The Generation Z Consultants

In the summer of 2015, at a Cornell University camp for high school students, a teenager from California named Melinda Guo met a boy from New Jersey named Ziad Ahmed. They shared an interest in business, marketing, and philanthropy. “You’re probably going to be the only person I keep in touch with after this,” Ahmed told Guo.

That fall, the two FaceTimed and texted about school and extracurriculars. Guo liked to attend marketing competitions designed for high schoolers, and Ahmed was devoted to a diversity nonprofit he’d started, which had gotten him invited to the White House’s annual iftar dinner—held after sundown during Ramadan—the previous June. Guo and Ahmed hoped to work on something together, and that October, Ahmed called Guo with a pitch. He wanted to create a consulting firm focused on people like themselves: members of Generation Z. Those born after 1996 make up almost a quarter of the U.S. population and wield $44 billion in buying power. And adults regularly embarrass themselves trying to speak their language. “We were coming across advertisements from big companies that were tone-deaf,” Guo says. “There was always too overt of an effort—it turns us off. So why not consult on how teens think, since we’re teens ourselves?”