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Excellence and Expertise

Nate Sowder: Designing success through setting goals, recognizing advantages

Fifth Third Bank executive tells students about balancing passions with what they are good at doing.

Nate Sowder lecturing in Taylor Auditorium
Excellence and Expertise

Nate Sowder: Designing success through setting goals, recognizing advantages

Nate Sowder isn't a Miami University alum, but don't tell him that.

“I didn't graduate from Miami, but you all make me feel like I did,” Sowder said. “I really like to work with Miami, because you all are extremely creative, and you all recognize that creativity and innovation are two different things, but oftentimes they go together very seamlessly.”

Sowder, an ecosystem innovation manager at Fifth Third Bank, was the keynote speaker at the Farmer School of Business’ Major Exploration Conference, an event to illustrate to first-year students the many career options that exist within business majors.

His talk focused on the idea of “Designing Success,” emphasizing the importance of high-impact career practices, including internships and capstone projects, to prepare students for success.

“You need to balance your passion with your advantage. You should always be passionate about stuff, but you have to understand that, especially when it comes to understanding what you're going to do for a living, you need to start understanding what your advantage is, because those two things might not line up. But you can start to learn how your advantage becomes your passion,” Sowder said. “If you continue learning and setting goals everywhere you go, it's much easier to say, ‘I went here because I knew that I could learn a new thing that's going to set me up for my next gig.’ That's figuring out your advantage.”

Sowder said that goal setting is key to making successful decisions about a career. “Don’t take a job unless you can clearly define a goal that you're going to try and get out of doing that job,” he said. “I wanted to go to a corporation to learn process. And that was my first goal in coming to Fifth Third. I wanted to know if my process was a good process or not. What I ended up learning was I didn't need to do that, that Fifth Third actually wanted me for something completely different.”

“If you take a job, either number one, you're learning something, or number two, you’re making bank. It’s okay to only have one of those things, but if you have neither of those things, it's time to move,” Sowder said.

He told the students that they should seek out mentors who can provide guidance, rather than just advice. “I mentor a lot of companies that are not in an industry that I understand, and the reason why I'm comfortable doing that is because while all companies are different, a lot of their challenges are actually very similar,” Sowder said. “That requires me to be honest with it, because advice and guidance are two different things. Advice is ‘You need to change something’, and guidance is ‘You should think about this.’”

Sowder said that when he’s hiring, he’s not only looking for people with critical thinking skills, but the ability to “think slow and act fast.” He compared it to watching a sports team or a dance group that appears to be working fluidly together, without much obvious thought or communication because they are extremely prepared for what they’re doing. “They’re actually thinking very slowly, but they're acting very fast, and that's what you want to get to in life,” Sowder said. “Because really, really good opportunities don't actually come that often, and when they do come, the ability to act on those opportunities is something that you want to be ultra-prepared for.”

“The best thing that you have going for you, that I think Miami is really great at, is setting you up for employment, whether that's helping you get internships, job placement, or experience,” he said.