When Professor of Finance Taylor Nadauld got his first job in 2002, he could count on one hand how many students from the BYU Marriott School of Business had gotten jobs in high finance. Now, he says a huge smile comes to his face as he watches students mentor each other, leading to more than 40 students from BYU Marriott getting jobs in investment banking last year. “It’s a beautiful thing,” he says.
At Finance Society meetings, BYU Marriott upperclassmen who are willing to serve as mentors—and already have a job lined up post-graduation—share their contact information with underclassmen. From there, students with questions can reach out, arrange a meeting, and ask questions ranging from which discipline of finance would be right for them to how they could get a job within that discipline.
Finance senior Matthias Dunn explains that as a freshman, he felt lost because he didn’t know what to study: “BYU was kind of dark at the beginning.” But he says that changed when he connected with mentors in the finance program. “These mentors would come and it was like they diffused light.”
Now, as he prepares for a full-time investment banking job at Morgan Stanley after graduating, Dunn says he tries to share the same light he received as a freshman with underclassmen. “All of my success as a BYU student is thanks to the juniors and seniors who took a lot of time out of their day to mentor me,” says Dunn, from Heber City, Utah. “Mentoring is my way of turning around and giving it back.”
Although Dunn hopes the students that he mentors achieve professional success, that isn’t his main focus. “My number one goal is that through mentoring, I can help them strengthen their relationship with Jesus Christ,” he says. “Regardless of what they learned from me, I just hope that they know that if they stay close to Jesus Christ, they will have success in their career.”
Focusing on Jesus Christ is a sentiment echoed by Bryon Reese, a senior in the finance program from Mapleton, Utah. As he mentors students, he aims to help them strengthen their relationship with Jesus Christ through merging their careers with their discipleship. “As we read the scriptures, we have more integrity,” he says. “We become better disciples and more disciplined people, which usually leads to being better professionals as well.”
Reese says he saw his discipleship merge with his career in his internship last summer, where he was the only member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on his team. After answering questions from coworkers about the gospel throughout the summer, he reflects on the impact that focusing on Jesus Christ over four years at BYU Marriott has had on his habits. “It’s a pretty special opportunity to build those habits now so I can have that light moving forward,” he says. “Not just right out of college, but for the rest of my life.”
One of the habits students establish through mentoring is giving back, says Nadauld. “If students establish a pattern of getting outside of themselves and helping others in their lives now, that pattern persists when they get into their professional lives,” he says. “We feel like if we can help our upperclassmen develop that skill now, they’ll truly go forth to serve.”