Impact Consulting Fellowship Applications Open, Sophia Savas of Cranbrook Partners & Co. Shares what it Means to Her

For the second year in a row, the Impact Studio is collaborating with Cranbrook Partners & Co, a company creating value through active ownership of businesses and advisory engagements. I sat down with Sophia Savas – Ross alumna, Vice President at the firm, and one of the people behind the fellowship – to talk about the partnership, what she’s hoping for from this year’s student team, and why she wishes she’d had this experience as an undergrad.

The first thing I learned is that this fall’s project is more unusual than I expected. The client is FireCatt, one of Cranbrook’s portfolio companies, and it runs the most technically advanced fire hose testing service in the U.S. Fire departments are its core customer. But fire departments aren’t the only places where hoses sit on site waiting to be used, and figuring out who else needs testing capabilities is currently an open question. That’s a good chunk of what the student fellowship team will focus on.

Cranbrook Partners & Co was founded by Zachary Savas in 2002, and Sophia shared more about her family’s passion for giving back to students and creating impact through the fellowship in collaboration with the Impact Studio.

“My siblings and I are 3rd generation Wolverines. Our grandfather, aunt, and father went there,” says Sophia, “And my brother, sister, and I have all graduated from UM, so we have deep ties to the university, and hope to invest in the next generation by giving students an opportunity to apply their skills in a real-world business context.”

Education is a foundational pillar for the family, along with a shared belief in lifelong intellectual curiosity. That is one of the reasons the company invests in working with students through the fellowship – the learning goes both directions. She believes the Savas family gets as much out of working with the student teams as the students get out of working with them.

Something I was curious to ask about is what kind of student Cranbrook Partners & Co. is looking for. Fire hose testing is a niche industry, and Sophia said that students are not expected to arrive already knowing anything about it. What matters is curiosity, a willingness to learn, and the instinct to keep poking at a problem to make progress towards finding a solution. Students from every major and year are encouraged to apply.

In last year’s fellowship with Roman Stone, students on the team were able to translate their technical expertise into business and market terms, and that ended up shaping the scope of the project itself. Sophia’s own start in her career pointed the same way: after Ross, she joined McKinsey as a business analyst and found her analyst class full of people who had studied everything from business to engineering to political science, each bringing something different to client work.

The part of our conversation that stuck with me most, though, wasn’t about the project at all.

“I would’ve loved more of a taste of the corporate world as a student. Having exposure to the day-to-day cadence, expectations, and unspoken norms would have helped me tremendously in my first job out of college.”

That gap is where the fellowship’s design comes from. Sophia and her siblings would have wanted to graduate with more of a sense in how successful corporate environments function. They built this fellowship to give students the thing they didn’t have: insight into how a business is run, outcomes of a project-based consulting engagement, as well as the routine, cadence, and norms of meetings and working with a diverse team. Because FireCatt is based in Troy, MI, students can visit the office and the test sites, do research in person, and get to know the team rather than just emailing them.

The relationships built and professional support extend beyond the project as well. Sophia described it as a privilege to be able to support students “not just in the immediate term, but also continue to invest and support them in their professional journeys for the years to come.”

In addition, Cranbrook thinks about how its businesses can and should have broader impact. Sophia shared, “We live in a world where business can drive more positive change across stakeholder groups – customers, employees, suppliers, communities, and the environment.” 

When I asked Sophia what success would look like, she didn’t mention deliverables. She said she wants students to make a tangible impact for a real company, support each other while they do it, and walk away with a clearer sense of what they’re passionate about and what they want to do next.

Are you a student passionate about making an impact through business?

Applications for the Fall 2026 cohort are open. You can learn more and apply here: Impact Consulting Fellowship — Impact Studio. Apply by September 25, 2026 at noon.