Recent University of Missouri–St. Louis graduate Callie Clinton turned a classroom conversation into a career path, developing a passion for investments and wealth management while balancing academics, athletics and internships that prepared her for her new role as a financial advisor. (Photo courtesy of Callie Clinton)
Callie Clinton initially thought it would be a quick chat early in the semester. Just a few minutes in the office of David Beverly, an assistant teaching professor of finance in the Ed G. Smith College of Business at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, to get direction on an assignment for his Investments course.
Turns out that conversation would do more than help her complete an assignment. It provided a spark that helped shape Clinton’s academic and professional goals.
For the online class in the fall of 2024, Beverly asked his students to optimize an investment portfolio in Excel for a few companies of their choosing. Clinton was having a difficult time getting the numbers to work, which Beverly said was actually the point of the project, enabling the students to understand why popular brands like Starbucks or Target often present poor investment opportunities. But Clinton, hoping to fix what was wrong with her numbers, scheduled an appointment with Beverly to go over the issues.
“I was expecting it to be a short meeting where we just fixed it, but it ended up being an hour where we dove into the data and talked about what each of it means, how we could make it better and all of these things,” Clinton said. “That really drew me toward the investment side of it, like where you should allocate your money based on what your risk tolerance is, and stuff like that. That was super impactful for me.”
Clinton, who began studying at UMSL in the fall of 2022, had already chosen finance as her field of study, but the conversation helped sharpen her interest in investments and wealth management, areas that would become central to the start of her career. Clinton recently graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Finance and a minor in economics, and she has already begun working as a financial advisor for SageSpring Wealth Partners in Franklin, Tennessee, where she had completed an internship in the summer of 2024.
“I’m super anxious, but it’s a good anxious to start my next chapter,” said the Nashville native, who started on May 4, before UMSL’s commencement ceremony.
Callie Clinton competed for the UMSL women’s swimming and diving team, balancing the demands of collegiate athletics with her studies in finance, and she earned academic all-district honors while preparing for a career in wealth management. (Photo by Luke Rinne)
Beverly fully expects it to be a successful chapter for Clinton. He said right from that first in-person meeting, he knew that Clinton was looking for more than just getting a good grade in his course. She was interested in the topic and wanted to increase her knowledge.
“Of course I can sit here and talk about this stuff for an hour because that’s what I like doing,” Beverly said, “but the fact that she was asking the questions, she wanted to dig into why this is happening, that to me was the important part and the intriguing part that showed she has a real desire to learn about this.”
Beverly’s impression of Clinton only grew stronger during the summer of 2025. Clinton had been selected for an internship with Enterprise Mobility, and she asked Beverly to be her faculty sponsor.
The internship turned out to be not quite what Clinton had expected, as she was placed in the information technology department. Rather than viewing that as a setback, Clinton embraced the opportunity and became the team’s resident finance expert while working alongside interns focused on programming. Their group ultimately earned an award for a pitch presented to company leaders.
“It ended up being a great internship, and she really enjoyed it,” Beverly said. “More than that, she excelled at it, and that to me shows just the type of person she is, because she didn’t take it as a negative. She just kind of dove in and tackled it.”
As a member of the women’s swimming and diving team at UMSL, Clinton is adept at diving in and tackling a challenge.
A competitive swimmer since she was about 5 years old, Clinton wasn’t sure as she neared high school graduation whether she wanted to continue the sport in college. As she weighed her options, she narrowed her choices to four schools, two where she would swim and two where she would not. Ultimately, the value of an UMSL education and the strength of its College of Business put the university at the top of her list. The welcoming atmosphere she experienced from the swim team during her recruiting visit to St. Louis sealed the deal.
“It just seemed like a good fit for me,” said Clinton, who was also glad to continue in the pool. “I think I would have really regretted it if I didn’t keep swimming in college.”
And Clinton certainly made the most of her time at UMSL.
In addition to competing for the Tritons, she joined the Pierre Laclede Honors College, worked as an economics tutor for Associate Teaching Professor Brian Speicher and challenged herself in discussion-based classes that helped build her confidence as a communicator. Her ability to balance those commitments while excelling in the classroom earned her academic all-district honors this past year, making her one of eight UMSL swimmers to receive the recognition.
“Callie has been a great representative of our team,” said Tony Hernandez, head coach of the men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams. “One of the things that we try to preach as a coaching staff is the community, the people that you’ll have around you on the team, and I think that she really bought into that and wanted to make sure she wasn’t just stepping into a community. She wanted to step in and then make the community be what it could be as well, and those are really the type of people that we want to bring in.”
