Josue Sanchez

“Lifelong learner fueled by curiosity, redefining standards, challenging norms, and loving every step of it!”

McKinsey Office: Miami

Hometown: Union City, New Jersey

MBA Program and Concentration: Harvard Business School

Undergraduate School, Major: Cornell University, Economics

What was your favorite thing about your MBA program? My favorite thing about HBS was certainly the people. Within the same week I could be having lunch at Spangler Hall with someone advising the president of India on COVID-19 vaccine distribution, then in the classroom with 90 classmates from different backgrounds having an engaging conversation, and then traveling with friends to Aruba by the end of that same week.

Even while traveling, you’re with people studying business with you, and you’re applying it in real time. A breaking news article pops up on someone’s phone, and suddenly you’re in a whole conversation about it. That was the best part—people, in very different contexts, always something happening, always something to learn.

Can you describe your proudest pre-McKinsey accomplishment? In what area(s) do you have considerable knowledge or expertise? Being an immigrant and moving to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic came with its challenges but also its rewards. I started at Google and was the first in my extended family to have that kind of role. It came with privilege both professionally and financially. I’m very proud to have been able to leverage that and provide for my family. It’s a running theme in my career and one I want to continue.

At Cornell I studied economics, went abroad to Cambridge to focus on development economics, and wrote my dissertation on Haitian migrants in the Dominican Republic. I also started a finance publication called Cornell Equity Research. At Google, I joined a rotational program and worked with clients like Procter & Gamble, Ford Motors, Target, and Samsung. I focused on selling YouTube advertising and pushing clients to rethink their marketing spend. That gave me exposure across industries and sparked my decision to go to business school and then into consulting to learn about business more comprehensively.

Why did you choose McKinsey over other consulting firms or other industries? I’d been in tech and wanted to accelerate my learning and progression. Consulting seemed like the best way to do that.

During recruiting, I had the opportunity to choose between Bain, BCG, and McKinsey. I built a model comparing them on culture, learning, career progression, and a few other things. I found myself re-working the numbers so McKinsey would rank highest. My gut was already telling me this was the place.

The global element was also huge for me. My internship was in Costa Rica—the only thing I wanted out of the summer was an international experience. Now I’m staffed in Mexico, where I’ve been for five months, practicing my Spanish and tying it back to my Hispanic roots.

What were you most excited about when you accepted your offer? What surprised you later? I was so thrilled to be done with recruiting. It’s a time-intensive, consuming process full of uncertainty. On top of that, I was the youngest in my MBA class—26 at graduation—so I felt like I was competing with people who had six more years of experience than I did for the same job. When I got the offer, it was a sigh of relief…but also just jubilee.

What surprised me later was, again, the people. After business school, I worried I wouldn’t have those same conversations that weren’t tied to a specific project. I thought consulting would be hyper-focused on the client and nothing else. But I’ve found those enriching, interesting conversations I had at HBS here too.

I also had to unlearn some misconceptions. McKinsey has a reputation for long hours and being super tough. Yes, the work is hard, but the people are human. There’s a lot of openness making sure the work is done in a way that’s sustainable. That was not something I expected.

Can you share a time you received mentorship while at McKinsey? How has it made you better? Alex Rodriguez, now a senior partner in Miami, comes immediately to mind.

When I first met him, I was in the discovery phase asking questions like this: What is consulting? Why stick around this long? He told me it’s sometimes rainbows and butterflies, sometimes not, but even on the cloudy days you’re learning and growing. That stuck with me.

As an intern, he was my summer sponsor—my quarterback. He found my study, coached me, gave me candid feedback, and showed me how to improve. Now, even as a first-year associate, I’ve been able to call him on cloudy days and say, “Is this normal? Do I need to change something? Who should I talk to?” Despite being a senior partner now, he’ll take 30 minutes to listen, break down what I’m saying, and give me next steps. That mentorship has been priceless.

If you could go back in time and give your younger self one piece of advice during the interview process, what would you say? I would tell myself: Don’t spend your whole winter break just casing. I skipped trips and was in the weeds. Yes, prep, but also travel if you can, go home, be present with family. You’ll be better off showing up with balance.

What’s something you’ve learned here that you know will be useful for your entire career? The components of a successful transformation. The preparation portion takes time—bringing in experts, identifying and persuading stakeholders, determining the levers to use. But once the preparation is complete, the execution should happen quickly. I learned this theoretically in business school, but here I’ve lived it.

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? On my second or third study, when I was still figuring out what the “consulting toolkit” even was, I had a tough engagement manager. Every time I showed up with a page or model, he’d say, “This is great, but let’s add three more pages, do more analysis, and reframe this first one.” It felt like he was blowing up my work and multiplying the task by three.

It was a difficult time—running through mud, one step forward, three steps back. But by the end, with his constant challenging, we had built a 100-page playbook to take a very innovative pricing tool from one location to a national scale. That had potential for ~$150 million in impact.

It was like a hike: hours of sweating and wanting to know when it will be over. But then you reach the summit and see what you’ve actually built. That experience showed me how far I could go when someone pushed me past my limits.

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