Alumni Profile:
Paul Cichocki '91
“As a consultant with Bain and Company, I’ve chosen not to specialize. That means the pressure’s always on to come up to speed in different industries and functional areas,” explains operations management graduate Paul Cichocki ’91. Fortunately, he notes, a generalist approach is part and parcel of Bain’s culture. “But, I’m continually challenged and often humbled,” he adds. From Bain’s offices in Manhattan, the Isenberg School graduate works on a perpetual stream of cases in Manhattan, northern New Jersey, and southern Connecticut. Now a Manager at Bain, he’s done turnarounds, market segmentation strategies, service-oriented strategies, corporate strategic plans, and operations improvements. His (and Bain’s) clients have included a national credit card company, a Big three auto firm, a children’s book publisher, pharmaceutical and health care firms, private equity firms, and other businesses.
“My career got a terrific jump start from the Isenberg School’s operations management program,” Cichocki observes. “Professors Ali, Robinson, and Nagurney taught us to think analytically. We had lots of practice with problem solving to improve productivity and quality.” After graduation, Cichocki put those insights to work at a large Frito-Lay plant in Kirkwood, New York. During his 4+ years there as a department manager, he supervised different product lines (Fritos, Doritos, etc.), bringing best practices and continuous improvement to their production and packaging.
After that, Paul spent two years earning his MBA at the Harvard Business School, where he graduated with distinction. “My operations management education really came alive at HBS, because you’re constantly solving problems in case after case. The curriculum there added breadth to my previous work and education.” It also gave him one of the business world’s top academic credentials, which in 1997 helped get him in the door at Bain.
Today, Cichocki commutes to his job in New York from Mansfield, Massachusetts, where he lives with his wife, Cindy Ostrowski ’90 and their daughter, Carlie. A second child is on the way. Cindy is also a graduate of the Isenberg School’s operations management program. She worked in production for Deluxe check printers and was a manufacturing and then marketing manager for Veratec (a nonwoven fiber company and division of International Paper) in Walpole before taking a break to raise their daughter.
Commuting from Mansfield to Bain in New York is far less disruptive to Cichocki’s lifestyle than it might seem at first glance. The SOM alumnus enjoys uninterrupted weekend blocks in Mansfield, aims to work one day a week from home, and does not travel beyond the Greater New York/tri-state area.. Eighty-five percent of his assignments are in New York City itself. And there’s no denying the intellectual capital to be gained by hanging out at Bain with his fellow New York-based consultants. “Working with and exchanging ideas and experiences with my colleagues is incredibly rewarding,” he insists. “For all of us, this place is unbelievably invigorating.”