Like many students, I’ve been on the look-out this year for opportunities to develop practical skills outside of the (virtual) classroom. Last November, I decided to join the LSESU Global Research and Consulting (GRC) Society, part of a global student-led consulting and research think tank that works on pro bono projects with social impact-oriented organisations. After completing an application and a short interview, I was able to get to work as part of a team of six LSE students on a project for a US-based NGO called Centre for Resource Solutions. We put together a deliverable identifying market-based policies seeking to improve the access of low-income and disadvantaged groups to renewable energies – just one of many projects that GRC had to offer this year.

I spoke to two of LSESU GRC’s executive committee members, former President, Thomas Huang, and Head of Finance, Ricky Wang, about the inspiration behind starting the society, what members have been up to this year, and how you, too, can get involved.

LSESU GRC Head of Finance, Ricky Wang

Tallulah: Could you tell me a little bit about the GRC society at LSE, and how it got started?

Thomas: It started back in my second year, in 2019. A friend and I were both interested in consulting, but we found that, one, we weren’t really getting the types of projects we were interested in from existing societies, and two, we didn’t think that organisations were providing enough consulting opportunities for students. There was a lot of simulated experiences on offer where you write blogs posts and things like that, rather than opportunities to work on real-life projects.

At that point in time, we were considering starting a society of our own. But then I received an email about GRC, which had originally started as a consulting society at the Wharton School of Business. We got in touch with them, and they were interested in expanding to LSE and some other UK universities as well. So it came together that we could join as an autonomous branch of what was a growing global collective of like-minded students, and in return, we’d get an existing organisational structure and could hit the ground running straight away. They had clients they’d worked with already, like the World Wildlife Fund, the World Bank, and all these international organisations, so there was no problem for them to pull over some of their connections to help us get started as well. We thought, ‘Wow, this is an amazing opportunity! If we can pull it off, that would be great’.

So that’s how it began – we thought there was a gap in the market, we wanted to do something about it, and then this amazing opportunity came up. We connected with Wharton, our visions aligned, and we worked with it to make it possible.

GRC focuses on social impact, but instead of only working with local chapters, we work with a lot of international NGOs and do a lot of research and policy heavy work. So one of the projects we have this term [with NGO Compassion in Politics] is focused on using metrics to determine whether the policies of local councils in the UK are helping to reduce homelessness. I don’t think other societies really offer that kind of thing!

Tallulah: Thinking about the NGOs GRC has been working with at LSE, are there any that stick out to you in particular?

Thomas: There’s so many! In Michaelmas Term, we worked with the Emergency Care Research Institute (ECRI) again. They’re a well-established non-profit in the US who research medical device technology, compiling data and giving advice to hospitals. The most memorable project for me is the very first one we did, which was also with them. It involved investigating the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) data on medical device failures. The FDA publishes this kind of data every year, but for some reason there was a specific set that was unpublished, and it was like, 20 years’ worth of stuff that they had suddenly put out. So ECRI were very interested, and we were like, ‘maybe there’s something in here, otherwise why didn’t they publish it?’. So our team’s job was to analyse the database, work on it a little bit, and see what it was all about. Turns out there was nothing super special about it! But the possibility was there that we could have really connected some points to see if there were any broader trends that weren’t available from what they had previously released.

This term, we’ve been working with an NGO called The Circle, who are focused on ending gender-based violence in the Global South. They have a UK-based team that’s been working on solutions in countries like India and South Africa [LSESU GRC members have been helping The Circle to investigate and recommend countries to focus their advocacy on]. This one really sticks out to me because it’s obviously a very important issue, and it’s something that a lot of our members care a lot about. Both of these projects were the type that we thought were really missing at LSE, and that a lot of students would genuinely love to do, rather than it just being another thing to make your CV look good.

Tallulah: What kind of skills can students learn by working on a project with GRC?

Ricky: I think the key point is that it’s a really practical way to learn lots of useful skills, especially related to research. So for example, during my project with ECRI that was mentioned earlier, we made quite heavy use of programming and data management software. And of course, there’s other more general skills that are useful not just for consulting but in other sectors. Even working with clients is something that you don’t get to do at university usually, and so working on a project was a good way to learn about that.

Tallulah: That all sounds great! How can more students get involved?

Thomas: We actually have a few projects available to current members over the Summer Term. We’ve recently elected our new executive committee members, so applications for the next academic year will be in the hands of our new President.

Ricky: The application process will probably be similar to this year’s – you apply, we hold an interview, and then we go from there. Do keep a look out on our Facebook page for more information!

Find out more about the LSESU Global Research and Consulting Society via LSESU, or visit the GRC’s website.

We thought there was a gap in the market, we wanted to do something about it … GRC focuses on social impact.