Nick Ciafardini

Associate Director, New York City

Nick, initially an intern with the San Diego Padres and now part of Protiviti’s Risk and Compliance Analytics practice, found an unexpected way to merge his sports and data analytics passion. Leveraging his background, Nick partnered with his Protiviti team to develop an app to consolidate and analyze performance data for professional golfer Matt Fitzpatrick. This project not only gave Nick a unique sense of contribution to Matt’s success in golf, but also underscored Protiviti’s supportive and collaborative culture.

"It still feels like a small company where you can get to know people personally and know their strengths."

Forging an Ideal Partnership

Professional golfer, Matt Fitzpatrick is famous for focusing on data to improve his game. As an ambassador for Protiviti, he occasionally asked for help with analyzing the numbers. Nick is an economics major, a statistics enthusiast, and has built his career in Protiviti’s Risk and Compliance Analytics practice. Nick’s manager, knowing Nick’s background, connected him with Matt, forging the ideal partnership.

Collaborating to Provide Innovative Solutions

Nick soon realized that the best way to help Matt would be to create an app that could collect all the data in one place, and slice and dice it to give Matt access to whatever he needed to know in the moment.

He shared this thought with a managing director who immediately formed a team of developers and app designers to bring the idea to life.

However, developing the app was challenging as it required an external user, Matt, to interact with data held on an internal server. Plus, some of the team members involved had to quickly become proficient in the game of golf.

After several months of close collaboration by team members in offices around the world, the app was completed. It now cuts the timeframe of results for Matt from days to hours or even minutes.

Protiviti’s Exceptional, Collaborative Culture

Two things made the development experience special for Nick. One was how the project highlighted the firm’s exceptional culture: even though Protiviti has more than 7,000 global employees, he says “it still feels like a small company where you can get to know people personally and know their strengths.” The other was Matt’s heartfelt appreciation for the app, which has provided him with tangible benefits. As Matt continues his meteoric rise in the world of golf, Nick has the satisfaction of feeling “We played a small piece in his success.”

By collaborating with his team to address Matt’s unmet golf needs, Nick’s story is a prime example of Life At Protiviti.