A Room That Reframed What Felt Possible — Slalom at WTC, Joined by Goldman Sachs

It was December, that quiet stretch before people scatter. Final deadlines wrapped, out-of-office replies queued, the city already half-looking toward what’s next.

Outside, the World Trade Center was lit up in full view, bright against the cold.

The setting alone carried weight. The height. The history. The skyline spread out in every direction. It could have felt intimidating to walk into that room alone. But City Tutors changed the temperature. Familiar faces, steady pacing, an ease that made the space feel navigable. The awe stayed. The pressure dropped.

CUNY students, recent graduates, and New Yorkers settled in to ask real questions, test assumptions, and get closer to work that can feel distant from the outside.

Professionals from Slalom showed up across practices and perspectives, offering a window into how problems actually get worked through: how teams approach ambiguity, how decisions get made, and how technology, strategy, and people intersect inside real organizations. Juan Escobar, a Principal at Slalom, left the conversations struck by how naturally fluent the learners already were—“how innately ‘wired’ this generation is for the tech environment,” he wrote—calling out their “proficiency with new technologies,” their curiosity, and the drive he could hear in the way they asked questions and described what they were building toward.

The perspective widened further with Goldman Sachs in the room as well, bringing an adjacent lens on how firms think, how clients operate, and how different worlds collaborate. Mark Jurcevic of Goldman Sachs reflected that what made the night work wasn’t just the mix of industries, but the way the learners were actively connecting dots in real time: they came “very prepared with great questions,” he wrote, and were “clearly… linking what we were saying across mentor coaches.” The format mattered too—“perfect for these small group conversations”—because it made space for the questions that usually get stuck behind intimidation or hierarchy.

Across small-group conversations, themes kept resurfacing. Proximity matters. Access changes how possible something feels. Confidence grows not from being told you belong, but from being treated like you do. Sonia Batra of Slalom noticed that eagerness immediately—students “taking notes,” leaning in, trying to “navigate their next steps” with the seriousness of people who know the stakes. She also caught something more delicate: the room had both spotlight-grabbers and quieter learners, and she found herself wishing there were “a creative way… and the time to bring out the quieter ones to speak” too—because those are often the people who leave with the most, once someone makes space for them.

Questions moved easily, from “What do you actually do day to day?” to “How did you know this was right for you?” to “What would you do differently if you were starting now?” One moment, Juan admitted, stayed with him afterward: a student asked when he first realized he was good at data storytelling. “No one had asked me that before,” he wrote, and it made him pause—not just to answer, but to take stock of his own path and how much of confidence is built through being seen clearly by someone else.

For many in the room, the takeaway wasn’t “this is for everyone.” It was something more honest: this could be for me, or maybe it’s not, but now I know. I’m in control of that choice. Sadhvi Grover, a Baruch graduate student, described exactly that shift—the way real proximity changes how you carry yourself afterward. “It really builds up a lot of confidence and ownership,” she said. “And the face time that you get… it’s amazing.”

And in December, with the skyline glowing and the year winding down, that clarity felt like its own kind of warmth.