Welcome to ConsultingLab

A resource, course, lab, and research project in Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College.

Welcome to ConsultingLab. Since 2014 we've completed 56 client engagements with 30 different clients in nonprofit, for-profit, and non-governmental organizations, as well as associations, startups, and government. Over 190 graduate student consultants from almost every part of the University have engaged with clients to perform deep data analyses, write White Papers, redesign processes and systems, do impact analyses, create apps, and develop strategies. We would love to have you join us as a student, client, or colleague. For more information about us please read on or see our ConsultingLab Prospectus.

ConsultingLab At A Glance:

A resource, course, lab, and research project of Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College.
Work with clients in nonprofits, NGOs, government, and business.
Engagements last seven weeks, March through May annually.
Work done by graduate student consultants (and the occasional undergrad).
About $15,000-worth of free consulting done by bright, motivated graduate students.
Outcomes have included White Papers, analyses, strategy development, marketing plans, process improvement design, and app development.
To start the engagement process with us please complete this brief Project Start Form.
Enquires: Professor Chris Labash, Managing Director (clabash@cmu.edu).

What we do

ConsultingLab works with real clients on real projects that have real outcomes, Our clients include nonprofits, non-governmental organizations, major corporations, associations, and government. Our projects have included developing White Papers forecasting human and technical resource needs, predicting the impact of AI on different disciplines, developing the foundation for a digital twin of a major city, analyzing black market activity after natural and man-made disasters, developing a web application to identify and facilitate food distribution to at-risk children, and a wide range of other projects that have real impact.

How we work

At the beginning of the Lab (every Spring semester) we post summaries of clients and their projects and ask students to identify their first, second, and third choices. Projects with the most student energy around them become the finalist projects and we then work to balance teams in terms of their choices, skill sets, backgrounds, and other factors to determine the right fit between team and project.

Over the course of seven weeks, teams of bright, motivated graduate students scope the problem, determine requirements, and methodically work through the client engagement to deliver the agreed-upon results. The outcomes reflect about $15,000-worth of free consulting work for clients, and a very real-world application and experience for students. Along the way, students learn and apply a problem-solving methodology we call The ConsultingLab Way, compare and discuss approaches, experiences, and problems with each other in the Lab, and research, share, and publish best practices in consulting.

The value we bring

ConsultingLab functions as a real consulting firm and skill resource for clients. Many of our student consultants have already had experience in such leading consulting firms as Deloitte, E&Y, PWC, and TCS. All are as bright and motivated as you would expect Carnegie Mellon graduate students to be. And while ConsultingLab is open to anyone across the University, most of our student consultants take this as a "last class" before graduation, so their skills are already sharp and workplace-ready. The value we bring lies not in expanding the FTEs you can put on a project, but in the deep data dives, incisive analyses, and creative problem-solving we do. We view your engagement not as a final academic exercise but as one of the first projects of our consultants' professional careers.

Management Team

Chris Labash, Associate Teaching Professor, Managing Director

Chris designed and developed ConsultingLab in 2014 after multiple student requests for a course that captured real-world consulting behaviors informed by scholarship and his own consulting experience. Since then ConsultingLab has successfully completed 51 client engagements. For more about Chris see his Faculty Bio or visit chrislabash.com.

Jenny Oh, Management Supervisor

Jenny, a Sixth-Year PhD student, acts as ConsultingLab's Management Supervisor and Director of Research, helping teams acquire, vet, manage, and interpret the data and other evidence that teams uncover during their engagements. More about Jenny here.

Please contact Chris Labash (clabash@cmu.edu). All of the Intellectual Property that we produce specifically for ConsultingLab is © Chris Labash unless otherwise noted. Student work is student work and is owned by the students unless otherwise specified. If you are a client who requires an NDA, please let us know on the Project Start Form. Everything on this site, and all downloads, are unless otherwise specified protected by a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND License, which enables reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. Our preferred attribution is "© 2025 Chris Labash for Carnegie Mellon University ConsultingLab. Used with permission."

Everything on this site, and all downloads, are unless otherwise specified protected by a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND License, which enables reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. Preferred attribution is (c) Chris Labash, 2025.

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