Week 5: Organizational Culture

A hallmark of the consulting profession is travel; consultants are constantly striving to meet clients’ needs, and that often requires physically meeting in person. Commercial consulting typically requires national travel, but the public sector practice I’m working for mainly travels within the DMV (DC, Maryland, and Virginia) area. But when employees are traveling all of the time, they lose the opportunities to form connections in the home office. Coming into this internship, I was unsure whether or not I would be employed at a client site, but I actually spend about half of my time in the DC office and half of my time in Rockville, Maryland at the client site. Prior to this experience, I envisioned myself wanting a tight-knit office culture where everyone gets along and has cordial relationships with one another, but that culture is near impossible at a company as large as PwC, even just within my own practice. Nevertheless, I have found my own pockets where I have established friendly relationships and feel “at home”.

One of the highlights of my internship experience has been getting to know the other interns. We are all rising seniors in college, and are all fairly outgoing. It’s nice to be able to sit near one another in the DC office, since there are no assigned desks, and spend our lunch breaks together. I enjoy our conversations about work because we are all assigned on different projects, and I’m learning more about the scope of work PwC does. I’m glad to be able to establish these relationships now, because we may potentially be coworkers in the future. Having connections to others within the firm that are working on different projects opens up doors to engage in more work, and is something that has been encouraged to me by full-time employees at PwC.

Furthermore, I have found comfort with the two women I work with at the client site, Kersten and Marguerite. Kersten is a senior associate and Marguerite is a manager, and I have learned a lot from them. They have a lot of experience in the field, especially working with NIH, so they’ve set a good example and explained the culture of working with this client. Marguerite is a working mother, which also has set a good example of what I envision for myself in the future. What I most enjoy is that they give me honest feedback and challenge me, so I truly feel like I am learning each day I work with them.
My fears about not feeling a sense of community among my coworkers have been alleviated for sure.

While there definitely isn’t the close-knit atmosphere I craved at the beginning, I have carved out my own network of peers, and feel comfortable at the firm.