Ann Ziker
2008 PhD in History
Associate at McKinsey & Company
After three years of teaching in a public high school, Ann Ziker returned to her alma mater Rice University to pursue a PhD in history. Since she'd completed her BA in sociology and political science, this constituted a significant new direction, but one that hinged on Ann's thinking about the value of a humanities degree: "What appealed to me about the humanities is that ... you are invited not only to incorporate the data-driven perspective [of the social sciences] but also to engage with qualitative questions about human behavior."
During her graduate studies at Rice Ann made a point of seeking out and incorporating multiple perspectives. She sought interdisciplinary conversations with students in other fields in order to avoid fixing herself exclusively in the standard scholarly practices - even orthodoxies - of any single discipline. This wide-ranging facility - to adopt multiple perspectives and select strategies that best fit a given problem - continues to support Ann's professional life.
After Rice, Ann joined the business consulting firm McKinsey & Company as an associate. The firm helps clients address their difficult questions and challenges, which vary from one project to the next. Then after a period of investigation and analysis, the firm recommends a solution.
When she first arrived at McKinsey, "I felt I had complete stepped into a new universe: new language, new ways of thinking, unfamiliar acronyms. But after a little while, I was surprised to recognize just how relevant graduate humanities work was to my new career. When we approach a humanities question, the basic skill set is extremely similar to we do at McKinsey: gathering information through research and interviews, reviewing existing knowledge on the topic, and synthesizing a large volume of data into a coherent story that responds to the original question. These skills are all at the core of what you do in graduate work in humanities."
To understand the workings of a large, complex organization, McKinsey consultants often must inquire about the human elements of a business: the motivation behind choices, modes of communication, and daily interactions. And on a day-to-day basis, Ann says about working with clients, "We talk to people, we listen, we try to understand." As a historian, she has considerable practice. "Those are often the kinds of questions you're trying to find out about historical actors: Why did this person do what he or she did, and what brought him or her to that decision?"
Consultants often encounter multifaceted, ambiguous problems, and in this regard Ann has found her humanities training immensely valuable. Her humanities background helped her understand how to respond to broad problems in a structured and logical way. "Humanities questions are never small or discrete, and there is rarely a clean, neat answer. We are accustomed to the need to use a fragmentary historical record to construct the best possible answer to a complex question." In addition, Ann identifies qualities such as independent thinking, creativity, and the ability to present a persuasive argument as essential skills in her business that are conferred by studying in the humanities.
Ann suggests that undergraduate students at Rice should strike a balance between taking courses they are passionate about, "that are going to motivate you to give your best effort," and thinking beyond courses to imagine what sort of career they would be interested in and what skills such a career would require. Regarding the long-term thinking about careers, "I think it's never too early just to start introducing yourself to people who are in careers that look appealing to you and not being afraid to ask them, 'I'm really interested to know how you got here, and could you tell me about what kinds of things I might do if I want to pursue a similar path?'"
