Like many students at the David Eccles School of Business, Matthew Kirry believes that having a wide range of experiences while in college is paramount to future career success.

And he’s willing to go down unconventional paths to get some of them.

For example, Matthew recently took the opportunity to serve as a student ambassador at the Zero Gravity Summit — a major conference held at The Gateway in Salt Lake City that focused on issues such as aerospace, defense, biotech, and artificial intelligence (AI).

The summit was staged by 47G (the rebranded Utah Aerospace and Defense Association), and thus proved naturally popular with engineering students, given the company’s ties to the University of Utah’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Matthew, though, was a rare Eccles School student in attendance, and thus viewed the event through a different lens.

“From a business school perspective, about 20% of the GDP for Utah currently is in aerospace, and there’s a lot of jobs being opened up in the state in defense and aerospace,” he said. “We just literally got a new $50 million investment from Delta for a training facility. [And with] Hill Air Force Base and Northrop [Grumman], deep tech and security, it’s opening horizons to different types of jobs, whether it be on the management, finance, investment, [or] operations side.”

A senior double-majoring in Finance and Operations & Supply Chain, Matthew wanted to make the point to fellow Eccles School students about perhaps widening their scope and considering different options.

He pointed out, for instance, that while majoring in finance often carries an inextricable emphasis on investment banking, the Zero Gravity Summit presented finance opportunities from a venture capital perspective, and project management opportunities from the operations side, and entrepreneurship opportunities across the board.

“Different bodies of individuals that have different abilities can work together to collaborate on different, cool projects,” Matthew said. “… There is a lot of crossover from what we’re working on in school.”

Of course, while the Zero Gravity Summit was a wholly unique opportunity, he’s had more conventional extracurricular Eccles experiences as well. He said one of the highlights has been his involvement with the Goff Strategic Leadership Center. He’s participated for multiple years and encourages his fellow students to do so as well, noting that it can help with everything from building résumés to landing first internships to meeting local industry leaders to getting practical, hands-on experience working with real-world companies.

“Doing as many things as possible and learning about the world — that’s why we go to college, right?” Matthew said. “… Any experience is good experience. My nature [has] always been to do as many things as possible — whether that’s T.A.’ing or volunteering for events or doing external things like Goff. The unique portion for me is just experiencing all the different opportunities that this school provides, which is a lot of hands-on opportunities, which not a lot of schools give access to.”

When Matthew wraps up his undergrad degree, he’s hoping to work in the tech field on the investment side, whether in venture capital or private equity. And he’s making plans for down the road, too — assembling a team of people around him to build out a company he intends to start someday.

To that end, he noted that a significant part of the Eccles Experience is the opportunity to meet a wide cross-section of individuals with unique backgrounds and ways of thinking, and that it’s important to be “taking advantage of [getting to know] the people that you intern with or take classes with and work on external projects with.”

For now, though, he’s enjoying the remainder of his college experience, and appreciating the unique experiences that the David Eccles School of Business provides.

“The conversation now about, ‘What is the value of a degree?’ — it makes sense because [college is] expensive and most people have to take out loans for it,” he said. “For me, it’s that you’re getting access to real-life situations, and then going to get that job where you’re able to work at a high, high level — and you’re being set up for that through school. … Eccles does a fantastic job of setting people up for contributing.”