A great customer experience creates loyal consumers, and loyal consumers proudly promote the businesses they love. Darci Darnell, a Partner in our Chicago office and the leader of our Global Customer Strategy and Marketing practice, has extensive knowledge on how to create outstanding customer experiences. On this episode, Keith talks to Darci about how her globetrotting career gave her the experience needed to lead a practice, and how Bain's consulting, advanced analytics, data science and marketing roles all come together to drive client success and sustainable growth.

Beyond the Bio listeners, we want your feedback. You’re invited to share your thoughts with us in our listeners' survey. It will take less than 3 minutes to complete and will help us shape the direction of future episodes. Head over to atbain.co/btbsurvey to share your feedback.

We’ve known our host, Keith Bevans, to lead insightful conversations with some remarkable guests throughout the years, but this episode is slightly different. Keith is sitting in the guest seat and answering questions from consultant and Beyond the Bio producer, Daniel Yellin, to share some insight into the why of Beyond the Bio, dive a little deeper into a few topics we’ve covered on DEI, mergers & acquisitions, mental health in the workplace, and our work in ESG, and share some insight into what’s to come for the firm’s business, capabilities, and recruiting efforts in 2023.

Beyond the Bio listeners, we want your feedback. You’re invited to share your thoughts with us in our listeners' survey. It will take less than 3 minutes to complete and will help us shape the direction of future episodes. Head over to atbain.co/btbsurvey to share your feedback. 

Robert Cercós and Juan Pablo (JP) Garcia, founders of Spike SpA - a leading provider of advanced analytics and machine learning solutions - joined the Bain family after Spike was acquired by the firm earlier this year. As part of Bain adding more client-demanding capabilities to our toolkit, Robert and JP bring a new expertise to the firm that not only provides resources for our clients but opportunities for advanced analytics and machine learning experts to work on impactful projects and solve the world’s most challenging problems. Listen to this duo’s journey from engineers to entrepreneurs and how their friendship led them into consultancy.

Lauren Kelley, CEO of OPEXEngine, a member-based benchmarking community for software and SaaS companies that joined Bain in 2021, found a gap in how companies measure data and chose to do something about it. Lauren joins us to share not only her journey to entrepreneurship and what’s driven her throughout her career, but how OPEXEngine is meeting the needs and answering the hard questions companies are asking around performance and what led to its recent acquisition as part of Bain’s aim to build a larger suite of capabilities to support our clients.

Neil Shah, Executive Vice President of Global Mergers & Acquisitions, studied government at Harvard. After graduating, Neil joined Bain as Associate Consultant for a few years before pursuing a J.D. from Harvard Law School. Boomeranging back to Bain after a few career opportunities in banking and policies, Neil now leads our global mergers and acquisitions (M&A) that help meet capability demands that support our clients. Listen to Neil’s journeys to Bain, how his government background supports his impact at the firm, and gain some insight into our recent M&As that are helping grow our capabilities in advanced analytics, marketing, innovation & design, and more.

Arpan Sheth, Bain’s Global Capability Leader of our digital delivery platform, Vector, is all about embracing open doors. Following his father's footsteps and becoming an engineer, Arpan shifted to consulting after hearing inspiring stories from people he knew in business. Throughout his time at Bain, Arpan has combined his engineering and business expertise to help build and grow our practices in India, lead our Innovation and Design capability, and support mergers and acquisitions of digital capabilities in Vector. Listen to Arpan share his journey to Bain and how he expanded our practices in APAC as well as give insight into our fast-growing digital platform, Vector. Additionally, learn how Bain is integrating engineers, data scientists, marketers, and innovators into how we’re supporting our clients.

After many years at Bain helping start our Retail practice, Erika Serow left to become the US CEO of Sweaty Betty before returning to the firm as our Chief Marketing Officer. Erika’s leadership career stems from her desire to be an operator and run a retail business, but over time found that she truly enjoys working with smart and skillful people for a brand that she believes in. On this episode, Erika shares her journey to Bain, what made her choose the firm as a place to build her career, and how her passions led her to become our Chief Marketing Officer.

Julie Coffman, our Chief Diversity Officer, leader of our Global DEI practice, and Keith Bevans’s first manager who helped mentor the leader and host we know today, joins us to talk about her extensive career at Bain and how she’s currently leading the firm’s DEI initiatives. As part of our 5-part environmental, social and governance (ESG) series, Julie shares insight into the social part of this capability. Listen to how we not only support our clients’ diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts, but how we’re leading by example through our internal commitments and annual DEI reports.

In this episode we discuss:

• The 3 chapters of Julie's extensive Bain career

We'd love to hear from you! If you liked this episode or have any feedback to share, let us know by completing the form on atbain.com/btbfeedback.

Sasha Duchnowski, a partner in our Chicago office, joins us as part of our 5-part environmental, social and governance (ESG) series to dive into some of the work we’ve done as our commitment to social impact. We discuss our work with The Nature Conservancy and the Republic of the Marshall Islands on an innovative approach to delivering sustainable cans of tuna, and how this work had led to better fishing environments for employees, retailers gaining supply chain traceability and visibility, and consumers being able to trust the products they’re buying.

In this episode we discuss:

• Why Sasha decided to pursue consulting

We'd love to hear from you! If you liked this episode or have any feedback to share, let us know by completing the form on atbain.com/btbfeedback.

Bain's environmental, social, and governance (ESG) capabilities focus on helping our clients make real impact in sustainability, equity, and inclusion for all. Having a passion for this work, François Faelli, our Global Managing Partner of ESG, joins us for a five-part series to share how we're centering these efforts across the globe. On this episode, François not only shares his journey to Bain, but takes us through his moving journey of becoming the firm's first Global Managing Partner of ESG and the current priorities of embedding ESG into 100% of our client projects.

In this episode we discuss:

• How François got his passion for ESG

We'd love to hear from you! If you liked this episode or have any feedback to share, let us know by completing the form on atbain.com/btbfeedback.