Over the course of four years at Adelphi University, I obtained and successfully complete five financial services internships. These experiences helped, in part, create the young professional I am today.
Over the course of four years at Adelphi University, I obtained and successfully completed five financial services internships. These experiences helped, in part, create the young professional I am today. These internships, completed from September 2012 through August 2014 in straight succession and without break, were possible because of the people and resources at Adelphi University and the Robert B. Willumstad School of Business who enabled me to concurrently take a full course load and hold a full-time internship during academic semesters. The internships taught me the soft and hard skills, at a young age, needed to be successful in an ever competitive and changing space.
From September 2012–May 2014, I learned the core fundamentals of financial services in the Wealth Management and Asset/Investment Management lines of business at companies like Merrill Lynch, UBS, Bank of New York Mellon and Morgan Stanley respectively. With these institutions fresh out of their most radical changes in 25 years, they each provided unique learning opportunities that formed my “professional foundation.” At these firms, I learned about different types of retail and institutional investors and the many ways they do business with financial institutions. Conducting business development, researching client positions, helping tailor client portfolios and facilitating relationship building exercises represents a small sample of the learning opportunities that I experienced.
In the summer between my junior and senior year, I took a shot at trying something outside of the center of finance—and with a technology twist. In comes Bloomberg, LP’s Summer Analyst program. This is where Finance and Technology came together for me and to this day, represents the first time that I heard the word “fintech.” This was an amazing opportunity and I credit it with opening my eyes to not only how much financial services had changed since the Great Recession of 2008, but how it was bound to be ruthlessly disrupted by innovations and developments in technology. I heard sayings like “robo-advisors and computer-engineered portfolio allocation algorithms for the masses” and thought “wow, they could really take a chunk of business away from the groups that I worked for now and in the future—I should probably read up on these subjects quickly.”
From there, one of my biggest lessons learned was that those (entities, people, processes) who deny, ignore, or fail to realize technological advancement in their space, will soon become that advancements next target. Every entity, person and process can and will change as time moves on and developments are made. With this in mind, I made it my mandate to look ahead, see and learn the “hot skills” that would be in high demand in 5,10,20 years; and to constantly re-evaluate and socialize these conclusions with my other peers. This thinking manifested in my choice to go into financial services consulting at a technology company like IBM, where nothing ever stands still and game-changing innovation is a daily expectation.
Two years out from undergrad, (wow, not even I can believe that) I am very excited to be working in financial services consulting where I help my firm, IBM, and their clients stay at the forefront of the fintech innovation boom. In the future, I look forward to contributing to thought leadership points of view for how the future state of financial services could look like and what that means for our clients, IBM and society as a whole.