Over the past 25 years, Jay Meldrum has advised on countless deals and witnessed the power of transactions that transform companies. Meldrum, a principal at PwC and the recipient of the BYU Marriott School of Business 2024 Alumni Achievement Award, recently spoke to students about how this power applies in both business and everyday life.
In his presentation, Meldrum shared with BYU Marriott students the statistics he typically shows his clients when discussing a potential deal: 45 percent of global CEOs surveyed by PwC believe their company will not be viable in 10 years if processes remain unchanged, and only 14 percent achieve significant improvement in key performance indicators (KPIs) by integrating acquisitions. He said, “If the deals are not successful in improving KPIs, why do the deal?”
It is not enough to merely transact in the business world, Meldrum concluded. “A broader focus on transformation is necessary,” he said. He applies the same principle in his personal life and in his covenant relationship with God.
Meldrum shared a quote from Elder Joaquin Costa, a general authority seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who taught that covenants sanctify, strengthen, and transform individuals: “One of the mistakes we often make is to think that keeping covenants, or the promises we make to God, is somehow a transaction we make with Him: [We] obey, and He protects [us] from anything bad ever happening to [us]. … Our covenants are not merely transactional; they are transformational.”
The concept that Elder Costa shared struck a chord with Meldrum, who is often considering the transformational aspects of deals. “Sometimes in the gospel, we have more transactional faith and less transformational faith to let God prevail in our lives,” he observed. “But this teaches us that our covenants have the power to transform us so we can become more like who our Savior wants us to become.”
He has found that transformational transactions have impacted him throughout his life, from his time as a student to his professional career.
As a newly returned missionary at BYU, he explored various educational paths with the goal of eventually earning an MBA. “In the back of my mind, I had always wanted to do something in business, but I had all these voices around telling me what to do,” Meldrum described. “For me, it was a matter of prayer and asking the Lord.” The impression he received was clear: Don’t wait for an MBA—study business as an undergrad.
At BYU Marriott, Meldrum earned a degree in business management with an emphasis in finance, and he went on to secure a position in the corporate finance group at Arthur Andersen in Los Angeles. But before Meldrum started, the company reassigned him to a different group: strategy, finance, and economic consulting.
Meldrum was initially disappointed by the change, but he eventually found he enjoyed his work. “I learned to look positively on what I could learn from the situation,” he recalled. “And there were things that I learned that I never would have known otherwise.”
After Arthur Andersen dissolved in 2002, Meldrum decided to earn an MBA at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, and he also partnered with several colleagues to start Fulcrum Financial Inquiry, an independent consulting firm specializing in complex litigation, investigation, and appraisal issues. “I loved the entrepreneurial experience,” he said.
Meldrum began looking for new opportunities after getting his MBA, applying the scriptural directive to “study it out in [his] mind” (Doctrine and Covenants 9:8). “I had spreadsheets of all the different places I wanted to go, the compensation and benefits, and the pros and the cons of the positions,” he recalled. “That was part of studying it out and deciding what to do.”
When an unexpected offer came from PwC to be a part of its revamped consulting practice, Meldrum eagerly accepted: “It was an entrepreneurial opportunity,” he said.
So Meldrum and his family moved to Dallas in 2005, and he made partner in 2011. “For almost 14 years, being a partner has continued to transform me, not just in what I do on a day-to-day basis, but why I do it and who I do it for,” he said. “It has transformed me professionally and spiritually.”
“There are a lot of ups and downs in any career,” he continued. “I’ve had plenty of downs, plenty of projects that I didn’t get, and plenty of deals that did not go well. It happens, but I’ve always been able to hold on to my faith that if I’m doing my best to do what is right, I will end up being where the Lord wants me to be and doing what I’m supposed to be doing with the people I’m supposed to impact, transforming myself and others along the way.”
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Written by Sarah Anderson