Jacob Mitchell ’23, a powerboating enthusiast, came to Guilford to play power forward for the College’s basketball team. It’s been the power of perspective, however, that has propelled him through retiring from the sport to the position he’s in today.
“I really wanted to play basketball in college. That was the dream growing up, and it was able to happen for me,” he says. “Having to retire because of my injuries ended up being a good thing because I had to take all that energy and put it into something else.”
That something else turned out to be launching a career in financial services. The Economics major with a minor in Finance has held nothing back in pursuit of his dreams.
Real World Experience
For three semesters, Jacob has held an internship at Volvo Trucks. The Bonner Scholar worked as a data analyst with one of the engineering groups in operations.
“Everyone in that group that I was in has an engineering degree. Guilford doesn't even have an engineering program, so I applied to the role completely unqualified but knowing that we've done a lot of analytics work in the econ program,” he says. “I did well in the interview, and they offered me the job the same day. What was important to them was that I had the technical skills.”
Now in his third semester working at Volvo, Jacob has moved to purchasing, working with buyers to source and buy the parts that go into making the trucks for production, which is more related to his major and interests.
“There’s something appealing to me about looking at numbers. For some reason, I was always interested in how the stock market works and how the economy works,” he explains.
Because financial services and corporate finance is what he’s truly passionate about he decided to apply for a position at Morningstar in Chicago in their development program for first-year analysts with the help of an internal referral from a Guilford alumnus. He went through a rigorous six-round interview process and studied 10 hours a day for a test and was ultimately accepted into the program.
“The referral came from Zach Evans who was a senior when I was a freshman and started the club Market Minds that I now run, so it's a full-circle moment,” he says.
Once he completes the development program, Jacob hopes to specialize in equity research working on one of the firm’s teams. He’s says he’d like to work his way up to senior analyst and one day start his own hedge fund.
After “one last summer on the water” leading one of the largest powerboating fleets in the country, Jacob will start his job in Chicago in September.
Opportunities on Campus
Jacob notes that he may have not been able to go this route without the special attention he received at Guilford, something he couldn’t get from a big university.
As the president of the Market Minds club, he leads discussions on economics, financial markets, personal financing and career development. He’s also involved with the U.S. Federal Reserve challenge and was the chairman of the Guilford team this year. Jacob calls it the Model UN of the Economics world.
“You act as if you are the Federal Reserve, so basically you analyze the whole economy and prescribe monetary policy as if you were the Fed, which sounds relatively simple, but there were many all-nighters pulled in the library,” he says. “The schools we’re competing with are Chapel Hill, Duke, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford and UCLA and a couple smaller schools. We’re able to show that we’re just as capable of doing what those bigger schools are doing.”
Retired Professor Robert Williams was the coach for the Federal Reserve Challenge team. Jacob credits him along with Professor Bob Williams with helping him realize his dreams.
“Bob’s also my primary advisor. Being able to bounce all my ideas around with him when I was going through interviews for different companies was great,” Jacob says. “His allowing me the latitude to intern this much while being a student and to get course credit was amazing. I just can't say enough good things about the people in the Econ program.”
Jacob has given back to the program through tutoring and assistant teaching.
“The Econ courses hit hard from the start,” he says. “There's definitely a little bit of a learning curve first. What I tell the people I tutor is once you can get your feet under you and you understand the basics, it's really up from there.”
With so much experience already, Jacob shares his advice on making the most of college.
“This is probably the time where we're going to have the lowest level of responsibility. It only gets more intense, and you're only going to have more things to juggle in the future,” he says. “Right now, I would say pack your resume as much as you possibly can. Don't be afraid to work hard, put in the hours, put in the work. It will work out, and you will reap those benefits.”