What a Theatre Charity Taught Me About Consulting

Why I Chose the E&I Capstone Project Over a Dissertation 

When the E&I Capstone gave me the choice between a live client project and a dissertation, I picked the project with my eyes closed. I'd spent a year collecting frameworks and wanted to know if they held up against a real organisation, and I'd been considering consulting as a career and needed to find out if it was actually for me. I wanted the answer. 

The Brief That Didn't Behave 

Did it match my expectations? No, and that was the point. The Capstone, run through the Queen Mary Entrepreneurship Hub, paired us with a real organisation, and I expected a clean exercise: segment the audiences, benchmark competitors, price the range, treat Clean Break like any other client. Clean Break, the startup we worked with, isn't any other client. It's a charity that has spent over four decades supporting women affected by the criminal justice system. My toolkit was built to monetise a brand. This was a mission, and it asked to be understood before it could be sold. 

Knowing When to Put the Toolkit Down 

The main challenge was the tension inside the brief itself: make money without compromising the mission. The hard part was never applying the tools. It was judging when not to. I felt this most when I watched Clean Break’s commissioned play, The Empty at Tara Theatre, the first play I'd ever seen. The room was completely immersed, and there was no merchandise anywhere in the building. My trained instinct called it a missing revenue stream. Sitting in that audience, I understood why that instinct was wrong. 

The Skill I Actually Grew 

The technical ones came as expected: segmentation, benchmarking, pricing. But the skill I actually grew was discovery: asking before announcing, holding my own conclusions at arm's length, understanding the mission before recommending anything. My emotional intelligence and active listening grew a lot too, and both helped more than I expected on this project. 

From Profit-Led to Mission-Led 

My view of entrepreneurship shifted from profit-led to mission-led. Not that money stopped mattering, but that it became the engine rather than the goal. 

The Question No Framework Could Answer 

This project answered a question no framework could: not ‘can I do consulting’ but ‘is consulting for me.’ The parts most people find tedious, the clarifying questions, the re-checking, the listening were the parts I liked most. That told me more about my career than any module could. 

Where It Takes Me 

I now have a real client engagement to speak to, the judgment to know when a framework helps and when it gets in the way, and proof of the direction I'd only suspected. In one word, the experience was revealing. Thank you to my team, Dhruv and Quyen, staff from Queen Mary, Dr Lilian Schofield (Module Lead), Dr Gloria Appiah, Dr Anna Glarin and Jodie Bispham, to the team at Clean Break, and to the Queen Mary Entrepreneurship Hub. 

A Final Thought for Future Students 

Pick the project that scares you a little, and choose the client you don't yet know how to help. The frameworks will be there when you need them, but the real learning lives in the moments they fall short, when you have to put the toolkit down and actually listen. Say yes to the live project. Ask more than you answer. And let the work tell you who you are, not just what you can do.