Posted on November 17, 2022 by Chris Reichert
UTSA Student Carly Schneider
UTSA student sets high bar as one of Victory Capital's first data science interns
Senior Carly Schneider recently completed her tenure as one of Victory Capital’s first data science interns. Schneider, an operations and supply chain management major, and UTSA alum Taylor Lyons ’16, were selected from a national pool of 400 applicants and spent ten weeks from June-August 2022 with the data and analytics team. Victory Capital is a diversified global asset management firm headquartered in San Antonio, and provides specialized investment strategies to institutions, intermediaries, retirement platforms, and individual investors.
“Carly and Taylor were literally the best two interns I’ve seen in my entire career,” said Victory’s Chief Technology Officer, Ian Sale. “Both had UTSA connections and just came with the right attitude and the right skills to make a big difference.”
The possibility of earning such accolades seemed a long way off back in the spring. Schneider, who first learned about the internship through a friend, first had to survive the application process. This included progressive rounds of interviews with the data and analytics team, and eventually with Sale himself.
“I was almost terrified,” she said. “This was going to be my first real job, my first time entering into the workforce.”
As Schneider began interviewing, she says something strange happened. She began to relax and to feel more at ease – almost as though she belonged there. Which she did, says Analytics Translator and Data Governance Lead Dan Fleming, who worked closely with the interns, training and mentoring them.
“It was such a natural and organic fit because Carly came in eager to learn, she’s self-driving, and she understood the opportunities. She was very well prepared and professional about it, which is right in line with our culture.” From the moment the internship began, Schneider says they hit the ground running. The work of both interns helped to deliver data-driven campaigns to educate investors.
“We both just kind of jumped right in,” she said. “They gave us a lot of autonomy, and they tried not to box us in too much and let us figure our way throughout the entire internship, which was very rewarding in the end.”
According to Sale, the interns’ ability to achieve momentum and integrate themselves not only exceeded the expectations he and the rest of the team had, but they were able to achieve results that he hadn’t thought possible in ten weeks. At a mid-internship presentation during which Schneider and Lyons were presenting their accomplishments up to that point, Sale remembers commenting that their work was impressive, and would be even more impressive if they added on a specific feature. Of course, he continued, that wouldn’t be possible in their remaining weeks at Victory. But when Schneider presented to Victory’s executives at the end of the summer – there was a mockup of her proposal.
“Not only did they produce what we had laid out,” Sale said, “they actually went a step further and did exactly what I said there was no way we were going to be able to do during this internship program.”
Ultimately the opportunity to learn and grow over the summer became one of Schneider’s defining experiences within her educational career.
“Even though I came into it with limited knowledge, I completed that project,” she said. “I worked through it all, I would stay late, I would come in early, I was very much a hard worker and pushed through any challenges that we came across to complete what I set out to do. And that showed me how driven I was and how ready I was for the workforce.”
Although Schneider has one more year of studies at UTSA, she says she’s fallen in love with Victory and is already hoping to be hired there after her graduation, as Lyons was at the end of the internship period. For Victory, Sale says they’ve already begun exploring how to expand the data internship for the next year and hopes to grow the internship program with more opportunities for students throughout the company. According to him, data and analytics have proven increasingly vital to Victory and the financial industry in general. From client demographics to market predictions and investment performance, every step is determined by data-driven decision making. Sale believes that Victory’s partnership with the UTSA School of Data Science comes at a perfect time to benefit students and the company itself.
“We are so fortunate to have UTSA right here in San Antonio, building a beautiful new data science building,” he explained. “They’re going to be producing exactly the sort of candidates that will make a difference for Victory. And the internship program serves all of us: we get a chance to expose UTSA’s great students to work in the financial services industry, to make a real difference, and take that classroom experience and put it into action.”
Applications for next summer’s internship are expected to open in the spring of 2023. For UTSA students in other fields, Fleming notes that other departments within Victory will be seeking interns for summer as well. In the meantime, he encourages any students who are interested in Victory Capital and its internship programs to email him directly at dfleming@vcm.com and check vcm.com for career opportunities.
— Chris Reichert
