Wooster experience helps Nate Bayer excel at G.E. Capital

In his first 18 months with G.E. Capital, Nate Bayer ’00 has moved four times: from Ohio to Connecticut, back to Ohio, then on to Chicago, and now Atlanta, where he works as a market analyst for G.E. Consumer Finance. Rotating from one G.E. division to another “has required me to learn a lot about a wide range of financial businesses in a very short amount of time, ” he says.

He credits his experience as a business economics major at Wooster with teaching him to “cut through a lot of information quickly, interpret business trends, and develop new business strategies. Economics has been a great background to have working for a company as large, diverse, and global as G.E.”

But the Maryland native almost didn’t apply to Wooster.

“My older brother and two cousins went to Wooster, which actually made me less likely to go there, rather than more,” he recalls. “I wanted to do my own thing. But my parents talked me into applying.”

A visit to campus for a scholarship competition changed his mind. Once here, Bayer quickly fell into the rhythms of campus life. He played soccer for coach Graham Ford and helped manage a million-dollar stock portfolio as a member of the college’s Jenny Investment Club. He shared a small house on campus with a group of friends who all volunteered with the Wooster Parks and Recreation Department, coaching and refereeing youth soccer and basketball games.

A decent soccer player in high school, Bayer says competition at the college level was “a wake-up call. Looking back, I probably should have been cut, but Graham had a lot of patience, worked with me, and eventually got me to a level where I was in his regular playing rotation, and a lot of times in the starting line-up. It was a great lesson in perseverance.”

Bayer did his senior Independent Study project on the impact of managerial ownership on mergers and acquisitions, working one-on-one with his faculty adviser, John Sell. The in-depth research project proved to be great preparation for his first job with First Energy Corp., and later when he enrolled in an accelerated M.B.A. program at Case Western Reserve University.

“Working through such a big project is a big confidence booster for anything you do later on, professionally and in grad school,” he says.

What would he say to a student considering Wooster?

“Wooster takes people like me who come into college with a lot of rough edges — academic, social and athletic — works with them, develops the raw talent, and ends up graduating people four years later that are very well-rounded, pretty polished, and probably a lot better prepared for the work world than the people graduating from a lot of other colleges.

“There’s a lot of opportunity.”