On the Job | Alum weighs benefits of consulting

Jamie Rosen Life Editor

Steven Kauderer ’85 majored in American Culture at Vassar. Kauderer was Editor in Chief of The Miscellany News and played Ultimate Frisbee. He pursued an MBA at Yale University and is now the Managing Director at Mercer Oliver Wyman, a management consulting firm.

The Miscellany News: How did you get into management consulting?

Steven Kauderer: I worked at Chubb [an investment banking firm], so I said, ‘Hey, I’d like to try business.’ I sort of viewed [management consulting] as getting a Ph.D. in business, where I can learn and get exposure to lots of different disciplines that I had an interest in, from marketing, to strategy, to finance, to organizational behavior, to psychology, to politics, to process design...I decided to stay in management banking as long as I was having fun and I was learning. That was in ’89, and here I am 16 years later still having fun and growing.

MN: What are your responsibilities as managing director of Mercer Oliver Wyman?

SK: I lead our recruiting task force for our undergraduate recruiting and I also lead the North American Insurance practice. My job varies greatly, which is one of the things I really like about consulting. So, some days I take care of internal firm issues around the management of the firm and of the insurance practice. Other days I’m helping to execute client work. Other times I am doing research and writing to further our intellectual capital and idea generation.

MN: What do you like best about your job?

SK: I’m constantly challenged intellectually, but also across a broad range of issues. I also really like to see the impact that the work that we do has on our clients in terms of their ability to grow and be more successful organizations.

MN: What don’t you like about your job?

SK: There’s a lot of travel, and when I was young and single I really liked the travel, but now that I have a family with four children, being away from home is difficult…I learned from my Vassar days how to balance hard work and travel with family and personal interests.

MN: How did your Vassar experience prepare you for your current job?

SK: Vassar taught me how to think and how to learn and how to problem-solve, and I also had to work in group settings and with teams, and those are all the kinds of things that ultimately really prepared me to work in management and in business and specifically in consulting. While I did go to graduate business school, in a sense everything I needed to learn how to succeed in consulting I learned at Vassar.

MN: Any advice for students who plan to pursue careers in consulting?

SK: Take a well-rounded group of courses. There’s no one major that’s best. Try to get involved in something that one feels passionate about, whether it’s politics or sports or the newspaper or anything else, but I think one of the things that we value in consulting is folks that are passionate and take leadership.

MN: Do you have anything else to share?

SK: My wife [Shari Leventhal] is actually class of ’85 as well from Vassar. We were friends, but we didn’t actually date in college. We actually remet at our five-year reunion. [Kauderer’s sister, Sherri Kauderer ’81, also met her husband, David Abrams ’81, at Vassar.]