Ritika Saraswat, 4th-Year BKin Student and Canadian Management Consulting (CMC)-BC Student Award Winner.

Ritika Saraswat is a 4th-year BKin student in the interdisciplinary stream. The School of Kinesiology is happy to announce that Ritika is one of 2 students in the province to have been awarded the Canadian Management Consulting (CMC)-BC Student Award. Sponsored by KPMG Canada, the award recognizes a BC undergraduate student leader who has demonstrated a passion for, and excellence in the area of, management consulting and leadership. It is unusual for a Kinesiology student to win such a prize. But Ritika believes that it was her academic background in kinesiology as well as the extensive consulting work which made her stand out as a candidate to the award committee.

Ritika has definitely demonstrated her passion for management consulting! Over the past year, Ritika has conducted two pro-bono consulting cases, three case competitions, and worked with four start-up businesses, in addition to her full-time studies. One of these cases was with Eastside Boxing, a local non-profit sports organization, whose mission is to “empower women and people in the Downtown Eastside community.” Ritika and her team worked on strategies to diversify the organization’s digital strategy to make their services accessible to everyone. Ritika says the project enabled her to connect her studies with her consulting interests, while applying her knowledge of kinesiology in addressing social issues in business, such as EDI (equity, diversity, and inclusion) and accessibility.

How does a kinesiology student, who is not in the Dual Degree Master of Management program, win a business award, you might ask? Ritika initially pursued her studies in Kinesiology due to her love of sports. However, in second year in Kin she was offered a marketing job by an NGO which led to other such opportunities with startups in and out of Canada. As a result, she joined the Sauder Management Consulting Club in her third year of UBC Kin. She began to take free business courses through platforms like Coursera and joined the Kinesiology Mentorship program under past Student Engagement Officer, Elise Le Brun. Here, she was paired with her mentor and Kin alum, Atila Ozkaplan, who encouraged her career interests, shared his LinkedIn contacts, and recommended her to one of his contacts, which led to a job.

Ritika had started building her LinkedIn (LI) network early on, and it was a LinkedIn connection that sent her CMC-BC award application. Ritika states, “I definitely did not have any expectations when applying. A month-and-a-half later I learned that I got it and I was pretty excited!” As a result, LI contacts reached out to her with more opportunities. One of these was for a job with the globally renowned firm Deloitte. Ritika has accepted the offer and will begin work with them upon her graduation from UBC.

Ritika encourages all Kinesiology students to consider every opportunity that comes their way: “As long as you’re willing to put in that consistent effort you can actually achieve your goals. If you want to become something, write it down. Keep it on your wall. Look at it every day you wake up and say, ‘I am going to become that’. Ritika is certainly proof of her philosophy! Congratulations to Ritika for this prestigious award and for landing the job of her dreams!

Watch the CMC-BC recognition video: