Shubhika Bilgrami is a Senior Manager based in our Dubai office. She works in BCG’s Travel, Cities and Infrastructure practice as a topic expert, providing sector expertise to projects across all of BCG’s global offices. We connected with Shubhika to learn more about her work and the growth she has experienced at BCG Vantage.

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Why did you join BCG? What has your journey been like so far?

I joined BCG in September 2017 after working for five years as a management consultant at another firm. Before joining BCG, I loved developing internal capabilities and building knowledge that had a direct impact on the client’s outcomes. What initially attracted me to this role at BCG Vanatge was the idea that I could be a part of creating point of views while still working in the consulting world alongside case teams. Being able to develop content, lead publication creation, work on new topics, and contribute to developing different points of view, all while remaining connected to the clients, is something that I found very exciting about BCG Vantage. I initially joined BCG as infrastructure and transport Senior Analyst and worked on several aviation and cities focused projects across the value chain. Eventually, as cities and regions topic grew, I started supporting a lot of global cases, and am now specializing in this area.

In this Senior Manager role, I serve as more of the go-to person about a particular topic. When other members of the case team don’t have deep expertise on the topic at hand, we are there to share our knowledge with them. We don’t work separately from consultants, but together with them. People rely on us to directly support the senior leaders, and we are equally part of the team, just with a slightly different role.

What is a standout project you’ve gotten to work on?

I recently worked on the Cities of Choice project, which is one of BCG’s flagship publications. Essentially, we ranked 80 cities based on multiple dimensions including economic opportunities, quality of life, social capital, interaction with authorities and speed of change. We drew on surveys of more than 50,000 people and assessed more than 150 economic, social and political metrics to assess the cities' performance. The report shows how these cities stack up. It was incredible to see the wide media coverage the report received; some city departments shared our findings on their local social media platforms and the report was cited in several news articles.

What is it like to be a team lead?

Currently, I lead a very global team, and my team is spread out in various parts of the world. One of the best things about this is that it makes working in a cross-office model much better, and you can ask different team members to help and step in different areas. I am a self-starter, so if there is something I want to develop I can reach out to anyone at BCG and find support to get it off the ground. I try and promote this same idea with my team members. There is a huge independence to explore and take on new projects, and this is one of my favorite parts about both BCG and my role. I want my team to be able to take advantage of that independence, while also being there for them when they need guidance.

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