For the majority of Jack Kennedy’s ‘26 time in the Lacy School of Business, he had a fairly different career in mind. He was interested in finance and planned on pursuing investment banking. But one of the experiences that changed his perspective had little to do with sitting in the classroom.
In undergrad, Jack became a personal trainer at Butler University’s Health and Recreation Complex. The experience helped him realize something important about the kind of career he wanted.
“I realized I needed the people-facing aspect, and not just sitting behind a screen all day,” he says.
That realization didn’t change his interest in finance, but it helped him understand how he wanted to use it. He began exploring wealth management, which combined his interest in finance with opportunities to build relationships and work directly with clients.
Today, Jack works in commercial trucking insurance at Amwins, a career he says he wouldn’t have predicted when he started at LSB. Amwins is the largest wholesale specialty insurance product and service distributor in the U.S.. His path from finance to wealth management to insurance may look like a series of unrelated steps. But looking back, Jack recognizes that each experience helped him develop skills and better understand the kind of work he wanted to pursue.
As Jack continued his education at Butler, his interests continued to evolve. His internships initially focused heavily on finance and wealth management, but during his senior year, he had the opportunity to take more insurance courses.
That experience opened another door.
“I finally had the opportunity to take more insurance classes, and that’s when I kind of realized that I was maybe interested in insurance as well,” he says.
Instead of viewing his changing interests as a lack of direction, Jack used them as opportunities to explore.
As graduation approached, he began applying for positions and focusing not only on finding a job but also on building connections. That approach eventually led him to Amwins.
Butler alumni working there helped him make connections and learn more about the opportunity.
The process wasn’t immediate. Jack had experienced rejection and worked with his career mentor to connect with professionals and practice interviewing. That networking set him up for the opportunity he has today.
His experience demonstrates that career development doesn’t always happen through one decision on a straight path. It can happen through a series of opportunities, conversations and experiences that create what comes next.
While Jack’s job titles have changed, the skills he developed along the way have remained constant.
One of the most important is organization. In his current role, Jack works with numerous systems and processes, and he has had to learn quickly. He relies on organized notes to keep track of new information and processes.
“There’s probably 10 different softwares I use now that I’ve had to take notes on,” he says. “Just being able to keep those notes organized, and be able to refer to them over and over again, is helpful.”
For Jack, learning how to learn has become just as important as knowing the ins and outs of a system. That has become especially relevant as artificial intelligence continues to change the workplace.
“AI can really teach you, but it can’t learn for you,” Jack says. “Being able to learn the process first, and then using AI to optimize it, has been really beneficial to me.”
Other skills have followed him from one experience to the next, including responsiveness and communication. In his current role, Jack works heavily through email and has learned the importance of prioritizing communications and responding quickly. That responsiveness reflects a broader lesson from his career, technical knowledge is only one part of professional success.
For Jack, Butler’s greatest value wasn’t preparing him for one specific job. It was giving him opportunities to explore.
“I feel like it leaves the door pretty open,” he says of his Butler experience. “Especially with the curriculum, I feel like you get a taste of everything.”
His coursework exposed him to areas including equity, wealth management, insurance and entrepreneurship. Outside the classroom, his involvement in Lambda Chi Alpha helped him grow personally and as a leader, while experiences including Bulldog Reports and other collaborative business courses helped him learn how to work with different people.
Studying abroad in London offered another opportunity to step outside his comfort zone. Jack participated in Butler’s Leadership London program, where he experienced a different culture and work environment.
“It immersed me into a whole different culture and work environment,” he says. “It really kept me on my toes, but allowed me to learn a lot.”
That experience reinforced the value of being willing to enter unfamiliar environments and learn from them.
But the most tangible part of Jack’s Butler experience was his internships. As a business student, completing two internships gave him the opportunity to move beyond classroom concepts and experience professional environments.
“Just getting that hands-on experience, in a real office, doing real work and tasks that impact people, is really meaningful,” he says.
Those experiences also became valuable talking points during interviews and networking conversations after graduation.
Post-grad, Jack found himself comparing his own progress to the people around him. Seeing classmates announce new jobs on LinkedIn made it feel like he needed to catch up. Instead, he learned to focus on his own path.
“You kind of have to drown out some of that noise, and just focus on your own career path, rather than everyone else’s,” he says.
His own career is evidence of that advice. The job he has today grew out of experiences he couldn’t have predicted as a freshman, from personal training to wealth management, from insurance coursework to studying abroad, and from internships to connections with Butler alumni.
Jack’s journey provides a different way to think about career planning. The goal isn’t to have every step mapped out. It’s to take advantage of opportunities, build skills that can grow with you and strive to discover what’s next.