THIE IS THE FIRST TIME since she was 15 years old that Lala Qadir MPP 2004 hasn’t worked for the government, at least directly. A chemistry whiz kid who interned at the U.S. Naval Research Lab when she was still in high school and worked as a chemical and biological weapons analyst at the Department of State during college, she now gets her paychecks from a private management consulting company with offices on six continents and annual sales of $2.7 billion.

What happened?

As Qadir sees it, nothing that doesn’t make sense.

“Serving the public interest has been a consistent theme throughout my life, and I know at
some point I will return to the public sector,” she says. “In an ideal world, within five to ten years, I would like to be in a position where I can be intimately involved in helping to shape U.S. foreign policy and serve our national security interests. Public service is an opportunity and a challenge at the same time, and it’s that combination that compels me. But to be the best public servant possible, I want to understand the language of all sectors impacting public life — including the private — while gaining a variety of skills.”

Working as a senior consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton, which has, since World War II, focused half of its efforts on helping government agencies, Qadir feels she has found a way to gain those skills while still staying dedicated to public service.

“Booz Allen affords me the opportunity to gain private sector experience and an appreciation for the business culture while also enabling me to contribute my skills and background from the public sector,” she says. “This helps when you have a client who understands that you’ve been there too. It helps build credibility. It also lets me be involved in the public sector at a very high level. That’s what drove me toward this job.”

So far, her high-level involvement has included working with two federal government agencies. The first, just after she joined the company a few months after graduation in 2004, involved helping to shape long-term goals for the Office of the Chief Financial Officer for the General Service Administration. She currently helps the Department of Homeland Security optimize business operations and address personnel needs. Although Qadir says much of her dedication to public service comes from the influence of her parents, who both ended up in the public sector after emigrating from Pakistan and India, it was the Kennedy School, of all places, that shaped her decision to blend the sectors.

“Many of the faculty at the Kennedy School, plus the speakers and leaders who come through, have had careers where they’ve worked in different sectors, built diverse experiences, and achieved great things,” she says. “That is both inspiring and motivating.”

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