Undeterred, Daskalovitz pulled out the phone book and began researching internships on his own by methodically calling public accounting firms. He landed a spot at auditing and consulting firm CliftonLarsonAllen.

"I was raised by hardworking, middle-class people. You put in the effort. You put in the work. You don't have to necessarily do it as someone has done it previously. You can do it your own way," he explained.

Managers later brought Daskalovitz into the firm's credit union practice and showed him the ropes for the next several years. "I was the internal auditor for a number of credit unions. That kind of became my niche," he said.

Years later, constantly being on the road in the public accounting world finally took its inevitable toll. Married and wanting to start a family, Daskalovitz started researching career options at credit unions.

"Ultimately my goal was to get to the CFO role," he said.

In 2013, Daskalovitz became an accounting manager at the Lanham, Md.-based FedChoice Federal Credit Union, which today has $386 million in assets and about 24,000 members. He rose quickly, later becoming the finance director.

Then in 2016, he began researching preschools for his then-two-year-old daughter, which pushed him to think about moving. That led to more research — this time involving a recurring dinner party for credit union executives.

"I had been to the dinner a few previous years, and because I was the youngest person at the dinner every year, after the first year I kind of felt a little bit overwhelmed. So I started like preparing for the dinner almost, like researching every credit union that's going to be there. I felt like that would give me more confidence," Daskalovitz explained.

That's how Fairfax County FCU landed on his radar. At the dinner, he made a point of talking to the credit union's CEO and CFO. It turned out to be a perfect intersection of preparation and opportunity.

"They had mentioned that [the CFO] was retiring and it was going to be at the end of the year. I just made a mental note like, 'Ah, that would be interesting,'" he recalled.

Though he regularly disregarded calls from recruiters trying to fill positions at other credit unions, when one called a few months later about a job at Fairfax County, he was intrigued.

"There were too many positives not to at least pursue that a little bit," he said. He figured he could shadow the soon-to-retire CFO for a few months. Daskalovitz was also anxious to understand how Fairfax County worked, calling its financials "out of this world."

"I'd go to, you know, CFO grad school," he said.

His first day on the job came in the spring of 2016 — time for more research. He immediately began studying how the outgoing CFO worked, looked at data and made decisions.

Daskalovitz is now the credit union's CFO, and much of his management style seems to reflect his journey to the c-suite. For one thing, he values the ability to work independently and communicate well more than he values perfect resumes.

"When I was starting, I didn't look the strongest on paper," he recalled. "All I needed was an opportunity, and it felt like I could outwork anybody."

He also contends that financials don't always tell the whole story, and that CFOs have an obligation to be as good as explaining as they are at analyzing. He insists on giving positive feedback — so much so that he even schedules it on his calendar so he doesn't forget. He makes sure to ask people what they think when they come to him with questions. And he loves being organized.

"I don't have paper accumulate on my desk. I never have more than a couple," he said. "My goal is for my desk to be clean and for there to be no emails in my inbox."

Daskalovitz takes noticeable pride in his team, which he described as "really independent, confident, hitting on all cylinders." The proof was visible after the recent sudden death of a long-time team member, he said.

"I'd love to say that I gave a big speech and rallied the troops, but really I was skeptical if we'd be able to accomplish the things we needed to," he said. "A day or two later, before I could even come up with this big master plan all by myself or give this great speech, everyone on my team was already kind of hitting on all cylinders. They were already meeting daily. They were mapping out what needed to get done … they hit every deadline that they needed to."

Still in his early thirties, Daskalovitz has come a long way in a short time. That's probably not a surprise to his father, whom he's also carefully studied and still talks to almost daily.

"My dad never had formal education after high school, but he's an entrepreneur," he said. "He kind of instilled in myself and my siblings from an early age that if you have confidence in yourself and you trust yourself and you can work hard, it doesn't matter if somebody else has advantages that we didn't have growing up. It doesn't matter if somebody got their foot in the door first. As long as you believe in yourself, you can accomplish anything."

Brian Daskalovitz's Dashboard

"First I look at rates. I look at what our margins are, what I can borrow at, what the Treasury curve is at. Then I look at indicators like unemployment, inflation. Then I look at certain cash flow measurements, like what paid off yesterday, what new deposits came in. We have extreme loan growth here. I constantly try to watch how my cash flows are looking. How much am I sending out in loans? Am I matching that with growth and deposits? Then I look at where the new members are coming from … then I go through the income statement every day and try to project what we're going to be for the end of the month. Then I look at what's our ROA looking like? What changed day to day? That starts to tell me the story of what happened yesterday."