I received my bachelor’s degree in computer science from Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University (GGSIPU) in India. Prior to joining McKinsey, I was with Accenture in India and the UK for about four years.
I joined QuantumBlack as a data engineer in India in 2017, and I was promoted to junior principal earlier this year.
In my role, I lead a team of data engineers, working across a variety of domains, including pharmaceutical, advanced industries, insurance, banking, retail, media, and mining. My role is to help define clients’ technical architecture, design data models, and develop and orchestrate end-to-end production ready data pipelines for analytics use cases. I am also involved in client capability building.
Receiving support from McKinsey when I really needed it
In 2020, I had an exciting opportunity to do a one-year rotation in London. I was in the office for one month before the UK went into lockdown because of COVID-19, so the rest of my time there was working from home.
It was a scary time because I was away from my family and trying to adjust to a life in London. It would have been tough anytime, but it was especially challenging during the pandemic. McKinsey made the experience wonderful despite it all.
For starters, senior leadership on the project made sure I received the mentorship I needed to learn how to effectively present my work to clients in the new virtual environment. It was more than that, though. They planned team activities and promoted work/life balance. Our manager even sent out fake requests to see if the people were working when they weren’t supposed to be.
Management made sure we were all doing well, and it felt like we were family, which is what I needed being away from home.
Collaborating on meaningful work
Despite the fact we were adjusting to working remotely, the two client engagements I did during my time in London were successful. My favorite of the two was supporting a media client. I worked with talented data scientists, data engineers, and DevOps engineers to build a business data model based on complex big data with minimal data dictionary or documentation. We built a solution via Kedro, McKinsey’s open source tool for data scientists, with CI/CD.
It was special because of the level of collaboration within our team and with the clients. Everybody was enthusiastic to go the extra mile and make things happen.
Looking forward
I am excited about what lies ahead. At McKinsey, I love the variety in the work, the amazingly talented people, and the opportunities I have to make a difference for clients. I look forward to charting my path at the firm and continuing to enhance my technical skills.
More about Anu
Outside of work, she enjoys dancing, adventure sports, and exploring new places. She has visited 16 countries so far.