Looking back at my first year experience at Tuck, the Microsoft Case Competition was without a doubt one of the highlights of the year. Unlike a neatly packaged case, meant to be solved in a couple of days, we were presented with a “live” business problem, with all the attendant issues  of insufficient relevant data , lots of data we probably didn’t need and enough ambiguity and complexity to keep a whole team of consultants busy for months.  Numerous team meetings, brainstorming sessions and a couple of epic all-nighters later, we developed a solution that we believed was innovative, while being grounded in solid business logic. Luckily for us, the judges agreed! It couldn’t get any better than this, could it?

Yes, it could! As winners of the Case Competition, we were invited to Redmond to participate in a truly unique leadership experience. It involved collaborating with the case competition winners from Tepper and presenting our solutions to Microsoft leaders, including Norm Judah, the CTO of Services.  Our frank discussions with senior executives, each leading multi-million dollar businesses, helped drive home the non-hierarchical and idea based culture at Microsoft.  Receiving personalized, meaningful feedback on my leadership style and competencies from leaders in the company was the highlight of the experience!

Project Firenze and the Redmond experience allowed me to appreciate the tremendous impact that working at Microsoft can have on the lives of people around the world, as well as breadth of options open to forge a customized career path.  It’s no surprise that I chose to intern here for the summer!