From McKinsey to GiveDirectly and back again (with more skills!)

We caught up with Carolina Toth, GiveDirectly's Senior Chief of Staff and ex-McKinsey Engagement Manager. Throughout Carolina’s career, she’s alternated between working at McKinsey and GiveDirectly and shares with us the ways in which each career phase helped her grow as a professional and achieve her impact goals.

Could you tell us about GiveDirectly’s mission and theory of change? 

GiveDirectly is about as simple as its name. We take cash from donors, and we give it directly to people in extreme poverty, giving them agency and autonomy to spend it in whatever way they want. We do this to accelerate the end of extreme poverty.

The theory of change is that people in extreme poverty want to improve their lives and don’t need any additional information or guidance on how to do that. If given the cash, they can make life-changing investments that will end their own extreme poverty. 

Fun fact: cash has the largest body of evidence of any anti-poverty intervention, with 315+ randomized controlled trials studying its impacts—and so it’s less of a theory of change than a known phenomenon! 

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What are your goals as the Senior Chief of Staff, and what does your day-to-day look like?

I partner closely with the President to coordinate and organize the top few layers of the organization - attending all of his 1:1 meetings with direct reports and setting agendas for our regular management meetings and board meetings for about 40% of my time. The other 60% is for project-based work, making a process improvement, or supporting a cross-functional effort - for example, re-doing our budgeting or goal-setting processes.

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What was it like transitioning from consulting to high-impact direct work? 

Leaving a job for me is always a very dislocating experience - but you find yourself again on the other side very, very quickly. Depending on how invested you are in your work, it becomes a big part of your social life and consumes so much of your brain space each day. The anxiety and/or sense of loss or grief comes right before you leave the old job - and I think that was true of my first transition.

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How did you first learn about GiveDirectly?

My first exposure was when my then-boyfriend/now-husband sent me an early GiveWell review of GiveDirectly back in 2012. I had done an internship and thesis research in Kenya and had become obsessed with M-Pesa [Africa's most successful money-sending service] as a technology.My research was on how local people and international development agencies had very different understandings of the same problem. GiveDirectly was a perfect match for these interests. 

I’m interested in the humility of cash (who am I as a donor to decide what you need?) and the justice of it - it seems fitting that very privileged people should give to those less privileged. These elements are, of course, harder to measure. A good way to measure the value of these elements is in the mental health gains of recipients (turns out people feel better when driving their destiny), which also seems to be undervalued in global development.

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How do you maintain motivation in your efforts to do good?

I’m a Christian, and I think this helps a lot because it provides a set of practices that invite me to reflect on my life, consider how to do better, provide community, and weather setbacks with a broader perspective. 

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When you first joined McKinsey, what were you hoping to get out of your time there? 

I wanted to learn many transferable skills that I could use in a social impact job after that. If possible, I wanted to find corners of McKinsey doing social impact work so that I could pursue this goal within McKinsey. 

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In what ways did your experience meet and differ from your expectations of working in consulting?

I enjoyed consulting a lot more than I thought I would! You can see that in the pattern of where I’ve worked: McKinsey, GiveDirectly, McKinsey again, the Behavioral Insights Team (which is behavioral science consulting for social impact), and then finally back to GiveDirectly. 

I did learn a lot of transferable skills for any situation. The early years really shaped how I think about problems and projects in a way that has proven very helpful. 

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Reflecting on your progression from a Business Analyst at McKinsey to a Senior Chief of Staff at GiveDirectly, what key learnings have shaped your career trajectory?

First round at McKinsey - essential “how to operate in a workplace” skills, client management, problem-solving, PowerPoint, and Excel skills.

First round at GiveDirectly - team and people management, working in a different cultural context, building and monitoring steady processes, accounting and nonprofit financial management, and fundraising.

Second round at McKinsey -  higher-level project management, client management, and self-management. Balancing life as a working mom. 

Behavioural Insights Team: I learned more about behavioral science as a field and about whole-organization and team management.

Second round at GiveDirectly - To be determined! 

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‍How do you think consultants' skill sets can best be leveraged for solving the world's most pressing problems?

Consultants’ skill sets are very flexible - knowing how to run a project well and how to problem-solve will come up in any and every job. You need to take this flexibility and hone it into something useful and more specialized over time - whether you stay in consulting and specialize in an industry or function or whether you go outside. 

Many of the world’s most pressing problems cannot be solved with a client-service model - in many situations, there is a need for disruption, innovation, or new efforts beyond what a consultant can achieve. 

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What advice would you give those passionate about impact who are considering working in consulting?

Consulting is a straightforward way to gain flexible skills. However, you do risk acclimating yourself to a lifestyle that will not be your forever lifestyle through your salary, perks, clients to impress, etc. 

Make conscious choices to remain connected to other communities and recognize when a lifestyle choice is needlessly lavish. The human desire to match your peers and consider whomever you are around as ‘normal’ is real.  

Don’t worry if you are already acclimated - humans are resilient, and you can adjust again. 

Some of the most important choices, I think, are to live in a neighborhood and send your kids to a school that is not so expensive. 

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