Consulting Innovation Lab
Applying consulting methodologies to real-world projects
The NYU SPS Consulting Lab provides emerging professionals across the Division of Programs in Business with fundamental consulting skills as a component of their professional development. Whether they are engaged as internal or external consultants or apply consulting methodologies to their work, DPB students will benefit from the experience of envisioning and executing an end-to-end project that engages multiple disciplines from its inception to its delivery.
What We Do
The overarching goal of the DPB Consulting Lab is to engage students across various programs in the development and refinement of consulting methodologies to enrich their learning experience and broaden their impact on their workplaces. The DPB Consulting Lab has the following objectives.
Integration
Provide an integrated approach to today’s business issues by providing DPB students with an opportunity to work across programs and geographies to solve the complex business problems of today. An interdisciplinary course provides an opportunity to interact with consulting professionals on developing consulting.
Innovation
The Lab serves as a catalyst for students and professionals to ideate and test innovative models for developing consulting competencies, to redesign the consulting experience, and to enhance the return on investment for consulting engagements. It will be an incubator for both the process (delivery modes) and content (subject matter expertise) of consultative work.
Implementation
As the engine and implementation arm for other SPS initiatives, the Lab can serve as a testing ground for ideas incubated elsewhere in NYU SPS. Students will deliver an evidenced-based consulting project from problem definition, data gathering and analysis, alternative development, scenario modeling, and recommended actions including a fully embedded change strategy to their SPS clients.
Consulting Innovation Lab Director
Dr. Mary Cianni
Clinical Associate Professor of Organizational Consulting
Director, Consulting Innovation Lab
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Mary is a Clinical Associate Professor in the MS Executive Coaching & Organization Consulting (ECOC) program at New York University, accountable for the design and delivery of the consulting elements of the program. She joined the NYU faculty from Korn Ferry where she was a Senior Client Partner and Global Leader of the Integrated Transformation Solutions. Previously, Mary spent 18 years at Willis Towers Watson serving in a variety of leadership roles including Global Leader, Mergers & Acquisitions and Northeast Leader, Change Implementation. In her consulting roles, Mary worked with clients across industries on transforming their cultures and workplaces. She spent time in the corporate world as a senior consultant at a financial services company and as Global Head, HR for a specialty pharmaceutical company.
Prior to beginning her consulting career, Mary was a tenured Associate Professor of Management at the Sigmund Weis School of Business, Susquehanna University. She launched the Mentor Program for women students and was a founding member of the Women Studies Program. She now serves as a Trustee on Susquehanna’s Board of Directors.
Mary publishes articles on a range of HR topics including diversity & inclusion in professional and peer-reviewed journals. She is the lead author of two chapters in Making Mergers Work. In March 2024, her book The Consultant’s Compass: Navigating success with courage, curiosity and compassion was published by Forbes Books. Mary has been featured in a variety of media outlets and is a frequent guest speaker and panelist at professional conferences. She holds a PhD in Psychology from Penn State University.
