You've got a dilemma: Part of you wants to go into management consulting to learn about business strategy and make piles of money. Another part of you wants to save the rainforests, help the homeless, or help facilitate the peace process in Northern Ireland. Being a good consultant and trying to make the world a better place are two very worthwhile endeavors. But who's got time to do both?

You do–if you make it your top priority. Dale Caldwell went into consulting to learn how to better serve his community. As the founder of the National Association of Black Management Consultants and a global recruiting director at Deloitte, he was a driving force behind diversity-improvement initiatives. He recently left the firm to become executive director of the Newark Alliance, a nonprofit organization devoted to urban renewal in Newark, New Jersey.

First, what does management consulting have to do with urban renewal?
For one thing, many of the minorities in management consulting lived in underprivileged urban areas and wish to go back to help those communities. Take me–I was born in Boston, lived in Harlem, lived in Roxbury, and went to high school in New Haven, Connecticut.

Second, our business-school educations and consulting backgrounds have equipped us with unique analytical and problem-solving skills that can be very powerful when applied to urban development issues. In a way, becoming a consultant is like contracting a disease–it makes you a compulsive problem-solver. If there's a cause you have a passion for, you can't help but apply your consulting knowledge to it.

In 1995 you founded the National Association of Black Management Consultants. What does your organization do?
The mission of the NABMC is twofold: The first is to work with individuals and corporations to increase the number of minorities in the consulting profession. And the second is to use the same type of strategic approach that consultants use to help clients to address the problems of urban areas. The NAMBC also publishes a magazine called Management Consulting that puts a spotlight on issues affecting minority consultants.

What inspired you to start the NABMC?
In 1994, as a senior manager at Deloitte, I attended the National Black MBA Association conference in San Francisco. During a lull in the activities, I walked around the conference center and mentally tallied the number of African-American partners and senior managers working at the various competitor firms. Of the 12 major firms I surveyed, I came up with 11 black partners and 24 senior managers, and that was out of thousands, which was dismal. But as blatant as the problem was, to my knowledge there was no organization out there that was addressing it.

Having been in consulting for a while, I recognized how influential consultants are in the business world. There's not a merger or an acquisition that goes by without some input from consultants. And yet minorities–Africans, Hispanics, and Native Americans–really haven't been a part of that, because their numbers are so small. So I vowed to start the National Association of Black Management Consultants by the next conference. We had our first meeting at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston a year later. There was a lot of interest in the organization and we had a good turnout-a couple of partners from some other firms and several senior managers.

Why are there so few minorities in management consulting?
Unfortunately, many of the MBA programs are not filled with minorities, and as a result the management consulting profession is not that diverse. What a lot of people don't realize is that a lot of minority MBA students who get into the Whartons, the Harvards, and the Stanfords, for financial reasons, may go to some of the schools not ranked in the top ten if they get a free ride.

At Deloitte, I created what we call the Diversity Blitz in which we reached out to programs other than the top ten to identify high-talent minority MBA students, and put them through an accelerated on-campus recruiting process. We were successful in extending offers to a higher percentage of minorities than were in the class. We didn't reduce the quality of the people that we were bringing in, but we increased the pipeline.

Because Deloitte was so successful with its Diversity Blitz, the NABMC is encouraging other firms to implement similar programs. We work with the Consortium for Graduate Study In Management, which provides scholarships for high-talent minorities to attend certain state schools with strong business programs.

What is the biggest challenge facing minorities in management consulting?
It can get very lonely. For instance, you may be staffed on a string of projects in which you might not see any other people of color. Once I was on a project in Wyoming and I was the first African American that my clients had ever met. They were a good bunch and it was nice educating them about another culture, but it was also a challenge.

What are firms doing to make minority employees feel more welcome?
Many firms, including Deloitte, have diversity programs and hire directors of diversity to oversee issues such as minority retention, development, and promotion. Firms have also started affinity groups. I started a group within Deloitte–the Association of Black and Latino Employees. Affinity groups are good at getting people together. Some minorities feel that if they're a part of these types of group, then they'll be labeled and it will impede their career advancement. My experience has been the opposite. Affinity groups are a great place to develop some informal mentors, to get to know folks and develop a network. It's also a great way to educate the firm about the particular issues of that group.

How did your consulting background help you get the job you have now?
The Newark Alliance is a catalyst focused on improving the quality of life in Newark, New Jersey, especially education and economic development. We are implementing so many programs ourselves, and my job as executive director is to prioritize projects and develop a strategic approach. There are so many good things going on in Newark, you have to be able to sensitize to that and come up with a strategy to move the city to the next level.

Without consulting training, there's really no way that a person can develop an implementable strategy. I feel very lucky. Wharton taught me a lot of theory, Deloitte Consulting has provided some real training in taking that theory and applying it, and now I'm able to use it as part of an effort to revitalize an urban area, which can hopefully be a model for the rest of the country.

Do consulting firms offer opportunities to do pro bono work?
Yes, although some firms are more active than others. McKinsey is really the leader when it comes to pro bono projects. They will dedicate staff to those issues. For instance, after the LA riots, they had a partner and managers assigned to helping develop a strategy to revitalize Los Angeles. And it was treated very much as a project. The consultants who worked on it got evaluated just as they would have been for any other client project, and it didn't slow down their progress within the firm. Monitor Group also does that kind of work. Deloitte will support people within the firm who want to take on side projects like that on their own – Deloitte will do it occasionally on its own – but it's not a big part of the firm's practice.

You switched from management consulting to nonprofit management, which seems like a pretty dramatic and unusual career change. What advice would you give to people just entering the consulting field who are interested in doing something different down the road?
Know where you want to go. It's very important to know your long-term goals. I tell that to young people especially. Too many people get into management consulting thinking, well everyone else wants to be a partner, so I want to be a partner. But that may not be what you're passionate about. You have to figure out what you're passionate about, what you spend your free time thinking about. If you want to have your own business, you have to be thinking, "How can I use this consulting experience to set myself up to run a viable business?"If you want to go into industry, you should be thinking, "What functional and industry focus should I cultivate as a consultant?"

I was interested in economic development, and so as a consultant I focused on the public sector–helping states, counties, school districts, and public hospitals improve operations and maximize revenue. One of the projects I worked on at Deloitte as a senior manager was developing a strategic plan for the city of Philadelphia. That was perfect training for what I'm embarking on now with the Newark Alliance. Every day I was with Deloitte, I was moving towards where I wanted to be. I feel like I didn't waste any time by being there. If you have a passion for something–if you really feel a calling in life–it's up to you to follow through with it.

Author Bio:
Aparna Kumar is a writer and editor in San Francisco, and a former WetFeet editor.