Created by two women who bravely leaped into the male-dominated world of management consulting -- after interviewing dozens of consultants about their first-year experiences, ​we created Next Steps to bring visibility to the experiences of women and BIPOC working in corporate America.

What's it About? 

Similar in tone to HBO’s “Silicon Valley,” this series follows people-pleaser Grace Peabody as she embarks on her first job after graduation. Grace had a perfect SAT score, graduated from Yale, and even plays the damn viola. As a black woman in management consulting, she’s desperate to not be seen as the ‘diversity hire.’ She is willing to jump through any hoop that comes her way -- but at what cost? The first season of Next Steps follows her misadventures on her first case in Butte, Oklahoma. The lessons she learns from her co-workers will make you laugh... and they will make you cry. 

Why Us? 

While working long hours in corporate America, we asked ourselves… “what could we do to fill up the thirty minutes of free time we have a day?” So we decided to write a pilot. We both love to create and decided to pull our crafts together (screenwriting/directing/acting/producing). Drawing from our experiences working in management consulting, we created Next Steps. Together, we wrote the script, and now we’re ready to produce it. Rachel draws on joke-writing skills that she honed at UCB and will take the helm as the director of Next Steps. Erica used production skills to move Next Steps through development and will use her acting chops to bring Grace’s best frenemy, Lexi, to life.

Why Are We Doing This? 

​Lured by thoughts of fancy dinners, first-class flights, and company AMEX cards? Welcome to the world of long hours, crippling imposter syndrome, and shoes that hurt. 

After conducting a survey of Harvard seniors, The Harvard Crimson reported that while 15.43 percent of the graduating class goes into consulting, only 0.55 percent want to be in that field 10 years later. No other industry is skewed to that degree. 

Both Erica and Rachel were going through college, unsure what they wanted to do with their lives. However, when junior year hit, management consulting became the golden ticket to success, happiness, and fulfillment. 

We spent late nights preparing for case interviews, hundreds of dollars we didn’t have on business formal clothes, and evenings in conference rooms being wowed by fancy information sessions hosted by consulting firms. 

We both ended up taking jobs in consulting. 

However, those information sessions don’t tell you about the difficulties - especially as a woman of color in the workforce. We created Next Steps to create an alternative to the narrative in Hollywood that glamorizes high-powered men in the financial services industry (looking at you, Jordan Belfort). We wanted to show the unsexy life of young associates trying to find their way in the world.

What are the Next Steps?

With your support, we are planning on shooting Next Steps on a COVID-19 safe-set in early February 2021. After that, we are planning to submit it to festivals as a short. Contributors at the Principal level and above will be invited to the premiere and will get to see Next Steps before anyone else. After the festival run, Next Steps will be distributed online for viewing. 

What about COVID-19?

If there were a case interview question about whether this is the optimal time to create Next Steps, the answer would be a resounding “no.” 

We are in the middle of a global pandemic and financial recession; however, during weeks of self-isolation, comedy has been a source of comfort and escapism for millions of people around the world. 

To move forward incrementally; however, we have taken drastic measures to protect the health of our team and the financial security of the production. We have postponed production and spent months researching COVID safety to prepare for every possible scenario. Now we are back and more excited than ever to create Next Steps with COVID-19 best practices in place.