DAVIS, Calif. -- To rewind almost six full years, a 17-year-old version of Courtney Schultz warned her Cupertino High graduates about the perils of obsessing over numbers. 

Clearly, the future Aggie swimming standout did not foresee what lay ahead: a bachelor's degree in managerial economics in 2018, a master of professional accountancy from the UC Davis Graduate School of Management in 2019, followed by a job as a management consultant with one of the "Big Four" accounting firms, PriceWaterhouse Coopers.

In other words, a whole lot of numbers, or so it might seem.

In fairness, Schultz referenced in her speech the folly of "comparing our own success to others" in terms of Facebook likes, SAT scores and class rankings, and how her Pioneer classmates should not define themselves by those measures. She also knew of what she spoke: as a swimmer, every training set and every race is ultimately quantified with a time. Schultz set three Chilean school records as a prep – she lists Chile as one of her three citizenships – then eventually posted a pair of marks that still rank in UC Davis' swimming record book. Fine achievements? Sure. But these are not synonymous with her identity.

By the time she reached her senior year of 2017-18, Schultz began to ask the question that often haunts a college student: what's next. She recalls director of athletics Kevin Blue referring her to one of the newest member of the athletics staff, Dr. Mike Lorenzen, who arrived the previous summer to launch a new student-athlete outcomes program.

Lorenzen's system, Schultz remembers, was so new that it was not yet dubbed Aggie EVO.

"I was actually there when he was testing out some names," she said. "He said 'what do you think about EVO?' It was short and to the point. The idea was 'evolution.' You're not yet what you're supposed to be, so how do you best tell your story to position yourself to be what you want to be someday?"

In fact, the opportunity to tell her story – a cornerstone to the EVO system – was one of the many positives Schultz took from her visit to Lorenzen's office. 

"He was genuinely listening to what I was saying. For the first time ever, I felt like I wasn't being stereotyped: the athlete who is blonde and says 'like' every other word." Instead, Schultz received an opportunity to define her strengths and foresee her desired type of work culture. For example, she grew up in the competitive environment of Silicon Valley and attended a highly ranked high school – CHS checked in at No. 33 in California and No. 267 nationally in U.S. News 2020 rankings. What did that mean for her? What about a flexible vs. strict workplace, the presence of mentors? Each of these were factors to consider when mapping out her future.

"He was super-helpful because he was so easy to talk to," Schultz says of her conversations with Lorenzen. "I'm a sprint freestyler. I did this, and here are my times. You're given a story you can tell, and you always have your sport to tie it back to. He did a good job at giving me something I can latch on to, but also something I was going to build on."

As such, Schultz took full advantage of that first year of Aggie EVO, despite not having the benefit of the entire four-year program. She attended the inaugural EVO Road Trip to the Bay Area, and took the first student-athlete section of American Studies 95, a course Lorenzen runs in a partnership with the campus's Internship and Career Center.

"My goodness, that class was the most helpful thing ever," said Schultz. "You learn about yourself, and that gives you power to advocate for yourself." 

For example, she discovered she landed in the "Woo" theme of the CliftonStrengths Assessment system. Short for "winning over others," the Woo profile still guides her in the workplace today. "When I'm having a bad day, I can anchor to what I'm good at. It doesn't need to always be the relevant thing, it just needs to be the thing I can always go back to. You have to have a growth mindset about everything else. With Woo, you're about winning others over – you've just won over a person who is now going to help you."

Before that initial meeting with Lorenzen, Schultz had worked to determine her path. She entered UC Davis undeclared, and had early interest in the health sciences before a chemistry class steered her elsewhere. He promised her parents that she would major in "something hard," and soon discovered that managerial economics majors are awarded a bachelor of science. 

In one of her upper-division accounting classes, a PwC recruiter paid a visit. The firm largely sought future grads in the audit and tax fields, which was not in Schultz' wheelhouse. However, a third area of PwC's services sounded more enticing: advisory. Schultz asked this part of the firm and was somewhat rebuffed: they were looking for people audit and tax, and generally didn't recruit from UC Davis for advisory.

"Any other person, when they hear 'we don't hire from UC Davis' would probably think, 'okay, I won't bother you again,'" said Schultz. "But not me. I thought, 'why not me? I'd be good at this job.'"

As if following the winning-over-others theme, Schultz put together her resume and stayed persistent with the recruiter. She also hopped onto LinkedIn and looked for people who were one connection away from PwC. As luck would have it, Schultz found the easiest ask possible: her mother. This single degree of separation led to information interviews‚ which led to an opportunity for an internship. However, it also meant additional coursework in accounting, either by returning for more school or by taking online courses.

Schultz accepted the internship, then returned to UC Davis that fall to complete the one-year MPac program at the GSM. 

Working an internship was already familiar territory, as she had done one throughout her senior year for the investment bank UBS. Balancing that with school, swimming and an officer position with her Alpha Phi sorority had toughened her up for any experience to come. 

"I don't think anything has been more difficult," said Schultz. "I remember posting an Instagram, and the caption literally had what I had gone through that year. People were saying 'I don't know how you're alive.' I could not get a break, mentally, physically or emotionally. It was exhausting. The actual practices at swimming were the easy part."

When Schultz completed her internship, PwC offered her a full-time job after her completion of her MPAc. Making a commitment a year in advance also felt familiar, she said: "It was like signing an NLI."

She now nears the end of her first year at PwC. As an advisory associate, she works under the management consulting pillar of the firm's wide range of services. The job is both tough and rewarding, demanding and flexible. She works as part of a team, but with a tremendous amount of duties that can fall upon her individually. Thus, perhaps Schultz' lifetime in swimming has trained her for this moment.

Attempting to describe a typical day is nearly impossible because of the variety of projects and clients she has. Sometimes a company looks to improve their customer relationship management, or it seeks to expand opportunities to recognize revenue. Enterprise performance management (EPM), initial public offerings (IPOs), restructures, resource planning – these are just a few of the areas where Schultz and her PwC teammates are called to lend expertise. Some projects take years, while others, like rapid assessments, are completed in a manner of weeks. 

"You can distinguish yourself pretty quickly at a firm like this because you end up going from problem to problem," she said. "Under my belt right now, I've been on three clients and done something completely different for every single one of them."

In fact, Schultz says, the never-ending cycle of problems and solutions reminded her of the journey as a sprint freestyler. At one point, perhaps she focused on improving her flip turns. Then once she got that in order, she might turn her attention to her breathing technique. As a result, she saw more and more benefits to her performance. 

"It's actually really fun for someone who is an athlete at heart," she said. "You find something to obsess over, you fix it, then you look for something else to make better."

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