A lot of what consultants do all day—as well as who their clients are—is intentionally kept a secret.

While McKinsey worked with e-cigarette maker Juul, it also consulted for the US Food and Drug Administration's department regulating vaping and nicotine.

Consulting firms also often keep their clients private to maximize the sectors they’re able to secure contracts for and avoid any perceived conflicts of interest.

A list of client work examples from McKinsey includes a case study on how the firm helped Starbucks design more inclusive stores, and many more.

From 2017 to 2021, the consulting firm McKinsey took in $77M in consulting contracts with just the US Food and Drug Administration alone.

This podcast episode discusses the consultancy industry’s rise and how these firms make billions of dollars, even amid significant scandals.

The author argues that consulting firms are so valuable to the companies that hire them because the clients don’t have to take the blame for any changes the consulting firm decides to make within the organization.

A deep-dive article from Harvard Business Review argues that many clients of consulting firms need to ask more from these firms and to understand their capabilities, which range from accounting to growth strategy and more.

Some also refer to this group as “MBB.” As a nearly century-old company that’s well known for its prestige, McKinsey has some famous alumni—including Chelsea Clinton and Sheryl Sandberg. The other two consulting firms in the Big Three have employed some famous faces over the years, too.

The “Big Three” consulting firms—McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group, and Bain & Company—and the “Big Four”—Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), KPMG, and EY—actually have a lot in common these days. But it wasn’t always that way.

Consulting is a popular career path for today’s top college students. A student newspaper article dives into a Yale University student’s brief love affair with the consulting industry, starting with a depiction of the interview process.

Arthur D. Little Inc. was the first management consulting firm. Starting as a chemical analysis lab, the firm evolved to play pivotal roles in projects like developing the NASDAQ system and supporting Apollo 11.

This video explains the basics of consulting, as well as what it's actually like to be a consultant—from the lifestyle and hours to compensation.

The "Big Four" refers to Deloitte, PwC (also known as PricewaterhouseCoopers), KPMG, and EY. They more recently built out their business consulting practices in addition to accounting services.

The “Big Three” and the “Big Four” consulting firms especially are known for high pay. Top firms often offer entry-level salaries well over $100K per year.

Marina Keegan was a recent Yale graduate set to start her career writing for The New Yorker when she died in a car accident. But before her death, she wrote an essay criticizing the consulting industry's impact on not only her classmates' lives but also their ability to impact the world at large.

Specifically, according to an article from careers site The Muse, a management consultant can be loosely defined as someone who is “a problem solver for some of the more complex business and org structures out there.”

Every year, top consulting firms head to career fairs at Ivy League universities like Yale across the country. They end up recruiting a significant population of the student body by graduation.

In the consulting firm McKinsey's 2022 "American Opportunity Survey," 36% of employed respondents (about 58 million Americans) classified themselves as "independent workers." But they're not all thrilled about their current professional status.

At some point in their careers, many investment bankers work on facilitating or advising clients on mergers or acquisitions. From analyzing industry group trends to deal negotiations, an M&A in investment banking explainer outlines how investment bankers handle these business transactions.

Research published in December 2025 in the journal Health Affairs indicates that these retainer-fee care models are expanding across the country. Concierge medicine charges monthly or annual fees, as does direct primary care (which doesn't take insurance).

Annual fees for concierge practices can range widely. At the lower end, Amazon's One Medical costs $199 (which can drop to $99 if you're a Prime member) and four figures for MDVIP and SignatureMD. Annual fees jump to $10,000 or more for options like Massachusetts General Hospital's concierge practice.

Data Horizons Research put the value of this global market at $18.9B in 2021, but anticipates massive growth by 2032, with North America comprising the majority of the market. Chronic health conditions, their analysis suggests, will be a contributing factor to this growth as medically complex individuals seek more personalized care.

One of the unexpected medical costs retirees are facing is thousands of dollars a year for concierge care membership fees. A typical annual fee can average $3,500. Concierge care is an option that's particularly popular among older adults with more complex health needs and in some areas of the country doctors are increasingly turning away Medicare patients and only accepting new patients willing to pay annual fees for concierge medicine.

Three companies make up over 90% of the US market share around voting systems, and like any company, they're priorities aren't always aligned with the public's. Dive into the industry of voting machines in this investigation piece from the Guardian.

Subscription-based practices sometimes don't accept insurance and they also require annual membership fees which can add up to thousands of dollars per year. In return, patients are promised more personalized care and round-the-clock access to medical providers. As doctors transition to concierge care, this retainer-based medicine model is forcing people to choose between searching for new primary care providers or paying hefty fees.

With that kind of statistic as a backdrop, proponents of concierge medicine practices argue that concierge services could help keep doctors in medicine and thus help to address physician shortages.

Watch experts weigh in on the prevailing business models of vaccine production, including how the Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted the industry for good in this 20-minute video from Financial Times.

A joint investigation by The Examiner and The Washington Post found that food, beverage, and supplement corporations and groups have paid registered dietitians on social media to promote content that goes against decades of scientific evidence on...

Between 2000 and 2018, PE's total investment in healthcare ballooned from $5B to $100B. While healthcare systems originally began consolidating as a solution to navigating complex regulations (and to make working with insurance companies easier), research suggests that private equity has both increased patient costs and decreased the quality of care in hospitals and doctors' offices.

Back in 2012, a University of Southern California researcher published a decade-long study in which she observed investment bankers’ health. The results weren’t exactly stellar. Every individual the researcher observed developed a stress-related physical or emotional ailment within several years of working in investment banking.

Concierge medicine practices offer more opportunities for same-day visits and longer meeting times with doctors in exchange for annual membership fees on top of typical insurance payments, copays, and deductibles.

However, when a product is recalled, the US FDA reveals the manufacturer. Business Insider dug into Trader Joe's recalled product history to figure out who is making its food. As it turns out, it's a multitude of suppliers, including big companies that make food for other grocers, such as PepsiCo's Naked Juice and Conagra.

We perceive ourselves as rational decision-makers—but research about our consumption habits suggest we are easily played by clever marketing. Here's how big brands design their branding to keep you coming back.

Under the best circumstances, PE firms can increase a company's value using strategies that might not be suitable for public companies facing pressure for immediate shareholder returns. But PE firms are often portrayed negatively due to the aggressive strategies they sometimes use to cut inefficiencies. As PE has grown, many firms have changed their strategies, shifting away from aggressive scaling to more integrated acquisitions.

In a world that is rapidly becoming more digitized, low and middle-income countries (LMICs) are trailblazing a path to cohesive digital healthcare ecosystems. This article from McKinsey & Company analyzes the different digital healthcare strategies...

Palantir's government contracts have steadily increased since Donald Trump was re-elected in 2024, moving from intelligence and defense to public health and assisting in Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency efforts.

Stocks are added to the S&P 500 by a secret selection committee that meets regularly to assess which companies can remain in the index, which companies need to be added, and which companies no longer meet the criteria. The members of the committee used to be public, but S&P Global decided to keep its members confidential after companies sent packages, letters, and gifts to try to make it into the index.

Created by the consulting company NOBL, this AI generator mimics and mocks the vague and impersonal presentations sometimes shared by consulting firms.

That's partly because there isn't readily available stock information, and financial accounting is kept behind closed doors. Typically, determining the value of a private company involves, among other things, closely comparing the private company with its competitors.

This FRONTLINE documentary follows federal prosecutors as they used anti-racketeering laws to convict executives at Insys Therapeutics, a pharmaceutical company that bribed doctors to overprescribe a fentanyl painkiller.

Some research suggests that the average wait time for a primary care visit in major US cities can be 21 days. Subscription-based medical practices offer faster in-person and virtual appointment options, but the price barrier to this type of service may worsen inequity in healthcare access.

That's the rough estimate from Zirui Song, a Harvard Medical School professor who focuses on health care policy and studies the growth of concierge medicine. He and other researchers found that between 2018 and 2023 the number of concierge and direct primary care practices (concierge care without accepting insurance) grew by 83% and the number of clinicians in those practices increased by 78%.