Although he originally wanted to pursue a career in medicine, Nalu Medeiros became interested in business after taking an accounting class at the BYU Marriott School of Business. After completing Accounting 200: Principles of Accounting, Medeiros met with a counselor to learn about the different majors at BYU Marriott, and one in particular caught his eye: the recreation management program.
Medeiros felt drawn to the recreation management program, which became the experience and design management program in 2017, because the curriculum specifically focused on improving the lives of others. “I am constantly trying to find ways to make the people around me happier,” he says. “As I learned about recreation management, the aspect of designing experiences truly spoke to me, and I knew I had found the right career path.”
After graduating from the recreation management program in 2013, Medeiros joined a startup software company called foreUP Golf. The company designs software for golf courses to book tee times, guide people to the start of the course, and manage sales. Almost immediately, Medeiros recognized real-life applications of concepts he learned in the recreation management program at foreUP Golf. One of those concepts was the idea of an experience economy, where consumers pay for experiences instead of just products.
“Learning about the experience economy helped me understand that at foreUP Golf, we were doing more than just providing a software so people who came to the golf course could purchase a product, like a bucket of balls at the driving range,” he says. “Instead, we were helping facilitate an experience. I experienced a paradigm shift in how I viewed both the software and interactions with our customers.”
After working at foreUP Golf for six years, Medeiros accepted a job as a partner program manager at Pluralsight, a technology skills platform, where he also incorporates his background in experience design. "In my current role, I help design strategic initiatives and experiences with our partners. I ask myself, how can we pull some elements from experience design into the operations I’m responsible for? Using these elements helps us maximize the benefits of our platform for customers.”
Deciding how to incorporate experience design elements is one of Medeiros’s favorite aspects of his job. “Every day is like a Rubik’s Cube,” he says. “Something always happens in the business that requires us to pivot or make adjustments. I love figuring out how we can continually improve our platform.”
Medeiros also appreciates the opportunity to make a real impact in others' lives. Pluralsight recently partnered with Google to provide its platform to individuals in Africa. Participants can go through a Pluralsight program focusing on app development for Google Cloud and graduate with a certificate verifying their new skills. “Experiences like that hit me in the heart because I’m helping people improve their lives and providing them with opportunities they might never have had otherwise,” he says.
Outside of work, Medeiros, who lives in Lehi, Utah, finds even more opportunities to positive influence the lives of those around him. As someone who proudly embraces his Polynesian heritage, Medeiros is a board member for Utah Polynesian Professionals (UPP), a network that helps Polynesians connect with and learn from other professionals in the community. “If you think about business or law or technology, there aren’t many Polynesians in those fields right now,” he says. “We want to help our fellow Polynesians realize that their options aren’t limited, and they can find people with their same culture and background in any profession they want to pursue.”
Medeiros loves taking part in the UPP community; the people in the community remind him why he chose to major in recreation management in the first place. “I enjoy encouraging the people around me and making their lives better,” he says. “The recreation management program reinforced my beliefs that bettering another person’s life is where I can find the most fulfillment.”
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Writer: Sarah Calvert
