Nikolai Wold developed a new set of skills on the way to a job at Goldman Sachs
Nikolai Wold
As his now-wife worked on a final presentation for her college engineering class, Nikolai Wold listened and asked questions. He certainly wasn’t an engineer—but was that a mistake in her systems visualization?
It turned out, “what I called out was an actual error that shouldn’t have been entered the way that it was,” Wold said. His wife took notice: “‘You found a mistake in my engineering final, and I just described it to you for about 15 minutes,’” Wold recalled her saying. “‘I think you should probably push yourself harder [in your career].’”
Wold (MSAQF 2022) started his professional journey as an aspiring model and actor with a degree in film studies. His post-grad resume listed roles at Whole Foods and pizza joints. Most recently, his job as a bank teller had provided him with steady employment and a newfound curiosity for how things worked in the financial world.
Taking his wife’s advice, Wold looked into master’s in finance programs; the Daniels College of Business seemed like a great fit. Applicants don’t need a business background to apply to the STEM-designated master of science in applied quantitative finance, which features a highly customizable curriculum that can be completed in as little as 10 months.
“Leveraging this master’s program opened the doors that allowed me to be where I am; it was very confidence-building and it helped to show me: ‘You can do a lot more than you think you can.’”
During the program, students have the chance to manage a real stock portfolio through the Marsico Center, take steps toward becoming a certified financial planner and travel abroad to study business in another country.
“It felt like an easy choice to me,” Wold said. “The campus was beautiful, the people I had met were very nice, I knew the program was quite strong and well connected in the Denver area.” Plus, he said, the Daniels name carried a certain prestige and had the strong rankings to back it up.
Years later, it’s easy to see how the degree paid off. Wold is an associate in credit risk at Goldman Sachs, providing internal credit ratings for private equity funds, assessing risk profiles and underwriting loans for large lines of credit. His career since graduating has also included stops at KPMG and Insight Partners.
“Daniels really was the strong foundation for growth,” Wold said. “It was very grounding and very helpful.”
Specifically, Wold found a home in the Pioneer Venture Group, an interdisciplinary collection of students that invests in early-state startups in the Rocky Mountain region. Not only was Wold managing a real venture capital fund, but he was also building a network of local business professionals.
“It was a great way to build my own connections and talk to a variety of personalities,” he said. “It also helped me to see what investors are interested in outside of an academic setting. I was able to take what I learned and apply it outside of the classroom, where the actions you take have direct consequences.”
Wold said he can trace his career success directly to the education he received at Daniels.
“Leveraging this master’s program opened the doors that allowed me to be where I am; it was very confidence-building and it helped to show me: ‘You can do a lot more than you think you can,’” he said. “It’s just a matter of applying yourself to your goals and keeping an open mind. You have to keep that eye open for opportunities as they come, even if it’s not the specific opportunity you’re looking for—because, you never know, it may lead you to where you want to go.”