Mateo Valdez Of Gonzaga Sport Consulting Group (GSCG) On Innovative Approaches That Are Transforming Education
An interview with Eden Gold
Success means different things for different people, and only you know what it means for you. Thank goodness I realized this eventually in college and charted my own career path that set me apart. As if I followed the status quo and defined success by getting good grades, I would have not only not founded GSCG nor be where I am today in my career, but I would have suffered through college and probably be less happy after.
The landscape of education is undergoing a profound transformation, propelled by technological advancements, pedagogical innovations, and a deepened understanding of learning diversities. Traditional classrooms are evolving, and new modes of teaching and learning are emerging to better prepare students for the complexities of the modern world. This series will take a look at the groundbreaking work being done across the globe to redefine education. As a part of this interview series, we had the pleasure to interview Mateo Valdez.
Mateo Valdez is redefining success for the next generation of business leaders by bridging the gap between academic theory and real-world experience. As founder of the Gonzaga Sport Consulting Group (GSCG), he built a student-led consultancy that has delivered business solutions to nearly 20 major sports organizations — including the NFL, MLS, Toronto Blue Jays, and New Balance — while creating a scalable model for experiential education.
Recognized by Inside Higher Ed, Gonzaga University, and awarded by the University of Michigan Sport Business Conference and Eastern Washington University’s Center for Entrepreneurship, Mateo is gaining national attention for disrupting traditional education. Under his leadership, nearly 100 students have taken on high-stakes consulting projects without relying on classroom instruction or faculty oversight.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share the “backstory” behind what brought you to this particular career path?
Thank you for the opportunity! Throughout my childhood, I loved learning, yet I was a bad student. That may sound paradoxical but was true since I always loved learning about things like history, English, business, arts, and more in my “free time”, yet when I was in elementary school, my parents would always reach down my backpack and find my homework crumbled up and a report card with poor grades at the bottom, and these habits would continue even in through the start of high school (although by then both were sent straight to parents through an online portal). My rationale as a kid was simply that I “wasn’t smart”, until finishing high school, where I began to realize it was less of that and more that my preferred way of learning did not align much with the largely theoretical nature of our current K-12 education system. What I owe my gratitude to for this realization is something many don’t associate with gratitude — the COVID-19 pandemic. This is because not only did the immense long-term boredom I felt and free time I gained during the lockdown force me to reflect on why I struggled academically in the past and how I prefer experiential learning — that is learning by doing things — but it also allowed me to put both that realization and philosophy into action, and found Gonzaga Sport Consulting Group (GSCG), where we provide students the opportunity to learn business skills by working on semester-long business consulting projects with executives at their favorite sports brands across the NFL, NBA, WNBA, MLB, MLS, NHL, and more.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
It was when one of our student project teams recently flew to Seattle to meet with one of our clients onsite that semester, the Seattle Mariners.
The Mariners front office team was incredible hosts, and had a whole day planned for our visit at the T-Mobile Park. One of our student members was particularly a huge Mariners fan, and seeing firsthand how extremely excited he was getting to work with the Mariners on a marketing project, meet with their business executives, and get a tour of their facilities, dugout, press rooms, etc. His energy was infectious, and he was so grateful for the opportunity.
I have many stories similar to this, but they are my favorite because they remind me of why we founded GSCG, to set up passionate and hard-working students with awesome opportunities like these, and get to enjoy watching some of these meaningful moments in their lives and careers.
I say that because my job is to focus on what is NOT going well in the program and improving it, so in the day-to-day grind, it is often easy to forget what we are actually achieving.
Although I am still terrible at doing this, my lesson from this is to be proactive about carving out time and space to reflect on what is going well and how far we’ve come, and dare I say, celebrate it!
Can you briefly share with our readers why you are an authority in the education field?
I don’t personally see myself as an authority in education — just someone who was lucky to be put in a combination of circumstances (time to think during COVID lockdown, supportive family and friends, etc.) that allowed me to think how I can best leverage the education industry to drive progress in my career (taking advantage of experiential learning opportunities/extracurricular projects over the classroom), and sometime after, scale those learnings through founding an organization that positively impact other students’ careers through the same principles. In my opinion, GSCG quickly gained traction and “authority” amongst students due to the beautiful combination of experiential learning, as mentioned before, but also operating within a context and industry that students are genuinely passionate about — sports. This combination presented some sort of learning growth hack, where students were so genuinely engaged with the projects they were working on due to how fun it was to work on a business project with their dream sports team, that they worked extra hard and therefore learned an immense amount about business acumen, professionalism, communication, and more, often without even realizing it. This sweet spot of productivity, learning, and fun GSCG achieved, and the clear outcomes it held, helping countless of our students land internships and jobs, became an inspiration for us internally, but also to many other students across the country who are now building similar organizations at their respective regions/universities.
Can you identify some areas of the US education system that are going really great?
Here I want to take the opportunity to note that many of the contrarian things I’ve said thus far about the US education system, really mostly apply to business education, or whatever leads to more corporate, entrepreneurial, and less academic careers. I say this because the theoretical nature of education does well for those who want to go into industries I have zero experience in, such as medicine, law, policy, biology, chemistry, etc. In these disciplines, memorizing stuff in the theoretical classroom is actually vital, as those disciplines are backed by rules, science, history, and nature. To me, this is where traditional higher education makes more sense.
Can you identify the key areas of the US education system that should be prioritized for improvement? Can you explain why those are so critical?
On the other hand, traditional higher education does not equip you to succeed in the business world, whether it is corporate or entrepreneurial. This is critical because students are used to letting educational institutions define what success means for them on their behalf. For example, many, since little, are told that success means getting good grades in school. There is some truth to this to set yourself up for opportunities throughout K-12, and up to high school, where it’s key to get into a good college, but if you want to go into the broad world of “business”, the importance of grades plummets once you are in college. To put it a bit more lightly, grades are only a small component of what you need to position yourself for an internship and eventually a job at a sought-after company. Even if you are a 4.0 GPA, since that is a quantitative value, you are directly comparable/no more unique than anyone else in the world who has a 4.0. This makes having qualitative experience, skills, like internships, extracurricular involvement, and projects (i.e., experiential learning) ever so important. It’s the stuff that makes you look more appealing and unique to employers on a resume, the stuff that is more interesting for interviewers to hear during interviews, and whether you want to be an employee or entrepreneur, the stuff that is more aligned with how the actual world works. The solution? Higher education business schools facing this truth and standardizing more of their core curriculum on experiential learning and industry engagement, which will set students up as more appealing job candidates with less theoretical knowledge and more relevant experiences that will prepare them for what is a nuanced, challenging, and ever-changing business world. In other words, doing what GSCG is doing, on an even larger scale.
Please tell us all about the innovative educational approaches that you are using. What is the specific problem that you aim to solve, and how have you addressed it?
Our approach addresses a critical gap in traditional business education: the disconnect between theoretical knowledge and real-world application. The specific problem we aim to solve is that many students — especially those pursuing careers in business — struggle to translate classroom learning into practical skills that employers value. Our approach is rooted in learning by doing. We provide students with the opportunity to work on semester-long consulting projects with executives from major sports organizations across the NFL, NBA, WNBA, MLB, MLS, and NHL. This model not only immerses students in real business challenges but also leverages their passion for sports to drive deeper engagement and learning. The result is a powerful “learning growth hack”: students are so invested in the projects because of their relevance and excitement that they develop critical skills — like communication, professionalism, and business acumen — almost effortlessly. Many of our students have gone on to secure internships and jobs thanks to the hands-on experience and confidence they gained through GSCG. By aligning education with passion and real-world relevance, we’re not just teaching business — we’re preparing students to thrive in it.
In what ways do you think your approach might shape the future of education? What evidence supports this?
Our approach — anchored in experiential learning and industry engagement — has the potential to reshape business education by redefining how students gain practical skills and career readiness. Traditional education often emphasizes theoretical knowledge, which, while important, doesn’t always translate into real-world competence. By contrast, our model at GSCG immerses students in hands-on consulting projects with major sports organizations, allowing them to develop business acumen, communication, and professionalism in a context they’re passionate about.
This approach could influence the future of education in several ways:
- Curriculum Reform: It encourages institutions to integrate more project-based, real-world learning into their core curriculum — especially in business schools.
- Student Engagement: It demonstrates how aligning education with students’ passions (like sports) can drive deeper engagement and better learning outcomes.
- Career Readiness: It shifts the focus from grades to qualitative experiences that better prepare students for the workforce.
Evidence of impact includes:
- Nearly 100 surveyed GSCG students and alumni reported that the program was instrumental in helping them secure internships and jobs.
- Many students built networks through GSCG that directly led to employment opportunities, including with the very companies they consulted for.
- The model has inspired students at other universities to replicate similar experiential learning organizations, signaling its scalability and relevance.
How do you measure the impact of your innovative educational practices on students’ learning and well-being?
The impact is measured by how GSCG has helped students land internships and jobs in their respective fields of interest. Every GSCG student and alumni we’ve surveyed (nearly 100) has attributed GSCG as extremely helpful in landing their respective jobs and internships. Many have landed an internship or job through the network they built at the organization, and some directly with the client company they worked on a project with.
What challenges have you faced in implementing your educational innovations, and how have you overcome them?
When focusing on innovation, testing, and pivoting, it is often difficult to prioritize concurrently sustaining what you are building so it can one day survive without you. This was especially prevalent with GSCG, as it was a project I started in my 2nd year of college at Gonzaga, and I knew two years later I would graduate and be unable to run it, and would have to hand off day-to-day operations to the next generation of student leaders. To get ahead of this as much as possible, by my fourth year in university/last year before graduating college, I started slowly transitioning out of our day-to-day work and instead focused on laying out detailed documentation, guides, and timelines on all our administrative processes, ultimately defining how to run GSCG. The end goal being if I randomly disappeared, there would be a shared folder that other student leaders can access that gives them all the info they need to confidently run GSCG and keep serving students. To this day, we are still a long way from reaching this ideal point, especially in May 2024, when I graduated and finished fully transitioning out of my role as President and into Chairman of our newly formed Advisory Council, composed of Gonzaga University alumni who are executives in relevant industries and donating to GSCG. That said, we have still made significant progress in sustaining our operations, and I’ve learned you have to embrace failures and errors to a healthy extent, as these are inevitable, especially during times of great change for an organization like the founder no longer running it, and accept this is just part of the process. To this day, I am still figuring out that sweet spot on how to lead the strategic direction of GSCG as chairman, while also being able to lean into the nitty gritty when there are fires and students need me, while also having a separate full-time job I’d like to keep. It is all worth it, though, as nothing teaches me more about leadership, responsibility, and organization than having to juggle all those responsibilities.
Keeping in mind the “Law of Unintended Consequences” can you see any potential drawbacks of this innovation that people should think more deeply about?
Great question. I think there is an equity component that needs to be considered. Because, these experiential learning opportunities are responsibilities students take on top of academics, so lower-income students may need to prioritize less-glamorous opportunities that pay more in short term, therefore at risk of missing out on these opportunities to engage directly with corporate partners that may lead to high paying internship/job opportunities in the long term, if that makes sense.
What are your “5 Things I Wish I Knew When I First Started”?
- Success means different things for different people, and only you know what it means for you. Thank goodness I realized this eventually in college and charted my own career path that set me apart. As if I followed the status quo and defined success by getting good grades, I would have not only not founded GSCG nor be where I am today in my career, but I would have suffered through college and probably be less happy after.
- Competing with others is overrated. Similar to #1, if you stop following what everyone else is doing and chart your own career journey, you will find you are the best at what you do, maybe because you are actually good at it, or maybe just because there are fewer people doing it and therefore competing with you! To put it hyperbolically, create your own competition, and you automatically win.
- Build meaningful relationships. I did not touch on this enough before, but something that always helps in areas of career interest is knowing people who are living it. This may sound obvious, but it is easy to forget to proactively do when you are too busy triple majoring and minoring in studies that will bear no relevance after college.
- Don’t distract insights with noise. Students are at risk of hearing bad advice simply because people feel a natural inclination to “teach” them. Who knows, maybe you are reading this column, and it is BS to you. I respect that, because you know what is best for you better than anyone else. Solution: pick your mentors wisely and never be afraid to challenge advice, not to be annoying, but to genuinely embrace curiosity that facilitates deeper learning.
- “Student” is the strongest title you will ever have. For people in college, enjoy it. You are never going to live a time where you are rewarded for failing, have close access to a network of faculty, alumni, and friends that genuinely want to help you, and have opportunities available for you to apply for so-called “internships” that 99% of the time require you to be a student. The negative part of this title is that it is temporary.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
I have so many quotes that come to mind from my favorite author, Mark Manson. But the one I’ll choose here is “Life is essentially an endless series of problems. The solution to one problem is merely the creation of another.” This quote and the mindset associated with it are what helped me get through the endless problems that building GSCG presented. Not just to get through them but appreciate them too, since I am also privileged that back then, my problems with it were really first-world problems.
We are blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂
Mark Manson and Ryan Holiday. Both are authors and podcasters whose insights have shaped my mindset, habits, and behaviors that gave me the fuel to build GSCG while in college, while also having a balanced and fulfilling-enough life outside of it.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
LinkedIn!: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mateo-valdez/
Thank you so much for these insights! This was so inspiring!
Mateo Valdez Of Gonzaga Sport Consulting Group (GSCG) On Innovative Approaches That Are… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.