Abigail Wegner (MHA '24): Deloitte Consulting

Hello from Chicago, Illinois! This summer, I completed a 10-week associateship with Deloitte Consulting in my new favorite city. I lived in the Central Loop, about a 20-minute walk from the office, and explored as much of the city as I could during my time at Deloitte. I experienced a summer full of traveling, connecting with full-time practitioners of every level, networking with fellow summer associates across the nation, and learning what it means to be a part of a team within a large consulting practice.  

Deloitte Consulting is a global consulting firm that houses various businesses and employees specialized in a variety of fields. They have over 100 offices nationwide, and I had the pleasure of working a hybrid schedule out of the Chicago location. Their healthcare and life sciences practice is widespread and includes commercial clients such as health systems, health plans, and provider networks. This summer, I was staffed on an account with a large health plan who has undergone various acquisitions and mergers since its original inception, and most recently rebranded. The client has current interests in better utilizing its internal offerings and portfolios as well as introducing new hot topics in the market, such as generative AI, into its current business processing. Our client has a long-standing relationship with Deloitte and thus our firm allotted multiple accounts to help further the client’s goals. My project focused on identifying internal growth ambitions for an internal entity of the client, born of recent acquisitions, and structuring potential strategies to achieve those ambitions by the end of this decade. I worked with another associate from my office to drive presentations and strategy pitches for the upper-level managers on the account, some of which I presented to partners and principals at the firm. One of my favorite parts of this summer was seeing my work pushed up to the client, who highly favored the strategy proposals made and is looking to move forward with them this year. 

Having access to such a large network of healthcare and non-healthcare consultants had a significant impact on my summer—I met so many new people and learned about so many niche fields of healthcare in learning about their clients. I was invited to co-locate with my client’s accounts in Atlanta, Georgia, where I met 11 other associates all working in different sectors of projects, as well as many full-time and seasoned practitioners from all over the United States as well as from Deloitte’s division in India, known better as USI. Back in Chicago, I was invited to attend multiple networking events around the city, giving me the perfect opportunity to explore some of the centralized neighborhoods by Uber, foot, or my favorite, on the L! Some were reserved just for the summer associates, including a boat tour around River North and Lake Michigan, a Cubs game experienced at the Wrigley rooftops, dinners in Near North Side and around the Gold Coast, and happy hours around Lincoln Park. 

I have had the best summer experience with Deloitte, and I am so grateful for all of the relationships I made and the new experiences I gained from living in the city for a summer. I have gained significant insight into what a health plan looks like as it grows within a finite market, the details of restructuring after nearly back-to-back acquisition activity, and how to spot new opportunities for new ideas in an expanding business. I look forward to applying my new understanding of such throughout the second year of my graduate program.