A deep passion for the consulting industry and a desire to help people are what drive Aleja Ross (BBA ’16)—both in and out of the office.
Aleja started her career in consulting at Accenture, and after briefly considering a career in law, landed at EY. Now a leader in consulting, she’s focused on helping companies redesign and transform their workforces to promote employee growth and success. By leveraging different tools and technologies, like generative artificial intelligence, she’s upskilling workforces and taking companies to the next level. “By looking at what skills and jobs are trending in the market, we can help companies get their workforce from where it is to where it needs to be.”
Her passion for helping people doesn’t stop when she clocks out for the day, either. Through a variety of community projects, Aleja is working to improve financial literacy among disenfranchised populations in her community—a lifelong pursuit sparked by the economic and racial disparities she witnessed in her hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. When she’s not serving on Hope Chicago’s Young Professionals board, which helps high school graduates from marginalized backgrounds pursue four-year college degrees—she’s partnering with the state of Wisconsin to help social security recipients manage their benefits.
One of her proudest projects was a grassroots initiative that provided budgeting assistance and resources—like food, housing, and infant products—to single mothers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. “To be that support system and share my story with those mothers was an experience that I still hold near and dear to my heart,” she says. “I’d tell them how I went to UW–Madison, majored in accounting, and now work for a large firm—and it communicates this message that, ‘You look like me and you made it there, so maybe I can too.’”