chose to major in, I think being able to value that diversity and being able to work and learn from people a lot smarter than you was something I learned at Rice, for sure, and was able to carry forward.

In terms of more coursework, I would say just being able to read a ton of information. For consulting, it’s not always reading, but you’re basically gathering a lot of information, and you’re trying to identify what the problem is and propose a solution. That’s the gist of it. No matter what your major is at Rice, you’re basically doing that. You’re doing a ton of reading, a ton of research, and not always things that you’re super interested in, but hopefully some of it is. So I think that skill of being able to distill tons of information down into a compact statement about what the problem is, and how to get from A to B. I feel like that was pretty prominent in the coursework as well.

What does your current position look like on a daily basis at Deloitte? 

Right now, I’m working in basically a digital products group within Deloitte. So I’m not actually working for a client right now, but what I’m doing is building a product that Deloitte would sell to healthcare clients. So, it’s in the field of product management.

For me, a day starts pretty early. We have daily calls at 7 a.m. with our development team in India—they’re based in Bangalore, Mumbai, and Hyderabad—and so we all get on a call for like an hour every morning and go over what was developed the previous day. What issues or questions they’re running into about the stuff they’re developing.

Let me take a step back. My role is managing different features of the product from conception to delivery. So that means understanding from the business, basically, what the problem statement is and what the specific issues or goals there are that this feature could address and accomplish, and take that problem statement, as well as the goals, to our design team…and based on that, they design something. They design the interaction with that feature, as well as what it looks like. And that is delivered to the development team along with all of the requirements about how it works specifically. And that’s my role, to see those features from the very beginning, through design, through development, and finalize them…So I’m the liaison between the development team and the designers, and, if this were for a client, I would also be liaison to the business stakeholders.

The rest of my day after that we might be figuring out what the next feature is; I’d be working with my design team that’s here in Chicago in the Deloitte Digital studio. I’d be working with them on the next feature. I might be doing some testing on whatever the development team has created that day. And I could also be writing detailed requirements for them, for the next set of work that they might do. And then also sometimes running a demo for clients that we’re hoping to sell the products to…A day in the life.

Where did you start out at Deloitte? How did it lead you to where you are now, more in project management?

I don’t know if you’re talking to other consultants, but the theme of it is networking, basically. Like so much of it is who is in your network and what contacts you make, because basically you strategically meet people and work with people on side projects and help them out with proposals, and things like that, and you’re basically looking for the people that you work with and that are doing the kinds of work that you want to do. It can be very strategic in the way that you network your way to what you want to do.

When I first joined Deloitte, I was referred by a woman who had previously worked at Infosys. We had actually never met, but we were introduced through a mutual friend, and she referred me to Deloitte Digital. I still didn’t know what I wanted to do. I probably wanted to start out in retail because that’s what I knew, and being in a new company, I didn’t know how much would be different, and I wanted to be in a comfortable space that I knew already…Basically the senior manager who referred me to Deloitte was the one who staffed me on her project. So the first project I was on—it was five months or something, and it was not an area that I was necessarily super interested in—but it was retail, so I understood the fundamentals of it, and because it was something that I already knew…she trusted me and respected me. I felt like I was in a safe space to start out in.

The position allowed me to network with the people that I knew worked in an area that I was interested in. So every Friday in the office, I would have a coffee chat with someone…and they would tell me, “Oh, it sounds like you’re really interested in XYZ, you should talk to these two people.” And the next week I would have conversations with the next two people. I emailed all the people I had met with, the ones I was interested in working with and one of them had a position that was coming up. This was the project at the bank…so that’s how I got into that, and from there I learned that I really liked product management; I was really good at it. I liked being able to see features from beginning to end and getting to really own it and see it progress and guide it through each of those stages.

When I knew the project was ending, I started networking again, just talking to person after person and I wound up getting involved in an internal healthcare initiative in my free time. And through that I met the manager, and I got into my current position.

So, it’s really like making your own destiny, just by getting to know people and understanding what they’re interested in. People are so passionate about their work…working with people who work in the healthcare industry at Deloitte…I just found out that their passion was really awesome, and I wanted to do that. So, it’s getting excited about the same things, and finding your people, and eventually you’ll get to where you want to be.

What would you say your favorite part of your job is?

Being able to work with a design team. I am not really a creative person myself, but I had always wanted to work with creatives to get a glimpse into what that process is…So getting to work with the design team is definitely the highlight of my week, every week. I would say, the bigger picture…the fact that I’ve made it into healthcare and the product that I’m working on is not only going to be good for the business, but it’s also improving healthcare and the health outcomes of the patients that these clients are serving. And finally, being able to understand healthcare a little more and see where the opportunity areas are for improving it and for how I can make a difference and making healthcare a little easier for people to consume and easier for them to access, I think, is a highlight, bigger picture.

Do you have any advice for a student interested in consulting or not really sure where they’re going and wondering if that would be a good path for them to take?

I think consulting is a great place to start if you’re wanting to sample different things, and you aren’t really sure what kind of work you want to do, in what industry or in what location even; consulting can be a great opportunity to sample all those things. I also think that consulting offers so much professional development training. I think that consulting does a really good job at those things because their asset is their people, so training their people and supporting their people and offering them networks and the support and learning opportunities.

I would say that people are at the core of everything, so make contacts but also be genuine. If you’re intentional about the place that you want to be, or maybe you don’t know, but you know what your next step, what you want it to be…I think you can be very intentional about the contact that you make, and the contacts that you keep up, and the work that you’re interested in. You can definitely make your own path in that regard.

Interview excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability and approved by the interviewee.