Principal Adi started his ZS career as a summer intern in the Princeton office during his business school studies. Though he received an offer to return upon graduation, he decided to join a generalist management consulting firm instead.
“My internship with ZS convinced me that I wanted to pursue a career in consulting, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to focus on healthcare,” said Adi. “I had a great experience working across multiple industries at the other firm, but I wasn’t developing the depth of expertise that my clients would value.”
One fateful day, Adi’s errands brought him to a local hardware store where he ran into Mike, a principal from ZS’s Princeton office. As they caught up, Mike asked if Adi would be interested in returning to ZS. After a few discussions and interviews, Adi boomeranged back to ZS as a consultant where he worked on sales strategy and market research for several clients. When managers were needed to help drive the Value & Access Practice Area, Adi jumped at the opportunity and has been focused there for the last six years.
Now that we discussed what you do, let’s get to “the why”. How does ZS’s Core Purpose — together, we love solving complex problems to help companies and their customers thrive — resonate with you?
Solving complex problems to help companies and their customers thrive really resonates with me, especially the latter part. Consulting as an industry exists to help solve tough problems, which is what initially drew me to the profession. At times, however, there’s a tendency to lose sight of the end-user, and in the healthcare industry, that’s patients. The opportunity to help our clients ultimately give patients access to new and innovative therapies is the most satisfying part about my work. Clients will say that patients are at the center of everything they do, but if their actions don't reflect that, we have the opportunity to redirect their attention to that ultimate purpose. In some cases, it’s partnering with them in that journey and in others it’s simply reminding them where their focus needs to be.
If you had to choose one hashtag or just a few words to describe your ZS career, what would you say?
#Perseverance.
I spent the first few years of being a manager in a “non-traditional” manager role, where I was working on-site to help launch a product. The client really liked me, so what started as a six-month engagement was extended to a year-and-half. I was getting great experience, but I wasn’t managing any teams, so it was a weird introduction to playing the role of a ZS manager. After the engagement ended, I honestly had a hard time finding my working rhythm – I felt like I was jumping around too many clients without any focus. I even debated leaving ZS at that time to join the industry side. After joining the Value & Access team in late 2013, things gradually began to fall into place. I’m so glad I persevered through an initially bumpy journey because it led me to find my niche and embrace it wholeheartedly.
How do you balance life outside ZS with your career?
My wife Mayura and I have two kids – a 10-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter. As you can imagine, my time outside of work is spent with them. I've gotten better at managing my work-life balance over the years and ensuring I have dedicated time to spend with my family, especially during the work week. Though my weeks can be intense, we make it a point to eat dinner together (mostly!) – and discuss what we liked and didn’t like about our days, and what we could do differently tomorrow.
We love to travel and try to take some meaningful vacations every year. We already have our next spring break trip to Japan planned during cherry blossom season, so we’re really looking forward to that. I recently developed an interest in long distance running and just completed my first half marathon – the first of many, I hope. I'm also a big sports fan – I follow the National Football League (go Patriots!), college basketball (go Duke!) and the Indian cricket team.
