Chase Byington

“I’m people-centered, passionate about healthcare, and I love learning and the Midwest.”

McKinsey Office: Pittsburgh (Summered in Cleveland)

Hometown: Cincinnati, Ohio

MBA Program and Concentration: The Ohio State University (Fisher), STEM track with a Healthcare focus

Undergraduate School, Major: The Ohio State University, Neuroscience

What was your favorite thing about your MBA program? Fisher’s full-time MBA program has about 50 people per cohort. You get the big-campus feel of Ohio State, but with a really tight-knit community. It’s smaller and has individualized attention, and you can quickly find your people.

Every class is the same—50 people in the same lecture hall Monday through Thursday. You get deeply connected, and the sense of community is strong.

Can you describe your proudest pre-McKinsey accomplishment? In what area(s) do you have considerable knowledge or expertise? I did 16 case competitions during my MBA—sometimes more than one a month. I was proud of the commitment, but even more proud of helping turn it into culture. First year, our team competed internationally in Montreal, which was amazing. The next year, I mentored the new cohort and taught weekly sessions. That was really rewarding.

Through club leadership, I also pulled together resources to host a case competition for Equitas, a community pharmacy in Columbus focused on LGBTQ care. We wrote an entire case for them and hosted it for first-year students, bringing in judges from companies across the city. It was an opportunity that combined advocacy, business development, and community engagement.

Regarding my background: I studied neuroscience and worked as a medical scribe during and after undergrad. I was applying to med school when I started my MBA, planning to use it as a gap year. But I realized I loved the problem-solving side—especially case competitions—and when I connected with McKinsey, it felt like the right opportunity.

Why did you choose McKinsey over other consulting firms or other industries? McKinsey had a strong local presence in Cleveland, and the Midwest offices felt very people-focused and dedicated to the region. It was easy to get connected.

I also spoke with dozens of leaders at the firm who have MDs and asked them directly whether I should pursue medicine or consulting. They told me: if you want to hone a single craft for your entire career, go into medicine. If you want to learn about many different things and see the broader landscape, go into business. That resonated with me. I’m not the type who wants to lock into one subject forever. I enjoy moving across sectors. I generally stay in healthcare, but I love the diversity of work consulting offers.

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? For me it was the idea of endless opportunities. There are so many amazing people across the world at McKinsey, and you don’t know where your career will take you. Tomorrow you could work on something completely new. That was exciting and invigorating.

A pleasant surprise was how flexible the firm is. I wanted to set up a case competition for Ohio State, reached out to recruiting in the Pittsburgh/Cleveland offices, and the answer was, “Yes, go for it.” If you have the drive and there’s value, the resources are usually there to make what you want happen, happen.

Can you share a time you received mentorship while at McKinsey? How has it made you better? Mentorship shows up in many ways every day. An example is working with Carlos Pardo Martín. He would print out our decks, lay them on the table, and go through them with pen and sticky notes—very hands-on, very old-school McKinsey.

It was inspiring. It felt collaborative, like we were solving together. The best mentorship moments are when hierarchy falls away and leaders act as true thought partners. Everyone in the room has a voice that matters.

If you could go back in time and give your younger self one piece of advice during the interview process, what would you say? Take a step back and don’t get overwhelmed. Walk in with hypotheses but stay open. Just talk through the problems with the interviewer in a collaborative way. It’s not about being right or wrong; it’s about alignment and next steps. That’s exactly what we do every day at the firm.

What’s something you’ve learned here that you know will be useful for your entire career? It’s easy for smart people to identify problems and get stuck on them. McKinsey teaches you to reframe problems into opportunities and next steps.

In medicine you can run a lab test. In business, you can’t. It’s closer to sociology—challenging, messy, and human. The key skill is pivoting quickly: pressure-testing ideas with experts, rerouting fast, and not sitting on a problem for a week.

What’s an example of a time when a teammate challenged you, inspired you, or pushed you to think bigger or go further than you would have on your own? With new hires coming in, I’ve been thinking a lot about how risky it is to start believing you’re an expert. Inevitably, that’s when you stop learning. It’s that curve where you think you’ve learned a lot but then realize how much you don’t know. Having brand-new people on the team makes you reconsider assumptions you had set in place and realize those “rules” aren’t as fixed as you thought.

Leaders push in a different way. I’ve heard many frame it in this way: “What would we need to believe to make this opportunity real?” It’s not about assuming an opportunity is possible, but about mapping what it would take. Then you can go line-by-line. Maybe one thing is unrealistic, but maybe another part can be shifted to make it work.

That combination—new hires asking the base-level questions that make you go back and check yourself, and leaders stretching you with those “what would it take?” questions— gives you a comprehensive view. It pushes you to rethink what you thought you knew and gets you to better answers than you’d ever reach alone.

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