Meet Alumni With Booz Allen Careers

I started working with Booz Allen right after I finished college. Immediately, I had the chance to engage with the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the Superfund, and the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act hotlines. On my first project, I learned about these key regulations in depth, and after transferring to San Antonio, I had the chance to shift my focus to their practical applications.

Now, I work primarily on environmental permitting and corrective actions around the country, integrating federal and state regulations, industry guidance, and best engineering and management practices. What I do helps streamline environmental projects, accelerating cleanups and ensuring that permits are appropriately protective of human health and the environment. I have the unique chance to make a difference in the lives of the people living near contaminated sites.

This became especially clear to me when I worked with the Environmental Protection Agency to develop an appropriate cleanup strategy for a significantly contaminated waterfront site in Dayton, Ohio. The facility proposed permanently fencing off the property and allowing the contamination to remain in place, creating a new “brownfield.” I suggested an alternative strategy that involved direct evaluation of risk, a targeted cleanup action, and eventually reopening the property for redevelopment. Both my leadership and our client embraced my proposal, which was exciting for me. I visited the site years later to find that the city had turned the space into a park with waterside walking trails. I’m proud that I had the chance to directly enhance the quality of life for people in the area.

While I learn so much through my work and the talented people on my team, Booz Allen also supports my professional development. Right now, the firm is providing tuition reimbursement for a class I am taking on Data Analytics and Visualization. Expanding my capabilities into this area will make me more marketable with clients and allow me to further expand my internal network.

If you’re a recent grad thinking about starting here at Booz Allen, my advice to you is to jump in. Trust yourself. Ask questions. Be open to discussion and listen to your mentors. Work hard and have integrity. Most importantly: be ready to grow.

I started working at Booz Allen after graduating in 2016. Since then, I’ve had the chance to help grow and evolve the Navy Overseas Drinking Water Program, which ensures that sailors and their families have access to clean and safe drinking water while serving abroad. I’ve had the opportunity to take a leading role in both the management and tasking of this project, as well as get involved in new projects related to environmental compliance in Defense acquisition.

The firm’s team-oriented culture and diversity of work opportunities impacts my daily life here. I’ve worked on environmental projects for both civil and defense clients simultaneously, and I frequently work with and learn from people with different skill sets and expertise. I’ve also worked my way up from a junior-level consultant to an associate. I know much of my career progress at Booz Allen comes from having such a supportive team and encouraging leaders who want to see me grow.

I chose to work in environmental consulting because I wanted to help solve complex environmental problems, and Booz Allen is the right company for me because problem solving is emphasized here. We’re really working to make the world a better place.

Early in your career, it’s important to expose yourself to as many opportunities as possible and gain as many skills sets as possible. If you join the team right out of college like I did, you’ll have the chance to meet so many different people with such varied passions and skills.

Challenging work, impact, and the people: These are the reasons that I like working at Booz Allen.

I’ve always been interested in solving problems, and my team and I help solve some of the biggest challenges in public health. We try constantly to find better ways to increase access to safe and effective treatments while also attempting to improve the experience of the scientific reviewers who evaluate new medical product applications.

Because we work in public health, we have the opportunity to make a real impact on people’s lives. The projects we work on require expertise and consistent, high-level performance. The people I work with are some of the brightest and hardest-working individuals I’ve ever met. I’m lucky to be part of such a great team.

I’m particularly proud of a project where we helped the Food and Drug Administration develop a service to assist clinical reviewers in reviewing and analyzing clinical study data. The service made it easier for reviewers to understand the data quality early in the marketing application review process and to generate tool outputs that are useful for reviewing safety and efficacy data.

For recent college grads, Booz Allen provides exposure to experts and leaders in their chosen field, and a diverse range of challenging projects. It also strives to grow and incubate talented individuals through training, mentoring, and sponsorship. If you have the motivation, the opportunities here are unlimited.

At Virginia Tech, I studied biology and economics. My professors and coursework provided me with a solid foundation of scientific knowledge and analytical skills that have served me throughout my career.

At the University of Maryland, I obtained an M.B.A. in management and organization that gave me a new perspective on how to run and operate an organization. I have used many of the theories and methodologies in my day-to-day work.

Degrees from both schools are well respected here at Booz Allen, especially in the DC metropolitan area where I work. I have plenty of opportunities to talk about Hokie football!

Booz Allen has empowered me to have a voice in the field I’m so passionate about. The projects I’ve worked on here are directly related to implementing or maintaining major healthcare reform or protecting plan beneficiaries.

I’m currently supporting Medicaid Payment Error Rate (PERM) Eligibility Review Contractor project as an eligibility subject matter expert. In this role, I conduct quality assurance reviews of our audit results, contribute to progress and findings metrics, and manage stakeholder engagement between the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, other PERM contractors, and all participating 50 states and District of Columbia. Our project findings are highly visible to the government and public and can shape future policy decisions affecting millions of beneficiaries.

And yet, I’m not pigeonholed into a certain role or subject area at Booz Allen. I get to learn about so many different sectors of the healthcare landscape, both from project work and because I’m surrounded by knowledgeable colleagues. There’s such a supportive and cooperative attitude here. People want you to learn and grow and are always willing to take the time and energy to help.

The firm provides its employees with the agency and autonomy to shape their own careers while building skills that translate across all lines of work. There are so many opportunities to explore a new field, find a project or community of practice that’s supporting something you’re passionate about, or develop a new expertise.

Throughout my time at Booz Allen, I’ve been able to use my experiences to identify business development opportunities across the healthcare market. What we do now can ultimately impact the healthcare landscape and being part of that change is so empowering.

When I was a student in the French and Francophone Studies department at Penn State, everybody used to ask me what I planned on doing with my degree. Then I joined Booz Allen and was chosen to work with USAID and the Global Fund delivering lifesaving HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria medications to the developing world. It was because of my background in French and Spanish, as well as my data science skills, that I was selected for such exciting work, and it was exactly the kind of work I pictured doing back when I was an undergrad. It’s why I joined Booz Allen. This is a place where language skills are really valuable in a business context.

When that project ended, I started working on a series of projects focused on applied mathematics and natural language processing (NLP). My French degree was focused on linguistics, so NLP was a good fit. I’m currently working as a senior data scientist for one of our Department of Defense clients. I develop methodologies to help our client address their most complex problems in the realm of NLP, applied mathematics, and economics.

This gets back to the reason that I went into consulting: Since I arrived at Booz Allen, I haven’t been bored. I’m not pigeon-holed into one area here, but rather get to use my network to find the exact kinds of projects I want to work on. I learn something new on each one.

I graduated with a computer science degree from Penn State University in 2001 and joined Booz Allen as an entry-level engineer.

Early on, I didn’t quite know where I wanted my career to go, but I was drawn to the notion of solving challenging technical problems and providing thought leadership and innovation to missions that really mattered. I served in a broad set of technical roles, ranging from requirements analysis, testing, satellite communications, systems engineering, and systems integration across multiple initiatives and markets. A plethora of training opportunities gave me the building blocks to transition into a technical leadership role overseeing both a functional capability and a technical delivery team.

One of the projects I managed was a $35 million task order supporting the transport and dissemination of intelligence surveillance reconnaissance data worldwide. Our team engineered and deployed a quick-reaction capability providing standard and HD video for forces in Southwest Asia. It distributes piloted and remotely-piloted aircraft imagery and sensor data to commanders, intelligence analysts, and deployed forces, providing soldiers with the necessary tools to support counter-improvised explosive device (IED) initiatives—and ultimately saving countless innocent lives.

One of the major challenges Booz Allen has faced historically is retaining highly technical talent that’s interested in advancement, but not necessarily interested in the firm’s traditional career progression model. Changes to our engineering career model now provide the ability to choose a technical career path and still have opportunities to advance to the firm’s highest levels. This fundamental shift has been critical in attracting and maintaining the talent pool we need to realize our vision for Booz Allen’s engineering business.

As an operations research analyst at Booz Allen, I contribute to several studies that help our client’s improve operational efficiency. I now support the Naval Information Warfare Systems Command in San Diego as a cost and data analyst by helping programmatic decision-makers make cost-and-data-informed decisions on the future of mission critical programs and technologies.

The nature of my job requires me to research, analyze, and defend ideas that don’t always align with the government’s traditional way of thinking. My role is to ensure that decisions are made with full knowledge of all options and their implications.

For this work, my superiors recently recognized me for embodying one of Booz Allen’s core values, “Unflinching Courage.” Additionally, in January of 2019, I was awarded the Values in Practice award, which is the highest individual distinction in the firm.

That’s one of the reasons I like working here. The firm and its leaders do not hesitate to give you the recognition you deserve. I never feel overlooked. The amount of trust the firm and its leaders have in me, especially with me being younger, strikes me as something that differentiates Booz Allen from other large companies. There are specific avenues here for recent graduates to set themselves up for long-term achievement. Every one of the senior leaders I’ve met has been ready to give advice and provide mentorship.

Booz Allen’s great reputation is what initially drew me to the firm. Its supportive leadership is why I've stayed.