Brayden Petras, C’28

It was late on a summer evening in Nashville, and Brayden Petras, C’28, was nervous. He was set to give a presentation to executives from one of the country’s most prominent corporations the next morning—and he was going to tell them that they were wrong.

That presentation was the culmination of three intensive weeks spent at Vanderbilt University’s Accelerator Summer Business Immersion program. Taking place on Vanderbilt’s campus, the program convened undergraduate students and recent college graduates from across the country for comprehensive coursework and immersive practical work with major companies as clients. In the classroom, Petras learned about consulting, marketing, branding, and business operations, while simultaneously making connections and receiving career coaching to help chart his potential future paths within the field.

Every Sunday, leaders from a Fortune 500 company would come in and pitch a problem to the students, at which point they’d have a week to collaborate in teams on proposing a solution and delivering a formal presentation of their recommendations in a head-to-head competition each Friday. The problems were grounded in very real concerns for the companies—in some cases, Petras and others had to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) due to their access to proprietary information—and the pace was grueling.

“We had a deliverable every night through the week, from background research to data analysis to drafting our presentations,” says Petras. “It’s amazing how much work we were able to do in such a short time.”

In the final week, Petras’ third client had requested a proposal for a marketing plan to help attract more Gen Z customers to their stores. Seeing that the company had a location nearby in Nashville, Petras went to check it out in person—and what he found pushed him to take the project in an entirely new direction. “It was not great in there,” says Petras. “It wasn’t clean, it wasn’t being taken care of ... I realized that they didn’t need a marketing plan. They needed to improve the customer experience.”

Petras took his observations back to his team, who agreed with his suggestion that they pivot their presentation. That step wasn’t without risk, however, as it meant diverging from the original brief they had been given. But, Petras thought, it would get at the heart of what they were supposed to do as consultants: go beyond telling the client what they wanted to hear and instead tell them what they needed to hear.

Since it was his idea, Petras agreed to be the one to deliver the constructive feedback face to face with the company’s executives. He settled on an approach that was direct but congenial, hoping to counteract any defensiveness by couching his comments in humor. It worked. “I threw in some jokes, which they seemed to appreciate,” says Petras, noting how the executives laughed along with him and readily admitted their agreement with his findings.

Of course, since Petras’ group had not satisfied the intended project brief, they did not win that week’s competition. But they did succeed in capturing their clients’ attention and leaving a lasting impression. His group may not have won the official prize, but Petras was specially commended for the ingenuity that led to his unorthodox presentation.

Looking back on both that moment and the experience overall, Petras credits his success in such a fast-paced environment to the preparation he received at Sewanee. Thanks to the Carey Fellowship—Sewanee’s business honors program—and Sewanee’s liberal arts curriculum, Petras found that he was able to enter the program and tackle the assigned problems from multiple angles.

“I’d see these students who were studying only business at their schools, and they weren’t able to think as critically,” says Petras. “But those of us from Sewanee were able to look at the problems holistically and attack them in different ways. It’s definitely something that gives me confidence as I look to a future career in business or consulting.”