In high school, well before she was a VP for AlixPartners’ Automotive & Industrial Practice, Hima Juttu got her first car. It was a compressed natural gas car, delivered to the front of her school in Sangareddy, India, by a local magistrate. It didn’t arrive by chance. Hima and another student petitioned the collectorate’s office for the car, with an idea to experiment with a water car that used Brown’s gas (HHO) as a potential supplemental fuel source, a popular innovation topic at the time.
Hima has always been a tinkerer. When she was 12 years old, she was offered the opportunity to travel the country and compete in science exhibitions, typically presenting her latest invention made from mechanical parts and motors. Initially, her parents didn’t want to let her go, but her older siblings advocated for her, making the case that the experience would build character. Which it did.
“I believe that whatever comes your way, just say yes and then figure out how to do it,” she explained. “I also have a mindset of creating my own opportunities.”
Her uncle was another relative that helped her shape her fine-tuned growth mindset.
Playing memory games with her cousins, Hima was competitive, a self-proclaimed bad loser. Her uncle taught her how to take those failures as a challenge and build on them.
He also had the most interesting job in the family. He managed an auto factory, and Hima loved listening to him talk about his job.
She did not always understand his stories about plant operations or disassembling car components but compared with her other family members with careers in banking or software development, his very hands-on job stood out.
She studied mechanical engineering in university, and then joined Mahindra and Mahindra, an automotive manufacturer, as a field quality manager, tasked with understanding why particular components failed and making recommendations to fix.
“It was interesting as a first job. It helped me develop a structured way of problem solving,” she said.
It also gave her an appreciation for the human element in managing change. As one of only 10 women on the 300-person plant production team, and a new grad giving direction to operators with decades of experience, Hima initially encountered resistance to her ideas—a lot of “we have been doing this for 30 years, and we know better than you,” she recalls.
“What I learned was how I approached the situation was as important as the advice I was giving. Understanding people’s fears and insecurities and then acknowledging them, like ‘yes, this is going to be a big change, but you’re going to be part of that change and drive it,’ was critical for me.”
After several years building more reliable and effective car parts, including as a senior design engineer at General Motors, Hima wanted to get more involved in the strategy informing engineering decisions, and decided to go to business school.
Before starting business school, Hima explored consulting opportunities. At the Forté MBA Leadership Conference, she met with AlixPartners at a coffee chat, where she learned about the firm’s collaborative culture and focus on tangible impact.
“That initial conversation stood out to me—if felt authentic,” she said. “I could immediately see how my engineering and problem-solving background could translate here.”
She attended Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, joined AlixPartners as an MBA intern in the Summer of 2022, and joined the firm full-time in 2023.
She still gets to be hands-on, combining her engineering roots with strategic consulting to translate design-to-value insights into tangible business outcomes. Her familiarity with the day-to-day experience of an engineer helps her build credibility with her clients. What’s new, and happening much sooner than she expected, is the visibility she has with C-suite and senior leadership teams.
“I’ve been in meetings and workshop with CPOs, VPs, and other senior execs, presenting our recommendations and hearing their perspectives firsthand,” she said.
But just as impactful are the daily interactions she has with her colleagues.
“I’m constantly surrounded by talented, smart people that challenge me. Every day I learn something new just by being in the same room and working through problems with my teammates,” Hima said. “That’s the level I want to be at with my career, the speed I want to grow at, and I am getting that here.”