Beth Meagher
, Senior AssociateWhy did you choose Booz Allen?
The story of why I chose Booz Allen begins with my work in an AmeriCorps program, Teach for America. This program provides training and support to uncertified teachers, sending them into areas with severe teacher shortages. I spent 2 years teaching in a very impoverished school in rural Louisiana. The students and other teachers were wonderful, but I was struck by the inadequacies and inequalities I found there and that these could exist in the United States where we have so many resources. I decided then that I wanted to work to create change at a systemic level. So, I went from Teach for America to graduate school, where I realized that to achieve my goals, it was important to work for an organization that knew how to run a business well and that helped other organizations to achieve their missions.
When I received a job offer from Booz Allen, I was impressed by how the company fit my goals about where I wanted to work. I was also impressed by its vision, its commitment to excellence, its Core Values, and the community focus it has always had. Since I started working here, I’ve been very excited to find that Booz Allen is even more entrepreneurial than I had anticipated it would be. I’ve also found that it is a company at the forefront of creating best practices and that it truly understands how to help its clients meet their goals and objectives.
Why have you chosen to stay at Booz Allen?
I’ve stayed first and foremost because of the people. The people here are tremendously talented, passionate about what they do, and very smart. They know how to work together to solve difficult client problems. For me, being able to work with people I can learn from is exciting and fun, and it has allowed me to push my own performance and make it better. That’s a really cool thing about working here.
What type of work do you do at Booz Allen?
I lead Booz Allen’s Nonprofit Health business. This means I set the vision for the market, work with senior leadership in Booz Allen to ensure that this vision aligns with the company’s overarching objectives, create an internal team, and work with cross-functional leaders to build and execute in this market. We are now working with large and small nonprofits, helping them with various key issues.
The work we do for our clients is very mission focused. We are fortunate to work with a number of premiere global and national charitable, humanitarian, and public health and safety organizations. Our work involves challenges such as how to create strategic plans and growth strategies, recruit and retain talented people in the nonprofit sector, wield technology as an enabler of competitive advantage, use e-philanthropy as a way to differentiate revenue streams, and create systems and processes for retaining and preserving institutional knowledge.
One particular project for a leading voluntary health organization formed both the foundation for our nonprofit health work and kicked off my own involvement in it. Booz Allen created the mega-community concept: that is, recognizing that—where problems are too large for individuals or single organizations to solve—working across public, private, and nonprofit lines can have a greater impact and ultimately effect change in a way not possible without that broad collaboration. Last year we brought together 80 leaders in the area of a particularly debilitating disease, along with several couples suffering from the disease and their caregivers. The results have been astounding. We identified areas of focus, formed work groups, and have begun implementing tactical and strategic recommendations. Recently, we met with the U.S. Surgeon General in large part because of the leadership strength in the mega-community we created—we are not just one individual or organization but a group of people who are all leaders in their own right. And we’ve been able to see our work truly affect people and their lives and families.
What excites you about your work?
What excites me most is working with clients. In this market, especially, they are very mission focused, and it is amazing to be able to see my ideas, our team’s ideas, and the client’s ideas implemented in a way that creates long-lasting change.
Do you have a mentor at Booz Allen?
I have a lot of mentors at Booz Allen! I think having mentors here is a key to success and that mentoring at Booz Allen really is a way a life. We learn so much working with our clients. Booz Allen hires very smart and talented people but, to solve client problems effectively, we all need to learn how to use the various capabilities, frameworks, and lessons learned that have been developed before our time—and that only happens through mentoring. I have some mentors who are constant and who guide me and help shape my career, and I have others who have worked with me at a particular point in time to teach me specific skill sets.
What differentiates Booz Allen from other companies that you could work for—what makes Booz Allen special?
There is a very congenial, collaborative environment here that is unique, but Booz Allen is also special for all the reasons I’ve mentioned already—its people, its entrepreneurial environment, the clients we get to work with, and the problems we get to help solve. In addition to that, the business environment here is shaped by a set of Core Values that help us do our work.
How has Booz Allen helped you be ready for what’s next in your career?
Booz Allen has provided me with a process and methodology to think about the difficult problems my clients have. Booz Allen teaches its employees how to think about business problems—there are no cookie-cutter answers, but our systemic approach allows us to dissect the problem, understand how to create solutions, and then implement those solutions in a way I’ve not seen in other organizations. People soon learn that this allows them to attack any problem that clients might have because they’ve been taught how to think about it and how to work on a team in a way that results in innovative answers.
How does the work you do help your clients be ready for what’s next? How has your and your team’s work made an impact for your clients?
We help our clients think about how they can have an impact, achieve their goals more quickly and efficiently, and prepare for the future. They are dealing with some of the most difficult issues concerning public health, chronic and infectious diseases, and the advocacy and support of caregivers, so they need to help their own organizations, their teams, and their support networks be prepared not just for today but for what is coming next. This means that they need to identify trends and how these will play out in their business.
Can you talk about a time when you saw one or more of our Core Values displayed?
Absolutely. I think professionalism is the cornerstone of how Booz Allen and those who are successful at Booz Allen operate. I see professionalism every day in how my colleagues conduct themselves, how they position themselves with their clients, and how they work with their leaders and their teams.
I also see teamwork every day—every project is executed by a team—and our teams work well together. Entrepreneurialism, too, is common here, and I often have people come to me whose clients are facing difficult issues they’d like to solve. My response is always, “Great, put together a white paper to explain the problem, and let’s see what we can do.” So, from the entry level all the way through the ranks, people have the opportunity to do original thinking around what our clients' problems are and how we can solve them.
