Luke Swiggett ’27 always enjoyed working with numbers, but he wasn’t sure how that might translate into a career.
“Before coming to Denison, I had little idea of what I wanted to do in life,” he said.
In his first semester on The Hill, Swiggett came across the Denison Consulting program run by the Red Frame Lab, a campus innovation hub where students develop their business skills, connect with visiting entrepreneurs, and learn fundamentals directly from industry experts.
Now, Swiggett is in his fourth semester with Denison Consulting. “With every new project, I have always learned something new,” he said.
He also has a career in mind.
“I would like to work more on the data side of management consulting,” he said. “I’ve chosen the majors of global commerce and data analytics to help me prepare for my career.”
Denison Consulting was born of necessity in 2020 when traditional internships dried up during the pandemic. Denison sought to provide students with equivalent business opportunities by connecting them with companies looking to resolve operational problems.
Since then, the program has taken off.
In the spring 2025 semester, 51 students are working as consultants. Denison Consulting has also nearly doubled its business engagements, underscoring its popularity with students and a growing stable of corporate clients.
Rick Coplin ’85 drives his point home — no slackers — to student consultants at Denison.
“We’ve served clients on over 115 engagements since we started in 2020,” said Rick Coplin ’85, Red Frame Lab’s associate director. “The program has grown from an experiment just five years ago into a highly competitive and attractive career-building opportunity for students.”
This semester, teams of Denison students are working with nine clients, up from the five projects typically tackled by students in past semesters.
This semester’s clients include:
- A multinational logistics business hoping to determine how data can augment the business.*
- Simple Times Mixers, a business looking to upcycle high-quality food ingredients that are byproducts of its manufacturing processes and currently disposed of as waste.
- A large clothing retailer looking at the viability of one overseas market with an eye on others.*
- Sound Genetics, Inc., a Silicon Valley company innovating how sound is analyzed and understood and offering state-of-the-art voice authentication and deepfake detection tools.
- Columbus Symphony Orchestra, which sought help with its plan to expand programming with local schools.
- Max Effort Muscle, a market leader in the elite fitness and supplement industry, requested consultants for product testing, technology assessments, and market analysis.
- Lucid Bots, a North Carolina-based AI-enabled robotics company that required research into international regulations regarding the import, sale, and operation of robots, especially drones.
- A startup business gathering evidence-based and actionable insights into the vocabulary needs of both non-native and native English-speaking college students focusing on reading, writing, listening, and speaking.*
- A prosthetics manufacturer that is conducting market research.*
*Students have non-disclosure agreements with these clients.
Denison students from Denison Consulting present their findings in fall 2023 to Wendy’s President, International and Chief Development Officer Abigail Pringle ’96 (top right), and Rosa Ailabouni, a professional consultant who mentored the students during the semester-long project.
Denison Consulting is built on professional development, with students learning to scope and manage projects, serve clients, work as a team, and communicate and present their recommendations effectively.
The program is open to all students, regardless of their major. However, they must apply and can be promoted — or not — based on their performance.
Students earn stipends as interns and work in groups of five or six. Each team is paired with a partner-in-residence, a professional consultant who mentors and offers advice but allows the students to lead each project.
“I want the students to have an authentic management consulting experience through Denison Consulting,” partner-in-residence Rosa Ailabouni said. “This gives students an opportunity to think through real-world business challenges and positions students for future internships and careers in consulting firms and industry.”
At each project’s conclusion, “Students have to deliver and defend their recommendations to the client and answer hard questions that show what they have learned about the company and the industry,” she said.
Ailabouni has worked in management consulting for over 20 years in the U.S. and abroad, and owns RMA Strategies, LLC, a boutique firm that specializes in guiding businesses through the people-centric side of adopting new IT tools and technologies headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. She has supported Denison Consulting for four semesters.
“I love working with students,” she said. “I like to observe their growth and understanding of the project and industry during the semester. It is exciting to hear and challenge the way they think about client problems, and work with them on client recommendations.
“Who knows, one of my students could go on to become the CEO of a big company,” Ailabouni said. “I hope that one day they’ll lean on some of the lessons they have learned during my time with them on a Denison Consulting project. This is professional development at its finest.”
Mike Russell ’93, a managing director and senior digital transformation executive at Accenture Song in New York City, is another of the program’s partners-in-residence.
He is impressed by Denison Consulting and the college’s commitment to career development.
“What I see now is next-level and a real differentiator,” Russell said. “It’s another example where Denison punches above its weight.”
“All the stuff we do every day at Accenture, the students are doing as part of our projects,” Russell said. “There is no better way to learn than to actually do the work. The value is in the experience and the experience prepares Denison students for what working with clients and working on a diverse team is like.”
In addition to consulting, the Red Frame Lab offers immersive workshops, startup programs, pitch competitions, alumni entrepreneur summits, and one-on-one coaching. It is also the home of Red Corps, a unique on-campus consulting arm in which students work to address the needs and concerns of various campus partners with the aim of improving student life.
Swiggett knows that even if he eventually pursues a career other than consulting, the lessons he is learning will benefit him regardless.
“My experience has been nothing short of incredible,” Swiggett said. “There are countless skills you learn that can be applied to the general workspace. I’ve learned that one of the major determining factors of how your project will turn out is the way you run your team.
“From communicating, scheduling, workload management, and the overall drive of your members, all of these things are crucial for these projects and the real world.”
