The University of Chicago Laboratory Schools

Management Consulting Executive

Adrienne King, ’82

Being employed by the same company from which she started her career fresh out of college over thirty years ago was not part of the plan for Adrienne King, ’82. As a matter of fact, neither was developing a career in management consulting.

“Coming out of college, my initial goal was to get a job in consumer marketing,” King, currently the executive vice president of Americas Talent Management at Bain & Company, shared during an interview for Beyond the Bio, a podcast that dives deeper into the stories of some of Bain’s many extraordinary employees. “[I] just tagged along to an info session with this company I’d never heard of—Bain & Company—that did this business that I’d never heard of, which was management consulting; [I] thought it sounded interesting…and the next thing I know, I’m moving out to Boston as an AC [Associate Consultant] in the Class of 1986.”

Since then, King has grown throughout the company in a number of different roles and in different cities. While attending business school at Stanford, she met her now-husband and soon transferred to Bain’s San Francisco office where she worked as a consultant for two years. As she planned a wedding and a move back to Chicago, she thought her journey with Bain was coming to an end. But as she entered the office of her director to resign, she was invited to help launch what would soon become the Bain & Company Chicago office.

She was also integral in the creation of Blacks at Bain (BABs), which is dedicated to the recruitment, professional development, and retention of Black professionals at the firm. Though it existed informally for years, it became a formal organization in the late 1980s and has successfully developed targeted initiatives to increase the number of African Americans at the firm and ensure their professional success.