Travus White

“A passionate and enthusiastic people leader who enjoys finding creative solutions to interesting problems.”

McKinsey Office: Philadelphia

Hometown: Jacksonville, Florida

MBA Program and Concentration: Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Healthcare Management

Undergraduate School, Major: University of Florida, Psychology

What was your favorite thing about your MBA program? I did my medical school at University of Florida, residency in Los Angeles, then matched into fellowship in pediatric cardiology at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. During the first year of my fellowship—March 2020—it was peak COVID. I started thinking about how I could impact healthcare in a different way.

Wharton’s joint MD/MBA program enabled me to think differently about problems I encountered in the hospital. I had done a quality improvement work in residency and fellowship, but seeing those problems from a different lens, from a different angle, was very interesting to me.

Describe your proudest pre-McKinsey accomplishment. Honestly, it was probably balancing my fellowship training with my MBA. There were a lot of things pulling me in different directions including trying to figure out exactly what I wanted my life to look like after my MBA while finishing up my fellowship.

Why did you choose McKinsey over other consulting firms or other industries? Working at McKinsey provides the opportunity to learn the toolkit, interact with leaders across healthcare spaces across the country, and work with like-minded people—which has been really special.

What are three words that describe working at McKinsey? Dynamic, people-focused, curious.

What were you most excited about when you accepted your full-time offer? What is something you didn’t know to be excited about then, but you are now? When I received my offer, I wasn’t sure what the lifestyle would be like. But I’ve actually found there’s quite a bit of flexibility. I travel a lot, but I still get time at home and feel that my time on the client side has been incredible and invaluable.

I work in our clinical operations space mostly on large hospital system transformations, which allows me to apply what I worked on in residency and fellowship. It’s exciting to improve access to clinical care for outpatients or help patients get home faster and safer from the hospital.

Who at the firm has been the most impactful mentor to you and why? Devi Mehrotra has been a mentor to me. She graduated from the healthcare management program, which she did during med school. She ended up being my first engagement manager as a full-time joiner. She’s extremely sharp, balances a million tasks with ease, but also really, really invests in people. She gave me a lot of autonomy, even early on, and she’s continued to invest in me.

If you could go back in time and give your younger self one piece of advice during the interview process, what would you say? Really lean on your own personal experiences. I think personal experience is extremely valid and almost always relevant. Like in casing, if you don’t know anything about a problem, you likely have life experiences with that situation, which can help you problem solve. We all come from different backgrounds-—not just our technical skills or education—-but all areas of diversity. Those contribute to your personal experience, which in turn influences how you think.

In what area(s) do you have considerable knowledge or expertise? Healthcare and clinical operations. I have done some life sciences work, but I am drawn more towards the provider space.

Tell us about an “only at McKinsey” moment you’ve had so far: We were developing a database to link physicians with patents they published, and encountered a challenge: Patents aren’t typically linked to identifiable doctor-specific numbers like their National Provider Identifier (NPI). Interestingly, we discovered a specialist at McKinsey whose PhD work involved mapping NPIs to the patent registry. We reached out to him, and he guided us through the process, offering insights and options for our project.

This is such a niche piece of expertise, but sure enough someone at McKinsey had this unique knowledge.

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