At 35, Clint Zweifel was Missouri's youngest state treasurer in more than a century when he took the oath of office in January 2009.
On Monday afternoon, the North St. Louis County native was offering advice to nearly 100 high school students and their advisers attending the annual Rotary Government Day.
"I didn't have this (career) path lined up when I was 16, 17 or 18 years old," he noted during a 15-minute talk. "But in hindsight, looking back at some of the work I did, it's pretty clear - (like) you're doing today, I was beginning to make small investments in myself, and in others, that made me a more capable person."
When he started college in 1992 at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, Zweifel said, "I was the first person in my family ... to walk on to a college campus and to have that experience.
"I still remember that feeling, that first day walking onto that campus, (that) my world had just gotten a heck of a lot bigger."