Olin alum Daiell: ‘You’ve got to become a human being’

Today, Olin Blog starts a partnership with MondayKarma.com, a site produced by Olin alumnus (and 2018 emerging leader honoree) Mark Pydynowski, BSBA ’04. MondayKarma shares the advice and experience of WashU alums as they forged their career path after graduation. Olin Blog publishes the tl;dr version and links to the full story. We highlight the career path insights from another Olin alumnus, Teddy Daiell.

Dad was a tax attorney. Mom was among the first female MBAs to graduate from Columbia University. With a career that’s wound from the back office of a single A baseball team, to strategy consulting to private equity to startups, Teddy Daiell, BSBA ’09, has not followed directly in their footsteps. Instead, he’s stayed true to his goal of becoming the author of his own story. Today, after a career that’s taken him to Bain & Company, Charlesbank Capital Partners and an MBA from Wharton, he works to instigate change in people’s lives through preventive health and wellness.

CORE CURRICULUM: Addressed in every interview

ON CHOOSING WASHU OLIN BUSINESS SCHOOL: “Even with good scores, I didn’t think I could get into one of the most prestigious schools based on my class rank. I narrowed my choices to Olin … or Wharton. When I did the campus visits, I felt like Washington University was a better fit for me. They were very customer-service oriented and I felt like they wanted me to have a good experience, whereas at Wharton there was an attitude that I should feel lucky they would even consider having me on the tour.”

ON FINDING THE RIGHT JOB: “I was looking to do business generically, but lacked direction in terms of exactly what I wanted to do…I stumbled into a class called ‘Managing Your Business Career Strategy,’ in the fall semester of my sophomore year…The class was my first real exposure to thinking about my future.”

ON GETTING THE INTERVIEW: “I cold emailed the manager at (Bain’s) Dallas office who was leading the recruiting effort and asked for an interview. I’m sure there are better ways to do it, but it’s nothing sexier than that.”

ELECTIVES: Freestyle responses from each interviewee

ON LEGACY: “I always had this sense that I could find a path that was meaningful for me, but also pressure because I have been given such fortunate gifts and it was clear that I needed to do something with it. I had the mentality that I need to get after that next rung of the ladder.”

ON ‘PROTOTYPING’ A CAREER: “Deloitte…would host workshops on campus that allowed students to do some work in that field such as run an Excel model for a strategy consulting project…Another way to prototype is through case competitions, where you work with a team on a strategy consulting case, do analysis and put together a presentation over a week or two.”

ON “BECOMING A HUMAN BEING”: “A key thing in all of the steps…is to not just be a piece of paper, but to become a human being in the eyes of the decision maker. To succeed, you have to rise above the rest of the resume stack, and dear God, there is a large resume stack.”

Visit MondayKarma.com to learn more about Teddy’s path through banking, consulting, and into preventative health, and how he maneuvered his various career permutations. You can also explore the career path for other WashU alumni.