About James: A lifelong SoCal native, James grew up in Huntington Beach before heading up the coast to UC Santa Barbara for undergrad, where he studied Psychological and Brain Sciences. He found his home in Los Angeles and spent six years working across sales and post-sales functions in the software industry, helping companies navigate digital transformations at Oracle, manage supply chain disruptions during the pandemic at Flexport, and connect e-commerce brands with their customers at Tapcart. At Anderson, James is pivoting into consulting to broaden his business acumen and apply strategic thinking across a wider range of industries.

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Before Anderson, my career had taken me through various sales and post-sales roles at a few different companies spanning cloud technologies, supply chain & logistics, and ecommerce. On paper, the through line made sense. In practice, I kept finding myself drawn to a different kind of work, the kind that starts with a messy, ambiguous problem and asks you to think your way through it. That pull brought me to Anderson to break into consulting.

What I didn’t fully appreciate when I arrived was how much support would exist to help me actually get there. I came in knowing the destination but not the route. Three things changed that: the Consulting Immersion, the Management Consulting Association, and ACT.

Immersion: Seeing the Work Up Close

Consulting had always felt a little abstract to me before Anderson. The Consulting Immersion gave me my first real look under the hood. Not through panels or information sessions, but through genuine exposure to how consultants think through problems. The frameworks they reach for, the way they structure ambiguity, the balance between rigorous analysis and clear communication. Going into recruiting without a feel for the actual work is a real disadvantage. The consulting immersion closed that gap early, and everything that came after felt more grounded because of it.

MCA: Building a Strategy from Scratch

Coming from a non-consulting background, I didn’t have a natural network in the industry. Joining the Management Consulting Association changed that. MCA gave me a recruiting strategy when I didn’t have one, connected me with practitioners who were generous with their time, and helped me learn to tell my story in a way that made my non-traditional background feel like a true asset.

Somewhere along the way, the club stopped feeling like a resource and started feeling like a community. That shift mattered more than I expected. I applied to serve as a first-year director because I wanted to give back to something that had already given me so much, and that experience is part of why I’m stepping into the role of incoming president. I’ve seen firsthand what MCA can do for someone trying to find their footing, and I want to help create that for others.

ACT: The Feedback Loop That Made the Difference

If I had to point to the single most underrated resource at Anderson, it would be the Anderson Career Teams (ACT). What it gave me was something genuinely hard to find: honest, real-time feedback from second-years who had just been through exactly what I was preparing for. Not polished panel advice, but actual back-and-forth with people who had recently sat in the same interviews and figured out what worked.

We’d work through behavioral questions together. They’d push back when my answers were vague or when I was burying the most interesting part of the story. I’d revise. We’d go again. Over time, my answers got sharper, and I started to feel genuinely prepared rather than just rehearsed. That kind of iterative coaching is hard to replicate on your own.

What I’d Tell Incoming Students

A career pivot inside an MBA program can feel isolating, especially when it seems like everyone around you already knows where they’re headed. What I found at Anderson was the opposite. The resources exist. The people willing to help exist. The community is real.

Coming in with no consulting background, I had genuine gaps in knowledge, network, and preparation. What I didn’t expect was how many people at Anderson were already invested in helping me close them. Immersion gave me context. MCA gave me community and strategy. ACT gave me the reps and the honest feedback I needed to walk into interviews feeling ready.

None of it happened automatically. You have to show up, ask for help, and put in the work. But when you do, Anderson meets you there. And when you come out the other side, pay it forward. That’s how the cycle works, and it’s one of the things that makes this place worth the leap! 

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Student Blogger: James Sidrak ’27
Undergrad: University of California, Santa Barbara ’19
Pre-MBA: Customer Success Manager at Tapcart
Leadership@Anderson: Section D Social Chair; Admissions Ambassador Corps; Director of Admit Events, Management Consulting Association; Director of External Affairs, Strategy and Operations Management; Director of Alumni Affairs