Winning Moves

Chris Zajic (BS Management ’03) has quickly risen to the top in the corporate world, most recently appointed as vice president of finance for NextEra Energy Resources. So, it may be a surprise that he didn’t choose ASU for its business school—in fact, he didn’t start as a business student at all. “My path has a bunch of twists and turns,” Zajic admits. “When I went to ASU, I originally wanted to major in broadcast journalism. As a huge sports fan, I wanted to be the next SportsCenter anchor.”

That love of sports is what led him to ASU: Being part of the exciting athletic environment of a PAC-10 school was a priority when selecting a college. In the fall of 1999, the Los Angeles-area native enrolled in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. But in one of his first-year classes, he found out that when he graduated, he could expect to cover small-town high school sports for about $18,000 a year—not exactly a network anchor salary.

He changed his major to business the next day. Switching his major turned out to be a good strategy, but it wasn’t until Zajic needed to apply to the business school as a junior that he started to get serious about his studies. Once he buckled down, he got better grades and enjoyed his classes more. “I loved the classes I took,” he says. “I can’t remember all of my professors’ names anymore, but I can remember exactly how and what they taught. I couldn’t wait for class.”

After graduating in 2003—the same year the business school was renamed the W. P. Carey School of Business—Zajic moved back to L.A., where he worked for a commercial real estate investment trust company that owns regional shopping malls. He started as an entry-level lease revenue analyst, reading lease documents and inputting financial data to create cash flow models.

After a few years, Zajic became an asset management analyst, responsible for running more financial models to determine which properties were ripe for redevelopment and how much space could be leased out. “There was a lot of financial analysis, and it was my first exposure to that kind of work,” he says.

Choosing ASU continued to pay off not just academically but professionally and socially, too. “At my first job, well over half of my department came from some PAC-10 school. It gave me another avenue of networking that helped me get promoted, and it made work fun as co-workers would criticize each other’s teams during football and basketball season,” he says.

The 2008 recession, combined with the boom in e-commerce, cut many shopping malls off at the knees. That shift provided the perfect opportunity for a vocation and location shift for Zajic and his wife, who were ready to escape California’s long commutes and high housing prices.

They moved to Denver in 2009, where Zajic took a finance position with a company that provides lenders with technology and back-office fulfillment solutions. There he found an active ASU alumni community to add to his network. “We would go to alumni events to watch football games at the Blake Street Tavern, and it was awesome to be around such a large ASU community.”

In 2015, after five years in Colorado, Zajic received a call from a contact at NextEra Energy Resources in Juno Beach, Florida. The company had recently made an initial public offering on a business that focused on renewable energy and needed someone to help in finance.

Zajic was ready to trade his snowboard for a surfboard, but his wife wasn’t interested in moving to Florida. Undaunted, he took her to dinner and made his pitch with a persuasive PowerPoint presentation. She got on board, and they’ve been in Florida since February 2015.

In 2022, Zajic was made vice president of finance for NextEra Energy Resources, North America’s largest developer of wind and solar and energy storage, with projects in 46 states.

“It’s been interesting to think about where my career has gone in terms of industries,” he reflects. He began his career during the last great era to work for shopping malls, but had a front-row seat to the decline of an industry when the financial crisis hit in 2008 and tenants started going bankrupt.

His time at NextEra Energy has been the exact opposite: Now, he’s part of an industry on the upswing. Last year’s passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, Zajic says, provides decades of tax policy guidance that will allow renewable energy companies including NextEra Energy to build more long-term planning. “The tailwinds behind the industry right now are phenomenal,” Zajic says. “We’re the world’s largest generator of renewable energy from the wind and sun and a world leader in battery storage and driving the development of the green hydrogen economy, so we’re perfectly positioned to capture a lot of growth as the country starts to translate its power grid from traditional forms of energy to more clean energy.”

Zajic says he was fortunate in his first job to work closely with leaders, including two senior vice presidents who reported directly to the chief operating officer. Straight out of college, his work was getting one level of review and going straight to the executive team. That type of exposure was an excellent education, he says: “You’re watching how people hash out issues or how executives approach different problems.” It also taught Zajic how to put together a financial analysis in a way that tells a story about what the numbers are saying, so it’s executive-ready. Throughout his career, he’s tried to teach those same lessons to younger analysts; as a result, he takes mentorship seriously, both formally and informally.

It’s also one of the reasons he recently decided to give back to W. P. Carey students with an annual scholarship. “I’ve gotten to the point in my career where I think it’s time to start giving back to the next generation,” he says.

Zajic says that although he didn’t have to worry much about financing his college education, his parents—a pilot and a small business bookkeeper—weren’t part of the corporate world. So, in addition to easing the financial burden for a student, he’d like to provide scholarship recipients with guidance to help them navigate corporate America faster.

Zajic keeps busy these days surfing, playing tennis, and spending time with his wife and 5-year-old twin daughters. And, of course, he makes sure to squeeze in an annual ASU football game with college pals.

He’s still easing into his new role as vice president. The appointment was part of a succession plan his predecessor put in place before her retirement. Being able to shadow her, Zajic says, greatly benefited his learning curve. “I had the fantastic experience of getting to work for her for almost a year before she retired,” he says.

Now that he’s officially in charge, Zajic says his short-term goal through the end of the year is “just not to screw anything up.” After that, he adds, “I’m going to allow myself to look at the next step.” Whatever that step is, he’ll be ready.