Owl Have You Know

The Skills Every Great Consultant Needs feat. David Aldrich ’15

Published: 13 May 2026 at 10:00 Europe/London

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Episode notes

Following an upbringing as an expat in Jakarta, Indonesia, today’s guest is applying his unique worldview to the management consulting industry and helping clients solve complex business challenges with digital solutions.

David Aldrich, a Rice Business alum from the Professional MBA Class of 2015, serves on the Rice Business Alumni Association Board and is a practice lead at EPAM Systems, a management consulting firm where he focuses on energy and AI.

David joins co-host Brian Jackson ’21 to discuss his journey of growing up abroad and how the Rice MBA helped him pivot into consulting. They also explore how AI is reshaping the consulting industry and how Rice Business became not just his alma mater, but a lifelong community and support system.

Episode Guide:

00:00 Meet David Aldrich

02:00 Growing up in Jakarta

05:27 Landing in a Philosophy Major

07:38 Venturing Into Startup Sales at FlightAware

12:00 Pivoting to Consulting Through a Rice Professional MBA

18:09 Life at EPAM Systems

21:47 Finding Digital Solutions for Clients Through AI

28:55 What Makes a Good Consultant

31:36 The Ukraine War’s Impact on EPAM

37:09 Life Outside of Work

39:38 Giving Back to Rice

41:12 Alumni Breakfast Series

42:59 Future of AI Consulting

46:39 Closing

The Owl Have You Know Podcast is a production of Rice Business and is produced by University FM.

Episode Quotes:

An advice for students who want to get into consulting

17:12: My advice to students that want to go into consulting is you need to get really good at the AI piece, right? Study right now and get proficient with tools like Anthropic, tools like, you know, ChatGPT’s Codex, tools like, you know, Gemini’s Nano Banana, and, like, PaperBanana, the new one that they just announced. You have to be proficient in this space and be certified in this space, too. Like, Claude just announced a certification program. You can go get certified as, like, an Anthropic Claude architect. It’s free. You can do it. Like, these are things that I think you need to have on your resume to position yourself for value, regardless of what strategy you take. If you want to go into strategy consulting or Big Four or technology, having those new skills on how to create agent capabilities for clients is going to be the table stakes to separating yourself from, I think, other people who are also looking to go into consulting.

Adapting to AI with caution

26:15: I don’t think you should stop AI adoption because of that potential, but I think it’s important to understand that there’s things that you can do right now to enhance productivity by using these tool sets. There’s other things that require, I think, a little bit more due diligence, and is it the right decision to completely re-architect the way we work with agents? Because what’s good for Anthropic and how they might not be the best thing for your company long term.

What makes a good consultant

29:10: A good consultant is not afraid to ask questions, to push clients, and, kind of, challenge thinking. I think there’s an art to being able to do that without offending and pissing clients off, and understanding when you have the opportunity to, kind of, push hard to get clients thinking in a different way. I think the other key part is being able to be hungry for any opportunity and not scared to learn any new topic, right? Because the nature of consulting is that you’re being thrown into a bunch of different businesses, and no matter how much you’ve worked in a specific industry or at, like, businesses, there’s always going to be something new that they’re doing, whether it’s from a technology that they’re using, a process that they’re following, the nomenclature that they’re using.

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