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Marissa Licursi, Senior Manager at Stax, has recently been honored by Consulting Magazine as one of the 2024 Rising Stars of the Profession for her Excellence in Client Service. Marissa is a leading figure in buy- and sell-side engagements and growth-strategy development for various private equity clients and their portfolio companies. With expertise in enterprise software, cloud services, infrastructure, cybersecurity, and B2B software, she consistently oversees and manages 25+ enterprise software engagements annually.
Along with her nomination, Marissa was asked several questions by Consulting Magazine—these are her responses:
1. What would you say has been the biggest factor in your success so far?
Education aside, I think the biggest factor in my success has been my unwillingness to fail and maintaining a growth mindset. I’ve had my fair share of tough engagements and challenging client teams. But I’ve never allowed them to deter me from pushing through. And, when there are setbacks, I try to view them as stepping stones toward self-improvement – and, the biggest growth often happens from those setbacks.
I take pride in putting into practice what I’ve been taught practically my entire life, which is, ‘if you’re going to commit, commit full force.’ Success for anyone doesn’t happen overnight, of course – it’s a result of being consistently determined and thoughtful, day in and day out. This mindset is what has allowed me to stay committed to delivering the best output possible for every client, and what helps in maintaining that mindset is being surrounded by a team of colleagues who share in that mindset as well.
2. What do you enjoy most about your career in the consulting industry?
I’ve been a consultant my entire career, starting in economic consulting and later shifting over to strategy consulting, straddling both growth strategy for corporates and transaction-led engagements often for private equity clients. And like many of my peers, I love problem-solving. But, even broader than that, I love the process that consulting engagements require – conducting research on a given asset or topic in a way that leaves no stone unturned, and, crafting a cohesive narrative (from a mountain of research and analysis) that is clear and digestible, all while bringing a client team along that journey with us.
Oftentimes, our team goes into an engagement with a number of initial hypotheses and may have some idea of what the story will look like, drawn from experience in a sub-sector that a given software asset we’re evaluating is in. But every engagement is unique, and even in cases where we’re highly familiar with a given asset we are looking at, there are always new elements. In the beginning of an engagement, the ‘pixels’ are there but they are blurry. About midway through, some of the pixels are blurry but a portion of them start to become clear. By the end, the pixels are crystal clear – and I really enjoy the process of starting with a blurry picture and ending with a clean, clear finished output that enables our clients (be it management teams, PE firms, etc.) to ultimately make good, smart decisions.
3. What is your proudest achievement to date?
It’s difficult to pin down a single achievement. Personally, I find fulfillment when my clients can leverage our work to make informed decisions. From a professional standpoint, there is nothing more fulfilling than a client showing appreciation for the work we’ve done and the impact we’ve had in enabling them to make a decision as a result. There are a mountain of components that go into actually making that happen. But, to me, being extremely thoughtful and empathetic to specific needs of a client team is top of that list. What makes that process easier is not treating a client team like they sit on the other side of a Teams meeting – they are in it with us, we are partners, working toward a common set of objectives.
So, my greatest achievement isn’t really a single experience or project. Instead, it’s the collection of positive feedback from clients that give me the assurance that we’ve supported them and were effective and impactful in doing so.
4. What's the best advice you've ever been given?
The first day of my career, someone very close to me who is both family and a mentor gave me some of the best advice I’ve received. 3 points that are, to me, equally important in their own right:
1. Make sure you understand motivation.
2. Look at your work through the lens of your boss, not your own.
3. Ignore titles and ages.
Understanding motivation of a client, of an ask, is critical in just about any profession. Particularly in consulting, we need to understand the ‘why’ behind the questions clients are asking us – that context, and second-order reasoning is key in being able to provide answers and implications that get to that second- and third-order level of depth that is critical.
“Looking at your work through the lens of your boss, not your own,” is a piece of advice I often give to others. Said differently, “assume away the role above you.” Keeping this in mind has helped me stay front-footed, and forced me to stretch upward on my own.
“Ignore titles and ages” has also served as a key reminder that anyone’s ideas are fair game. My current boss has his own way of delivering this message – “the best ideas can come from the day one Associate or the gray-haired Managing Director” getting at the same idea. Your ideas are just as good as anyone’s, and you (the proverbial you) can’t let a hierarchy, or even being the only female in a meeting (which, I often find myself in) fool you into staying quiet.
5. What would this recognition mean to you?
I am very humbled and honored by this nomination. It’s a culmination of my dedication to delivering the highest quality output for my clients, but it would not be at all possible without the leaders and colleagues at Stax who have supported me and pushed me into opportunities that have allowed me to grow and develop.
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