Going from a corporate banking career to independent work is a significant transition. Doing it through BCG as your first engagement, then building a pipeline of projects across MasterCard, Women's World Banking and Singapore-based consulting firms, all while based in Vietnam, is a different order of achievement. Cuc's story is not about following a plan. It is about being ready when the opportunity arrived, knowing what she was actually good at and building the kind of presence that kept her name visible to the people who were looking for exactly what she had.

In this session, Cuc, a strategy consultant with expertise in customer journey design, product portfolio development and banking transformation, shares the full arc of her journey, including the moments of doubt, the practical decisions that worked, and the honest advice she would give anyone considering their first independent project.

Watch the full recording here:

What you'll take away from the session:

• Why Cuc left corporate banking for consulting and what the experience of ownership and autonomy in her first BCG project confirmed about the right direction for her career

• How deep industry expertise in one sector, specifically banking and digital transformation in Vietnam, became the most differentiated and commercially valuable asset she brought to international consulting firms

• Why stakeholder management is the skill she considers most important for independent consultants, beyond technical expertise, including how to push back on scope without damaging client relationships

• How she uses AI as a research productivity tool and why the human judgment, business sense and real industry experience that sits on top of AI output is what clients are actually paying for

• The two biggest challenges of freelance consulting she faced: work-life balance managed through timeboxing and financial gaps between projects managed through deliberate pipeline thinking

• How Cuc built her project pipeline almost entirely through a deliberate LinkedIn connection strategy with headhunters and talent acquisition professionals, without actively soliciting work

• Why sharing knowledge freely and staying genuinely curious about your clients' markets is the most reliable way to sustain long-term relationships with international firms