As the first African American woman to be named partner at McKinsey and Company, the management consulting firm, Pamela Thomas-Graham '85 "takes it almost as a responsibility to be a role model. I try to hold myself to high standards," she explains, "and try to balance my personal life and my professional life, so people actually look at me and say, 'This is a job I would like to have.'"

The first person from her Detroit high school to attend Harvard, Thomas-Graham stayed on to earn joint

Pamela Thomas-Graham '85.

J.D.-M.B.A. degrees in 1989. She took summer jobs in law and investment banking but chose management consulting as a career because "it seemed to provide a good mix of the things you learn in law school and business school both." Consumer and database marketing are now her primary professional specialties.

Thomas-Graham likes the fact that management consulting is "a very people-intensive profession. You spend a lot of time rolling up your sleeves to help other people solve a problem. I find that very satisfying, both intellectually and emotionally." It's also rewarding, she adds, "when you can take things you learn in a business environment and apply them in a pro-bono context"--as she did recently in helping a civil-rights organization rethink its mission--"because that's such an important thing to get right."

In Thomas-Graham's experience, the consulting industry can be something of an enigma to minority students, so she is working to rectify the situation through McKinsey's recruiting program. "Our efforts involve reaching out to people," she explains, "making sure that they know who we are, and that we're interested in them." The same principles also inform her service on the boards of two organizations directed at African American teenagers, Girls Inc. and the East Harlem School at Exodus House. "I think it's easy for these students to see that a person who looks like them can be an entertainer, an athlete, or even a lawyer," she says. "I think it's very important for them to know that someone who looks like them can also be a businessperson and influence some part of the economy."

In her field, Thomas-Graham admits, "One of the things you have to trade off is how much time you're going to have for personal things"--like her longstanding interest in theater. She jokes that she wasn't able to turn her active career in the law school drama society into an acting gig when Member of the Club, a book by her husband, Lawrence Otis Graham, J.D. '88, was recently made into a movie. But she has found, through her professional and community work, that wearing a suit often has a greater impact than wearing a costume.