USD College Alumni Spotlight: Elise Vaughan Winfrey and Nick Winfrey

How Two USD Grads Turned a Liberal Arts Degree into Dream Careers

For alumni Elise Vaughan Winfrey ’08 and Nick Winfrey ’08, a liberal arts education helped them build a firm foundation for their careers.

They met at a stargazing party at USD and married after graduation. Both graduated from the College of Arts and Sciences in 2008, with double majors in international relations and economics and a minor in Spanish. Today, Elise Vaughan Winfrey is a senior analyst on the United States Government Accountability Office’s Natural Resources and Environment team, and Nick Winfrey is Vice President of Data Science and Data/Measurement Strategy at The Walt Disney Company. Their education at USD, they say, prepared them well by challenging them to think critically, communicate persuasively and quickly make connections to solve problems.

"In my role, I work on a wide variety of subjects and explore something new every time I start a project, building on my expertise and functional skills, which is something I picked up from USD,” says Vaughan Winfrey. 

Winfrey’s fast-paced job requires him to solve abstract problems, translating them into coding language and business language that other teams, including legal and privacy, will understand to support Disney standards. He mused on the similarities between his job and what he learned at USD.

“I thought back to Del Dickson (retired), one of our favorite professors, and the Socratic method he used in class, and the one day I forgot my notebook was the day he called on me to explain it,” he says. “It was uncomfortable to (solve a problem) on the fly, but that is 90 percent of my day-to-day at this point.”

For Vaughan Winfrey and Winfrey, the intersectionality of coursework and study abroad opportunities (both studied in Madrid, Spain) was a key factor in choosing USD. “And the incredibly gorgeous campus,” Vaughan Winfrey adds.

Winfrey’s first post-graduation position was with the Federal Reserve Board researching trends in macroeconomics, but as the job evolved, he craved a role where he could see more direct connections to his work. That led to an analyst job in the FBI investigating organized crime, examining data collection methodology and organizational structures to improve processes, but it still wasn’t what he envisioned.

“I was thinking about data collection in a more strategic way and started to feel like I wanted to go to an organization where that was fundamental (to the work), and I wanted to understand what that meant in the private sector,” Winfrey says. Eleven years later, he’s fully into data science within the Disney Entertainment division, leading teams studying data and measurement strategy, data governance, data engineering and solutions engineering.

“A lot of my success has been learning to speak legal and data language and the ability to speak business language, and a large part of my USD education was … understanding how (such) pieces fit together,” he says.

Vaughan Winfrey’s first role was with the Council on Foreign Relations’ Center for Preventive Action and focused on analysis and discussion of international peace and conflict areas with an emphasis on regional and subject matter issues. The combination of analysis, event planning, budget management and editing allowed her to demonstrate the knowledge and skills she garnered from her education in a variety of functional areas. 

After earning a master’s in public policy, she landed at the UCLA Fielding Public School of Health. It was interesting but narrowly scoped work, and in 2016, she landed her current role at the independent, nonpartisan Government Accountability Office, working on energy and environmental issues. 

Both appreciate how the value of their liberal arts education was highlighted as they gained competencies and skills in both the private and public sectors.

“The logical and philosophical underpinnings, how the premises carried through to a decision or end statement, were intertwined in almost every single class at USD,” Winfrey says.

The dedication of the professors made all the difference, Vaughan Winfrey notes.

“These really fabulous professors were profoundly and personally invested in our success, guiding us to be our best,” she says.

— Leslie Ridgeway