Combination of Skills to Solve a Problem
Tell us about a time you needed a combination of skills to solve a problem.
In my third year at RTF, I had just been promoted to senior consultant when I joined the project team for an engagement involving Bed&Board, a $900 million retail giant that was heading for bankruptcy. Bed&Board’s assets required three separate sale processes during the bankruptcy process, and any portion of the company that wasn’t sold would likely be liquidated.
Bed&Board struggled for months to find buyers for the different components of the business, but eventually two prospective buyers entered the picture. My boss suggested bringing in transaction specialists with to carve-out the business and integrate the different business units into new owners’ existing organizations. However, Bed&Board’s CFO said they couldn’t afford the additional fees and left it to me and my team to figure out how to divide up the Bed&Board’s business units.
For the next four months, I used several skills that were new for me: I led large discussions with client executives, developed and contributed solutions to complex problems with real implications, and collaborated with multiple stakeholders simultaneously. At first it felt overwhelming, but I leveraged my bankruptcy expertise and relied on the specialized knowledge of my client, who was as overwhelmed as I was but had a far better understanding of their own business.
I led a team of 15, including members of Bed&Board’s executive and procurement team, to divide up their vendor relationships. I had experience managing vendor relationships and evaluating bankruptcy contracts, but this project was far more complex and challenging. We had court deadlines to navigate, and deadlines for each sale process were staggered across the calendar, so we needed to take a systematic approach while weighing the implications of each decision.
Every day, I met with my team, evaluating each of Bed&Board’s 300 vendors and contracts individually. Simultaneously, I worked with Bed&Board’s accounts payable team in India to negotiate with those vendors regarding outstanding balances Bed&Board owed, which needed to be paid before the sales closed. Once we finished our evaluation, we presented our assessment to the management team of both buyers, and further refined our assessment based on their feedback.
After four months of heavy analysis, coordination, and negotiation, we finalized a mix of solutions that avoided total liquidation: the new buyers, a competing retail giant, retained 90% of Bed&Board’s existing workforce, over 5000 employees. I had built close relationships with the people at Bed&Board, and seeing them keep their jobs was, for me, the greatest achievement in this project. At Kellogg, I’m excited to build these skills further by studying with Professor Max Schmelling, whose course, “Private Equity’s Greatest Hits” was recommended by Shmax Melling (’24), to continue to strengthen my ability to support companies undergoing restructuring.