Chandler Mason, a senior finance major, is scheduled to graduate at the spring 2026 commencement. Photo by Angela Foster.
Chandler Mason has always wanted to start a business.
The Memphis native wasn’t sure which degree to pursue at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, but wanted something that would help him achieve his ultimate goal.
“My mom was always like, ‘You need to get a degree,’” Mason said. “I don’t believe that you need to have a degree to start a business, but now that I’ve been in college, I realize it’s a massive boost. Coming in, I asked myself, ‘Well, what major would give me the best outlook on the entirety of business?””
He chose to major in finance with a minor in professional sales and was later selected as a Rollins Scholar in the UTC Gary W. Rollins College of Business.
“Finance is this perfect culmination of looking at the entirety of a company and how it operates,” Mason explained. “And then, of course, understanding the money side, which is always quite nice.
“For me to be able to create my own company or understand how to do that, I thought it was the best thing ever to take a case study of every successful company out there and analyze what they’re doing right and wrong.”
In addition to his studies, the senior said he wanted to take advantage of all the opportunities available at UTC. He had a plan to get involved both on and off campus through clubs and internships.
During his time at UTC, he has participated in multiple internships—including at Southern Champion Tray, UNUM and TVA—and has begun working on his own startup.
“I wanted to do an internship in the public space, I wanted to work in the private space, I wanted to work at a government organization and I wanted to do a startup,” he said. “I got my ‘Infinity Gauntlet’ and the reason is that I wanted to understand how companies operate in different spaces.”
He had the same goal on campus. Mason joined multiple clubs over the years but spent most of his time with the UTC SMILE Fund (Student Managed Investment Learning Experience), where he has held various roles.
Starting as a junior analyst, he eventually worked his way to a chief analyst position. Then, stepping back from his chief role to focus on his internships and classwork, Mason worked as a consultant to the club.
Chandler Mason outside the Bloomberg lab in Fletcher Hall.
Through his internships and work with the SMILE Fund, he discovered his passion: backend data organization.
“I really found what I love,” Mason said. “What I love is actually less of the analysis of the data. I enjoy the sophistication of cleaning and organizing data and datasets. Making them connect, having this holistic idea of: what is data, what does it mean, how does it operate, why is it important, and how do we make this sustainable and scalable?”
Robert L. Maclellan and UC Foundation Associate Professor of Finance Hunter Holzhauer—the SMILE Fund’s program director—said Mason has been an undeniable asset to the fund and its growth.
“He’s probably my best SMILE Fund student when it comes to coding,” Holzhauer said. “That’s a skillset that we don’t have a lot of on the fund. We’re looking more towards that as we try to integrate AI and more data into some of our automated models. Chandler has not only taken the lead, but he’s also created a lot of what we’ve started with.
“We’ve also been looking into creating what’s called a quant fund that uses more sophisticated quantitative modeling. Once again, Chandler’s been there with me from the beginning.”
Holzhauer said that this is indicative of Mason in class. He was eager to learn, test his knowledge and share it with his teammates and classmates.
“He was in the lab all the time, always helping other people,” Holzhauer said. “I don’t know how many stock reports he wrote, but he helped people get dozens of them written. I mean, when my (Chartered Financial Analyst) team was working in the lab all the time, there would be the five of them and Chandler. He was sitting there listening and enjoying what they were talking about and occasionally piping in.
“At times I laughed at him and said, ‘We’re going to go through this entire process and you’re not even technically on the team.’ He would laugh about that, but that’s very much Chandler.”
Mason described his collegiate journey as “an engineer at heart getting a finance degree and planning to be an entrepreneur.”
Holzhauer said it’s common for students to want to work in finance because the SMILE Fund’s lessons will still resonate with them.
“It gave Chandler another tool in his toolbox,” he explained. “Whereas coding is a language now, he’s got this language evaluation. He’s going to be able to take all of these different tools and build something that other people wouldn’t build.”
Mason said UTC has been the “best teacher” he could have had.
“From a personal development standpoint, I think that this school gave me the most I could learn about myself, that failure was OK,” he said. “What UTC means to me is accepting failure, honestly. It’s that the hard things are usually the right things. I learned that if you’re confused, it’s because you’re growing and that confusion is a beautiful thing. It’s what makes people intelligent. Overall, I think UTC is a gem.”
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