Technology Consultant, Orange County
Please introduce yourself. Who are you and what is your job/career?
I'm Maddie Allenspach Kukura. I'm a 31 year-old female living in Irvine, California with my husband, Adam, and corgi, Russell Popsicle. I'm a Senior Manager in Technology Consulting at Deloitte Consulting LLP.
As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
As a kid, I had various ambitions... I loved to clean and at one point told my mom I wanted to be a maid (I still love cleaning my house to this day!). I was then told by her while at the dentist that I could make more money being a dentist, so that was my new career choice. Most of my life I loved watching interior decorating television shows and wanted to be an interior designer (Again.. I still love designing my house to this day!), which merged into an Architect. However, once I realized I needed an extra year of school to become an architect, I decided business was right for me. :)
“I loved to clean and at one point told my mom I wanted to be a maid”
Can you describe your profession to those who might have never heard of it before?
I help advise global, cross-industry clients on their enterprise transformation journeys for how to update their business processes and systems across their end-to-end businesses to run more efficiently. I specialize in a particular technology called SAP S/4HANA, which is an enterprise resourcing planning system that essentially runs everything for a company's back-end from Procurement, Sales, Supply Chain/Manufacturing/Logistics to Finance. I specialize in the Finance portion of implementations, usually leading teams to advise and implement new SAP finance processes. However, I also provide program management for other business processes outside of my core area of expertise.
Maddie’s first day at Deloitte
What was your process for choosing your career path? Was it a long journey or an easy one? At what moment did you know that you wanted to be in this profession?
As you can tell by my very long journey of what I wanted to be when I grew up, I had a hard time deciding on one thing. This led me to business as a degree as I felt it would open the most opportunities for me. I spent a summer internship in Finance Operations before I graduated from college, and I really enjoyed my summer, but I realized what a job in industry / Finance would mean is running the same reports month after month. That was when I learned about others who went to my school that went into consulting at Deloitte. What drew me to it as someone who didn't entirely know what I wanted to do but knew was the variety of opportunities it would bring - in different industries, technologies, and business processes. Upon starting, I quickly found that I was always learning and never doing the same thing. This provided me endless opportunities for growth and from an early point in my career I was getting to lead meetings and engage with client and project executives which was much more visibility than my peers in industry jobs were getting, and that was the point I became hooked to the consulting lifestyle.
Can you walk us through your typical day of work?
Pre-Covid, I used to travel every Monday through Thursday to the client site. Luckily, post COVID, I now have much more flexibility and only travel every few weeks or months so I get to work from home. A typical "day in the life" will vary a lot based on my current project, which is often changing. At my current level as Senior Manager, most of my days are spent in meetings. I start my mornings (often very early) with a check in with my India team on progress they made overnight. I then move to standup meetings checking in with the client and my US team on their activities where they raise blockers to me and I provide advice. I'll have ad-hoc meetings throughout the day dependent on the project phase - be it design workshops, testing updates, etc.
At a Senior Manager level, in addition to delivering projects for my clients, I am also responsible for selling new projects for our firm. So I will also typically have meetings with new clients to assess opportunities or be internally preparing a staffing/estimation for a new work or providing a point of view to deliver in a client orals.
Lastly, Deloitte heavily emphasizes work outside of your core client work, so I have multiple firm initiatives that I lead where I will have updates on. For example, right now I'm leading our Internal Finance Market offering, and I have a team of 6 planning monthly statuses across 21+ threads and planning town halls, newsletters, and website updates across our entire practice.
I also serve as a Coach/performance advisor to 5 resources, and I will have check ins with them or their team to provide advice on how they can meet their career goals and get to the next level.
Maddie on a panel discussion about SAP
What do you love most about your job?
I love the challenges my job brings. Every time I get to a level of comfort with a certain role, I am challenged to do something even further. It allows the job to never get monotonous. The other thing I love the most is the people - and my good relationships over the 9 years I've worked at Deloitte are what has helped give me all of the opportunities I've gotten to this date.
What questions should someone really ask themselves if they want to get into your profession?
A career in consulting may not always be your classic 9-5, especially in technology implementation. You are bound by your client's timelines for requests for new projects which may come up with fast turnaround dates and you may have go-lives or work over holidays and weekends. It's an exciting career, but it can be a demanding one, so you just have to think about if you're okay with a lifestyle that may not look like everyone else's.
What did you study? How much schooling do you think is required to get into your role?
I studied Business Finance. Folks in my role have degrees varying from business to engineering to arts. Some have advanced / masters degrees as well, but I do not, and I do not believe it is required. Any undergrad degree should be sufficient to get into this role as a lot of the learning is done along the way.
Did you have any mentors that helped you along the way?
I have many mentors who have helped me along the way. Some of the biggest ones have been my other female Senior Managers, who have showed me what it takes to be a women leader in our firm, but also are there any time I need to vent about challenges I am facing.
What was the biggest piece of advice that helped you get to where you are?
One of my partners has always said, "surround yourself by people who are smarter than you," and I have never forgotten that. I've grown from Analyst to Senior Manager at my company in 8 years which is pretty unheard of as the path usually takes around 10-12 years, but I attribute a lot of my success to the relationships I have built. Having grown in my role so quickly, I know that I will never be the most experienced person in the room, but I have a lot of contacts at the firm who are able to provide me answers and inputs to various questions or work with me on projects that allow me to be successful.
Maddie and her colleague at a work conference
What do you think it takes to thrive in this role? What is the most and least rewarding part of your job?
It takes hard work and a desire for consistent learning to thrive in this role. We may not always know everything but we have to do the research to provide the right advice for our clients. The most rewarding part of this is overcoming new challenges you never thought you could. The least rewarding is that clients will constantly ask more and more of you.
How is the flexibility? Work life balance?
The flexibility of being able to work from home is nice. I also know a lot of parents in consulting and technology who like it as you may be more flexible to take a break in the day as folks will know you'll be back on late for calls with India. However, for myself, personally, stepping away and maintaining a work-life balance with all that is on my plate in such a demanding career is the consistent biggest challenge I still face to this day.
What would you say to someone who is looking to figure out what they want to do?
I'm still to this day figuring out what I want to do. I love my career, but I do wish I worked less hours, so it's still hard to say if this is a lifelong path for me. I think no job will ever be perfect, and the only way you can know what you want is just by trying new things and being open.
If people have further questions how can they find you/contact you?
Feel free to add me on LinkedIn and message me: