You Can B Ambitious — Sandhya Sangappa ('24)

"You Can B Ambitious — Sandhya Sangappa (24', Data Analytics)"

Sandhya Sangappa is making strides to grow her skills and network and serve as a “bridge” between Bentley and the consulting industry. Her involvement with the Bentley Consulting Group has allowed her to form new relationships and gain real-world experience in a professional setting. In only her second year, Sandhya already holds multiple leadership positions. In addition to the consulting group, Sandhya is the Vice President of the Mathematical Sciences Club and an Ambassador of the Student Honors Council. Her ambition motivates her to step outside her comfort zone, not fear making mistakes, learn new things, and grow as an individual and as a leader.

As the Head of Corporate Development for the Bentley Consulting Group, Sandhya is responsible for establishing consulting projects with companies as a part of a capstone project for the group’s bootcamp program. Despite not really knowing much about what it was before coming to Bentley, Sandhya has grown very fond of consulting and appreciates how there is so much you can do with it. While many focus on management consulting, Sandhya finds herself excited by opportunities within data science and technology consulting, as well. She has even been able to lead a team to do analytics consulting for an MIT startup company out of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and she highly values this kind of real-world experience gained from the Consulting Group.

Being in a leadership role in such a large organization at Bentley comes with its challenges, though. Sandhya can find talking in front of their entire general body to be daunting, but her nerves are relieved when she remembers “that people are just here to learn” and it is an “honor to be able to teach them.” Even though Sandhya can feel discomfort in some of these scenarios, she knows that growth comes from doing things that make you feel scared.

The Bentley Consulting Group has given Sandhya a better idea of where she wants to go in her professional career. She has been able to take the skills she has learned through her courses and her extracurriculars and apply them when she worked as a data engineer for Duffl, a Y-Combinator startup out of Los Angeles, California, that “delivers high-margin and high-demand products to students on UC college campuses via electric scooters in CA.” Learning so much about consulting in a short span of time has instilled the skill of independent learning in Sandhya, as well as the knowledge of how to identify and take advantage of resources.

With a general body of about 150 members, and a bootcamp of about 30, Bentley’s Consulting Group has grown a lot since its establishment, and since Sandhya has joined, the group has been “re-engineered in a way that better prepares members to be consultants regardless of what type of consulting or what company” they choose to pursue. Sandhya hopes to see even more growth of the club in terms of membership, but also regarding the capacity to take on and deliver consulting projects for new firms. A goal of hers is to assist Bentley students in landing internships and jobs in consulting.

Sandhya has her future in mind and works hard at Bentley in both her classes and extracurriculars to develop skills that will aid her in her professional career. However, she is also mindful of living in the moment. “If you focus on the day-to-day, the accolades will come.” She values the importance of focusing on “school, extracurriculars, health, mind, and body” and knows that keeping these at the forefront of the mind, rather than things far in the future, will reap benefits. Sandhya advises others to network and form as many connections as possible. It is important to recognize, though, that it is not enough to just make a connection, “You have to maintain it.” By building and maintaining relationships with others, Sandhya can learn, grow, and help others.