Growth.

A moment of reflection from alumna Lindsey Zaic

During her time at University of Northwestern, Business Administration major Lindsey Zaic ’20 started a Women in Leadership club for students. Passionate about teaching and building people’s strengths, Zaic also got involved in Residence Life as a Resident Assistant (RA) for two years.

In addition to on-campus involvement, Zaic pursued many real-world experiences made available through UNW.

Now, only one year after graduating, Zaic works as an Associate Consultant at Bloomington-based Avtex, a customer experience consulting firm.

We sat down with Zaic to hear her reflections about her time at Northwestern and life after.

The following has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Describe your experience at UNW in one word.

Growth. Overall, it was a time of seeing where I wanted to go. Northwestern was an avenue for me to get where I wanted to be and prepared me for a job that I am very excited about.

How would you describe your freshman-year self and what would you tell that version of yourself now?

I would describe my freshman self as determined, energetic, and anxious. I would tell my freshman self that you don’t need to have everything figured out right away: Just take small steps of obedience forward and God will direct your paths.

Describe some of your passions:

In my free time, I love to go hiking, hammocking, host game nights, play volleyball, and spend time with my youth group kids. I am passionate about and living a life of thankfulness and spreading joy to those around me.

Explain your transition from school to career.

UNW definitely helped prepare me for my current career. I had two great internships; Northwestern really pushed me to do that. I felt prepared and that I had all the business skills I needed; it was just the knowledge of the industry that I didn’t have, which I could get on the job.

What is your current job like?

I go into companies and try to identify customer or employee frustrations called pain points. We then map out the customer/employee journey so that we can improve it. Next, we ideate around these goals and pain points to pull innovative solutions out of employees. Then we give solutions and recommendations for the companies to get to the future state.

What is your favorite part of the job?

My favorite part of my job is that we get all of the smartest people from a company in a room and facilitate workshops with them, asking questions in a way where we can pull information out of them so that they can grow and accomplish their goals. We work with people and use their strengths to create solutions that help their companies move forward.

I feel so blessed to be able to enter into the consulting world at such a young age. I want to give a shout out to Professor Jessa Nelson for that. Her classes challenged my thinking and assigned hands-on work which has helped me greatly in my career. I would also like to thank Professor Donaldson who encouraged me as a student and introduced me to my current employer!