The first step: Craig Minnick

For Craig Minnick, the path from Ohio State to his first full-time gig wound through pursuing entrepreneurship, starting Ohio State’s guitar club, an internship in Italy, missing commencement and, eventually, a job with Nationwide.

After earning his bachelor’s degree in business administration with a specialization in finance, Minnick completed an Internal Audit internship with Nationwide this summer. In September, he returned to the company full time through its Professional Rotational Opportunity (PRO) Program.

It’s a fitting next step for someone who spent college exploring as many different opportunities as he could.

Minnick arrived at Ohio State interested in entrepreneurship, joining the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Scholars Program and the Keenan Center for Entrepreneurship. He helped develop ideas ranging from an Ohio State-themed WALL-E to a Duolingo-style personal finance app. Then his interests shifted. He joined Buckeye Leadership Fellows, worked as a teaching assistant and analyst, and participated in the OnRamp Innovation and Fintech Immersion programs. A major involvement was starting Scarlet Guitarists, Ohio State’s guitar club, which involved teaching guitar to students and developing a music community through open-mics and concerts.

After his sophomore year, he went even farther outside his comfort zone, traveling abroad for the first time to intern with an arts startup in Florence, Italy, through Fisher’s Global Internship Program.

And then there was commencement.

He skipped it.

While in Italy, Minnick learned that musician Mac DeMarco was touring and would be playing in his hometown of Cleveland. He and his friend Naim Senhaji scrambled for tickets and eventually met DeMarco after the show. Minnick even got his signature on a Mission BBQ receipt he happened to have in his pocket.

“In hindsight, it felt like the perfect way for me to close the book on college,” Minnick says.

Now, with a full-time job secured, he’s entering adulthood with the same curiosity that shaped his college experience. He’s commuting between Columbus and Cleveland to spend time with family, getting back into running and working with his dad on a passion project: building an electric guitar.

He’s also thinking about what comes beyond the PRO Program —what kind of work energizes him, where he can build a new community and what creative projects might come next.

Ohio State, Minnick says, taught him that there is far more out there than he once imagined. It also gave him experience navigating rejection, uncertainty, leadership and failure.

Now he has a new opportunity to put those lessons to work.

“I am certain that this is the time in my life where I need to try as many different opportunities as possible to gain perspective on what resonates with me,” Minnick says.