Elaine
Business Information Specialist Associate Consultant, Evanston office
Education
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
M.S. in Electrical Engineering, 2005
M.S. in Mechanical Engineering, 2002
Activities at USC: Vice President, Chinese Students and Scholars Association
TSINGHUA UNIVERSITY
B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, 1999
Memories of Tsinghua: College life at Tsinghua University is my most precious memory. I joined the University Art Group during my freshman year, and I met all my best friends through the organization.
Hometown
Taxing City, Jiangsu Province, China
ZS Career Path
Business Information Specialist, 2005
Business Information Specialist Associate Consultant, 2007
On the work
"I worked on an Incentive Compensation design and Quota Setting project for a US pharma company. At the beginning, I was the most junior associate in the team and learned a lot from my teammates and the project itself. Gradually I took more responsibilities, and later started to mentor new associates on the team.
"I worked on many China/Asia projects afterward. One of them is to design a training course on Sales Force Effectiveness for a Asia-Pacific client. In this project, my main responsibility was to develop the course material, including presentations and supporting material. This project is very different from the other ZS projects I worked on because it involves less technical skills and more consulting/communication skills. It is a challenging job to include the right content, present them in the right way, and customize the course so that the audience can learn and apply the content to their daily work afterward. The client gave us very good feedback regarding the course."
On ZS values
Do The Right Thing: "The most important thing in every successful project is to add value to our client and help them in the best possible way. For example, a client called at 6 pm on Friday with urgent requests. In this case the only right thing is to sacrifice a little bit and help the client. Of course, the client appreciated our help very much and wrote a thank-you letter afterward."
On life outside work
"I love hanging out with friends. Friendship is one of the most important things in my life. I also like food, movies, books, music and theatre."
On the Evanston office
"Evanston is a very cozy town with beautiful views. The Evanston office also has many intelligent and fun people."