In this episode of the Weinberg in the World Podcast, host Preena Shroff, a third-year student at Northwestern University, interviews Peter Waitzman, the CEO of Expedition Money and a 1999 graduate of Weinberg College with a degree in Economics. Transcript: Preena: Welcome to Weinberg in the World Podcast, where we bring stories of interdisciplinary thinking in today's complex world. My name is Preena Shroff and I'm your student host of this special Weinberg in the World episode.
I'm a third-year student majoring in neuroscience and global health with a minor in data science, and today I have the pleasure of speaking with Peter Waitzman, who graduated from Weinberg College in 1999 with a Bachelor of Arts and Economics. Peter is now the CEO of Expedition Money, a financial wellness program aiming to provide educational content and coaching to help individuals and families achieve financial independence.
Peter, thank you so much for being here with us today. Peter:
Well, thank you very much. It is a pleasure to be here. Preena:
Yeah. We are so excited to learn about your work in finance, but would love to start out with maybe how your career path was shaped by your time at Northwestern. So if you can tell us more about your undergraduate experience, what were some impactful classes, extracurriculars or mentorship experiences that you had which impacted your postgraduate career? Peter:
Yeah. So as you mentioned, I came to Northwestern for economics and got immersed in that student body. So a lot of my friends were economics majors. And something similar that you and I share is that I lived in Ayers CCI at the time, which also had a lot of economics people, especially with its commerce theme.
So from classwork to just the living experience on campus and even my social life were really surrounding me with people that were like-minded. And economics encompasses a lot of different things, but one of the things that I really liked that is a little bit outside the coursework right now is that it connected me with some of my really good friends who are really good friends today, but we were able to do stuff together, whether it was in classes or starting businesses on campus or doing projects together or researching or just sitting around in the lobby and kicking around ideas or reading the Harvard Business Review or whatever, just having people that share some of the same ideas. And a lot of that was some entrepreneurship. I think it was a little too early to think about that at the time. We didn't really think about starting businesses kind of that freshman, sophomore year, but it was just nice to be in that culture.
And then when I started taking classes, people would turn you on to certain things. So one of the classes that I surprisingly liked, it wasn't necessarily in economics, but was the public speaking class. And I remember one of the exercises there was to take a controversial topic and take one side of it and defend it. And I really liked that because what it made you realize is that not everything is going to be a win-win-win situation for everyone. So sometimes you're going to have to take something and you're going to have to do some convincing with it. And it really impressed upon me that you're going to have to be, one, a good communicator when you get out into the real world, make the case for what you're doing, be succinct, get your point across, those types of things, and that's going to be really helpful.
And then all of the economics classes that came on top of that, just to help you understand how the world works and incentives and the market dynamics and all of those types of things really was a nice way to put that puzzle together so that when you came out of school, you had a good perspective, a good base for developing what you wanted to work on or go into your career. And obviously, ultimately, I went that entrepreneurial route. Preena:
Absolutely. Yeah. It's pretty cool that the residential college system was where you found a lot of those connections right off the bat starting in college. So go Ayers. My unbiased opinion is Ayers is the best residential college. Peter:
One thing, it's funny you call it Ayers, because Ayers wasn't added on until I was there. So at that time, Mr. Ayers was getting involved and so we put the name on there. So to me, and for people of my vintage, it's still CCI, but I like how some people now know it as Ayers, so very cool. Preena:
Yeah. So let's talk more about beyond Northwestern and what led you on the career path. So I know you talked about different econ classes that kind shaped your experience. What skills were you able to build upon that have been critical in your field today? Peter:
Yeah. So one of the things that Northwestern directly led to was going in the economics world, a lot of people come out of college and go into consulting and it can kind of be a natural transition into the real world for people. And I did that for a couple years. So I did two years in consulting before I went into banking and then investment management, and then financial planning. And so the dots, the path there is actually not super uncommon. I don't know that it's a super common path, but it makes a lot of sense, I think, being naturally born out of the economics seed from Northwestern, and a lot of people who go into consulting maybe kind of branch off into different things. But I kind of still follow that financial path. And what that did for me at the time was just give me a lot of exposure to how things work.
So one of the things that I realized from economics is that you get a lot of macro picture, kind of big picture, even if you're doing microeconomics, it's kind of very generalized. But when you get out into the workforce and you start working as a consultant, you kind of understand how business works and the business requirements and those things that go into big projects. But then when I went to the bank as an analyst, you really start seeing real-world stuff. You're looking at data that is moving the needle on the products or services that you provide. And then when I went into financial planning and investment management, you're starting to paint that side of the picture as well. How does this impact individuals and what are the motivations there and the incentives and what are people using, and how does the top level of banking and financial services providers fit into what the consumer needs on the front lines?
And so having that broader picture really helped me then continue to move forward, and that's when I started moving away from the products and services side of things into what is generally more financial wellness. So how do we make people healthier, happier, more fulfilled, maybe chase retirement early, balance life and work better, raise a family, kind of have your cake and eat it too. Just generally be able to live and exist in life, which is very difficult.
I've even said the game is kind of rigged these days. It's really hard to make the amount of money, and you may not feel it now, but we kind of live in a high inflation environment, and there's so many challenges for people. It's either earning enough money or finding a place that's cheap enough to live or having a job that's secure. The myriad of things that really plague people and things that people struggle with.
And so that's why then I started to step back and actually worked... I was working for a large financial services company at the time and they wanted to launch a financial wellness project, something a little bit more encompassing, a little more general. And so I went into the home office and then we started building that and I spent a few years doing that. And then I continued the path of financial wellness and building financial wellness programs for a couple other companies after that. So ended up helping develop financial wellness companies or financial wellness programs for three companies following that, and then went off on my own and built the financial wellness program that I really wanted to build. So that's how I ended up getting there.
So kind of a lot of different steps. It's not necessarily A, B, C, D, but it didn't really deviate as far away as I think a lot of career paths can or they can really pivot. And I certainly embrace that too. And for the people that kind of want to go off and do something that's very different from what they got trained in, there's never maybe the perfect opportunity to do that, so you just want to do it. Preena:
Yeah. Yeah, it makes sense that you said you had a couple different jobs working in the industry before building upon your own program. So I guess I kind of wanted to ask, maybe the mentorship aspect of that, do you know if there's anyone who specifically provided a particular mentorship experience for you? Or what advice do you have for students who are looking for support along their career paths? Peter:
Yeah. Mentorship has been one of those things that I think has really evolved over the last couple of years. Not even the last couple of years, but over the last couple of decades. And so when I was a student and then even when I went and left school and actually participated in the mentorship program to Northwestern students at the time, so at that time I was meeting a couple students, and this was fairly early on in my career, there's a lot of value to that.
I feel a little bit like mentorship has changed in a way that on one hand, people who can be and should be mentors and have that life experience and maybe are an expert in their industry or subject matter experts are almost gun-shy about becoming mentors because they're worried about the time commitment, they're worried about, hey, the imposter syndrome of it, even though maybe they shouldn't be. And so it's harder these days I think to have formal men
