Imagine this: You are 23 years old, recently graduated from one of the top business schools in the nation, earning yourself a lucrative position at one of the best management consulting firms in the world. You are making good money, allowing you to quickly pay off your exorbitant student loan, and have a secure future in the works for you because of your education and experience.

But your primary passion lies in football, where you have spent five years developing connections, making a name for yourself with hard work and production that can only be expected of someone with a drive built on devotion.

So here’s the decision: do you stay in the corporate world doing what you enjoy, or do you take the leap of faith to do what you love?

Cody Cejda, Northwestern’s director of football operations, chose the latter, without looking down or looking back. And though success has rewarded Cody throughout his journey, his pathway was not always smoothly paved. It was through his own initiative, drive and faith in himself that he was able to land in the Wildcat Football Office, what he calls one of the most fun environments he has ever been a part of.

A native of Kingsley, Mich., outside of Traverse City, Cejda (pronounced SHAY-duh) attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he earned his undergraduate degree at the famed Ross School of Business. His real fervor, though, was football, where he served as a student manager and student assistant under then-head coach Lloyd Carr.

“I was hitting the foghorn every five minutes,” Cejda claims, describing his early days with the Maize-and-Blue, when he would sound the horn at the end of each session of practice. With a fascination for the sport and an optimism that it would one day be in his future, Cejda would spend as much time as he could in the football office, just learning all he would need to contend in a competitive market.

However, once graduation rolled around and reality set in, he realized there were some responsibilities to take care of. “I paid my way through school [and] had to pay off my student loan debt,” Cejda says.

He went back-and-forth with this decision: he could continue to work an hourly wage in the football office, or take his degree and accept a job in the corporate world and develop professional skills to help pay off his student finances. He opted for the practical move, taking the more profitable offer from Accenture, an acclaimed management consulting company.

In just a year and a half, Cejda was able to pay off the remainder of his college debt and still had about a six-month buffer of time to explore his options. Never losing sight of his love for football operations, he reached out to everyone he knew that had some connection with the game. The most helpful turned out to be the former director of football operations at U of M, Brad Labadie, who got him in contact with Director of Football Operations Nolan Jones at Northwestern.

Shortly after, Cejda was interviewed by Jones (in the same office he currently holds) and earned a position on the support staff at NU. He started off working as a volunteer, as many football assistants do to start off in a major college football program. Though he was not compensated, his reward was the enjoyment of every minute detail of the job.

In an ironic twist of fate, the man who now holds the famed “Trust Yourself” board before the Wildcats take the field on Saturdays had to do just that. He had given up a well-paying job to work for the Purple-and-White, but he had followed his internal compass, leading him to what would be the most satisfying expenditure of his life.

It helped that his support staff – family and friends – encouraged him to make that leap of faith. “I was really fortunate my family supported me, even though deep down they may have been a little concerned about whether I made the right decision,” he said.

As the Director of Football Operations for the past eight years, Cejda oversees the day-to-day operations and budget of the football program. “In a nutshell”, he says, “I am like the chief operating officer.” His duties include coordinating team travel, bowl game preparations, training camp schedules, off-site events and team meals. He oversees things off the field and works with staff and administrators to take head coach Pat Fitzgerald’s vision and implement it.

A performance-driven person following the Fitzgerald model, Cejda is always looking for areas where the program can get better, to go from good to great. He works relentlessly to build an environment that the staff will enjoy as well as thrive in.

“We are always looking for continual improvement…to get things working the way we want them to,” Cejda explains. “We are striving for championships, in a way that our players and staff will enjoy. We want our student athletes to enjoy being a part of our program.”

One example of those continuous improvement programs is Northwestern’s new technology-based system to maximize players’ practice performance. Northwestern uses GPS tracking technology and a data collection system to track players during practice. The platform, known as Catapult, monitors, tracks, and analyzes data on player performance to help the staff make efficient, data-based decisions on a daily and sometimes hourly basis.

“We get data on 44 student athletes,” Cejda explains, “and we can see, ‘this is what we did, this is where we need to be; these players did a lot; these maybe didn’t do enough.’” Coaches then sit down to disaggregate this data and determine the ramifications for some players not hitting some of their targets, or to see if they are perhaps being overworked at practice.

Another big task Cejda is continually working on is building Northwestern’s culture, which he says is still a work in progress.

“At Northwestern, we’re still building our brand, but it’s getting bigger and more recognizable,” he said. “It’s fun to be a part of the process. Our program has had a lot of success since the mid-‘90s, but that’s only a small part of history.”

Cejda crows about the privilege of working with Wildcat legend Fitzgerald. At the forefront, he says, is the affliction Fitzgerald has for his student-athletes and their life needs.

“It’s the greatest aspect that people outside the program don’t see [and] that impresses me the most,” Cejda honors. “He wants to see how they [grow to become] fathers and men… He is a great ambassador of the game and for this university. It’s so fun to see and [he’s] so fun to work for. He does it the right way, by the book, in every aspect of the program.”

Though the Wildcats may not have put up NFL draft numbers like some of their competitors in (and out of) conference, one thing that can get lost is the quantity of quality characters that come out of Evanston – and it’s a number that so many like Cejda appreciate just a little more. “He’s never willing to compromise…integrity. He will always put their personal well being ahead of their future as a football player. That’s how Coach Fitz always will be.”

Watching the way Fitzgerald cares for his players, makes decisions and sees things through the eyes of the players, Cejda applauds the coach’s procedures, which has been producing unprecedented Northwestern results the last six years. The remuneration, as Cejda points out, comes from building a fun culture with an inviting environment that not only attracts aspiring professionals, but also springboards them to greatness beyond Evanston.

But it all starts with the matter of treating people like people that matter. “Everyone inside our football program knows everyone on a first-name basis – from the student athletes to the custodial assistants that will clean…the facilities,” Cejda boasts.

Cejda tells a story of fourth-year and record-breaking NU quarterback Clayton Thorson reaching out for an updated pictorial guide of the newer student assistants. To fit the culture that Fitzgerald and his organization are developing, players are expected to know everyone’s name by facial recognition. Things like this are not merely an encouragement, but rather an expectation, which makes NU, as Cody puts it, “one of the best places to come to work.”

Those are the types of things that makes the NU Football Office such a synergetic, tight-knit group. While the NFL is a vision Cejda has for his future, he seems in no hurry to disrupt the great position he is in today.

“Right now, I’m having so much fun with what we’re trying to accomplish- getting to the next level… There’s not another staff that has as much fun as we do,” Cejda argues. “We’re working hard, [while] enjoying the process. It’s an environment where everyone loves to be”.

Plato once said “a good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.” Cejda can attest to this, as his decision has made him one of the happiest men working today – though he would never describe it as work.