Career Path Of A Director Mergers And Acquisitions Advisory At PwC
David leveraged experiences in the Marine Corps and an MBA from USD to pivot into management consulting, initially facing internship rejections but ultimately landing a corporate development role at 20th Century Fox where they learned a lot about financial modeling, which then opened doors to a consulting position at Oliver Wyman. "Always interested in mergers and acquisitions," David then strategically networked with USD alumni at PwC to transition into their M&A practice in Silicon Valley, where they have been for almost nine years.
Mergers and Acquisitions, Management Consulting, Corporate Finance, Networking, Career Transition
Advizer Information
Name
Job Title
Company
Undergrad
Grad Programs
Majors
Industries
Job Functions
Traits
David Samuel
Director, M&A Advisory
PricewaterhouseCoopers Advisory Services LLC
New York University
University of San Diego, MScGL and MBA
Film, Media Arts, Visual Arts
Consulting & Related Professional Services, Technology
Consulting
Veteran
Video Highlights
1. Leveraged an MBA to transition from the Marine Corps into a business career.
2. Gained valuable financial modeling experience through a corporate development internship at 20th Century Fox, which helped him secure a consulting role.
3. Networked with alumni to transition from strategy consulting at Oliver Wyman to a mergers and acquisitions (M&A) role at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), aligning his career with his interest in the tech sector.
Transcript
Could you walk me through your career path, starting with your experiences in graduate school? Please include any internships or jobs you had before your current role.
Thanks for the question. As I was finishing up my time in the Marine Corps, I wanted to get a graduate degree. This helped me transition and leverage that into a new career path.
While I was at USD's MBA program, I started to learn more about management consulting and became really interested in it. Once we started the first year of the program, I applied to several consulting firms, but I wasn't having any luck getting an internship with them.
So, I ended up getting an internship in corporate development at 20th Century Fox in Los Angeles. That was a good role that taught me a lot about financial modeling, which went well with my corporate finance focus. It ultimately set me up for my first job out of USD with a consulting firm called Oliver Wyman.
That's really how it happened. It was grad school, a corporate finance internship at 20th Century Fox, which I then leveraged to get an interview and job at Oliver Wyman.
From there, I did Oliver Wyman Strategy Consulting for a while in San Francisco, but I really wanted to focus on the tech sector. Oliver Wyman wasn't really working in the tech sector in San Francisco, which is interesting since the Bay Area is full of tech companies.
I was always interested in mergers and acquisitions. After about a year at Oliver Wyman, I started networking with a USD alum at PwC's M&A practice. They connected me with people in Silicon Valley who needed more consultants with MBAs for their M&A practice.
That's how I ended up at PwC's Deals Practice, and I've been there for almost nine years now.