Jake Gordon ’19: ‘Driven with a Clear Purpose’
When Jake Gordon came to Lehigh University in fall 2019 as a member of the MS in Management (M2) class, he was driven with a clear purpose: to learn as much as he could about the more quantitative elements of business strategy and land a job at a top tier management consulting firm. Now, roughly 10-months, some long nights of studying and many case interviews later—Jake is proud that he will be working as a Management Consulting Analyst at Accenture—his dream firm. When talking about his M2 experience overall, he says “I definitely grew more with my business acumen and technical skills than I ever would have thought possible. I can’t wait to get out there in the world and apply the many interesting lessons I learned during M2.”
A Los Angeles, CA native originally, Jake graduated from Muhlenberg College in 2018 where he studied Business and Political Science. Out of the classroom he served as two year captain of the wrestling team, was heavily involved in philanthropy through his leadership fraternity, and most of all, fostered a unique passion for entrepreneurship in starting his own business.
Along with a co-founder, Jake founded dressedgps.com, an online e-commerce platform where students could rent or sell their underused outfits (like dresses, suits, or even themed sports jerseys) to other students and make a profit. After working on this business for over a year and growing it to multiple college campuses around the country—Jake realized that there was a lot more he wanted to learn about running and scaling a successful business.
To get that experience, he had the opportunity to work in Tel Aviv, Israel as a Venture Capital Analyst at Viola Growth, the largest VC in Israel with over $3 billion in assets under management. While working on investment deal due-diligence, industry/technology research, and product go-to-market strategies for Viola, he found a passion for the work and knew that he wanted to continue when he started his career. A friend recommended management consulting as an industry where he could do very similar types of projects- and and with that, Jake then became fixed on making it happen.
Returning to campus at Muhlenberg in the fall of 2017, he came to understand that breaking into consulting is incredibly challenging and shifted his focus to find a Masters program that could allow him to stand out as an applicant while also getting a stronger quantitative background.
“I knew that companies are looking for applicants that have strong technical skills and can both understand and use technology to do analysis. When I found Lehigh’s MS in Management program it felt like a perfect fit to launch my career and challenge myself.”
To get consulting experience the summer before the program started, Jake interned at the Lehigh University Small Business Development Center, helping local companies in the Lehigh Valley area with their most pressing strategic challenges.
The combination of his internship experiences, along with both his educational and athletic background with Muhlenberg and Lehigh positioned him as a strong applicant to get into consulting. But just looking good on paper in the highly competitive application process wasn’t going to be enough. Thats where the Lehigh Alumni network, where thousands of alumni occupying jobs at top consulting firms around the world, was leveraged by Jake as a pivotal tool in his candidacy. Using platforms such as LinkedIn and Lehigh Connects to set up calls to get advice on the interview process—multiple alumni personally stepped up to mentor and coach him to success.
“Without the Lehigh network—and particularly the many folks that took extensive time out of their days to mentor me and help with the overwhelming process of breaking into consulting, I don’t think it would have been possible. I am incredible grateful and am certainly in debt to pay it forward to the next wave of students seeking personal or career guidance.”
Jake starts his job at Accenture on July 10th in nearby Philadelphia and will be doing everything he can to make his Mountain Hawk and Muhlenberg families proud.
