McKinsey x FxF Role Model Campaign
The Brief
The finance industry has a visibility problem. Not a talent problem. The women are there: ambitious, qualified, and watching closely before they decide where to invest their career. What moves them isn't a job posting. It's seeing someone who looks like them, at a company like yours, being honest about how they got there.
That's why we created the Role Model Story. A campaign built around one woman at your company.
Her real journey, the pivots, the rejections, the moments that didn't go to plan, and how she got there anyway. Not a polished LinkedIn announcement, but the story behind the career. The one that makes another woman reading it think: that could be me.
For McKinsey, we spotlighted Willemijn van Buuren: a consultant who turned down a full-time offer at Morgan Stanley to pursue McKinsey after a previous rejection, and built the career she actually wanted rather than the one that looked best on paper.
The Campaign
We interviewed Willemijn and turned her story into a multi-slide carousel: her choices, her doubts, the offer she walked away from, and the advice she'd give to every ambitious woman standing at the same crossroads. Published across LinkedIn and Instagram, the post did what the best employer branding does: it didn't promote McKinsey. It made women trust them.
The Impact
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Hear from her:
"If women can't see themselves at a company, they won't apply. The Role Model Series exists to close that gap. Not with campaigns, but with real stories from real women who took the hard road and got there anyway."
— Leonie Kennepohl, Co-founder, Female x Finance
