Celtic Spotlight: Senior Caden Leddy

For senior Caden Leddy, summer break offered an opportunity to look ahead – exploring his interest in business, experiencing college-level learning, and gaining hands-on experience at two major universities.

This summer, Caden attended the Summer Business Academy: Data-Driven Decision Lab at the University of Michigan and participated in Badger Summer Scholars at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he took a sports marketing course, “More Than Just a Game: The Business of Sports.”

The experiences gave Caden the opportunity to explore two areas of business he had been considering for his future: accounting and marketing.

“For the past few years, I had been deciding between accounting and marketing because I was interested in both fields but did not fully understand what each major involved,” Caden said. “These experiences helped me gain a clearer understanding of my interests and confirmed that I want to pursue accounting in college.”

But Caden wasn’t simply learning about business concepts in a classroom. Both programs challenged him to apply what he was learning to situations faced by real organizations.

At the University of Michigan, Caden and his group worked with data from the historic Michigan Theater to develop recommendations for optimizing revenue. They analyzed variables ranging from concession sales and movie selections to operating and closing times, considering how each could affect the theater’s overall financial performance.

At Wisconsin, Caden approached business from another angle: sports marketing. As part of the program, he developed an off-season marketing plan for the Iowa Cubs and delivered a 20-minute presentation explaining his strategy.

“I enjoyed combining creativity, data analysis, and business strategy while working on projects that addressed real-world challenges organizations face,” he said.

Working through those challenges also changed the way Caden viewed the business world.

“My biggest takeaway was that business is much more interconnected than I originally realized,” he said. “Whether analyzing data, making financial decisions, or developing a marketing strategy, businesses rely on critical thinking, teamwork, and data to solve real-world problems.”

Beyond helping him determine what he wants to study, the programs gave Caden a glimpse of what life after Providence could look like. He experienced college classrooms, learned from university professors, and collaborated with students from different places.

The experience left him even more excited about what comes next.

“These experiences helped confirm my goal of majoring in accounting and gave me a better understanding of how business concepts are applied in the real world,” Caden said. “The programs made me even more excited to study business in college and explore how accounting can be used to make a positive impact.”

For Caden, a summer spent exploring different sides of business ultimately helped bring his own future into clearer focus!