Meet the Founder

Paul Pesek

The highlight of my day is helping students unlock their career potential. I come from a small liberal arts college, Wheaton College. Through trial and error, I discovered the ins and outs of resume building, networking, and landing job offers. After 6 combined years in consulting with McKinsey and in private equity, I'm now an MBA student at Wharton and an MS Education student at Penn.

I've coached hundreds of students over the past decade and was featured alongside other dedicated coaches in the Wall Street Journal. I'm passionate about helping others navigate their career journeys, and am on a mission to build accessible resources that can empower all students to do so confidently.

More about my coaching work and personal career journey

If you're interested in learning more about my own career journey and my work coaching college students before launching First Round, feel free to check out any of the following:

VOCATIONAL
CAPITAL

Non-profit coaching program I founded and helped grow at several small colleges

Check out the program

WALL STREET JOURNAL FEATURE (2019)

WSJ article featuring Vocational Capital leaders and the work we're doing with students

Check out the article

WALL STREET OASIS PODCAST FEATURE (2020)

Two-part episode on the WSO podcast about my career journey from Wheaton to Wharton