New York Fed Visit

The Zarb Graduate Business School Career Center and Hofstra Investment Banking Association(HIBA) organized a visit to the NY Fed. Ms. Barbara Church Kattan (Director, Career Center), Mr. JIngxuan Chen(VP, HIBA) and Mr. Apurv Vispute (Event Manager, HIBA) managed and led the group of 25 students to the Fed. Here are some pictures from the trip.

Ms. Kattan, Mr. Chen and students outside the Fed 

Ms. Kattan, Mr. Vispute and Mr. Chen with the students

Ms. Kattan with the students

Executive Panel- Hofstra Investment Banking Association

Hofstra Investment Banking Association organized an executive panel event on September 17, 2014 for the students where the executives such as Mr. Robert Pauley (Morgan Stanley), Ms. Marilyn Antoine (Merrill Lynch) and Mr. Hernan Celis (JPMorgan Chase) were present. They interacted and shared their experiences with the students. The students had a great learning experience.   There were more than 65 students present at the event. Vice Dean George Papaioannou, Dr. KG Viswanathan and Dr. Dominique Gehy (Faculty Advisor) were present at the event. The officers of HIBA did a great job in working as a team and making this event a successful event.

From left: Mr. Gaurav Gupta(President,HIBA), Dr. Dominique Gehy(Faculty Advisor,HIBA), Mr. Hernan Celis, Ms. Marilyn Antoine , Mr. Robert Pauley, Mr. Jingxuan Chen(VP, HIBA), Mr. Apurv Vispute(Event Manager, HIBA) and Mr. Keith Eisenberg(Treasurer, HIBA)

Movie:"The Pursuit of Happyness"

A movie which shows all the struggle that a person can do in his/her life and then can eventually become a millionaire. Perseverance, Honesty, Hard-Work and Determination are a few of the characteristics that have been portrayed in the movie as being the ingredients on the way to success. As our dean sums up,"Happiness is not a destination, it is a journey". 

This movie was chosen by Hofstra Investment Banking Associaton to be shown to the new students so as to inspire and motivate them to work hard and achieve success in their lives. I feel honored to be the leader of the Associaton at the time this movie was shown and also being the initiator of this event. I hope our Associaton is able to keep working towards student development and help them achieve success in their careers.

Getting Internship Offer from a Tech Startup

It was a usual meeting with my Multivariate and Simulation methods professor. He is very admirable and helps his students in any possible way and goes out of his way to do that. We were discussing the agenda for the fall semester and how the classes are going to be during this semester. Then we started discussing career opportunities after graduating for me as an MBA with double majors in Finance and Business Analytics. He told me about numerous job opportunities that a student can have with finance skills along with good technical skills. While we were discussing these, he asked me if I would be willing to do a part-time job/internship over the fall semester. I told him that I would like to know my responsibilities as an intern. So he put me in contact with the person incharge from a tech startup company called ProSeeder Technologies and it deals in SaaS for the finance firms such as Venture Capitals, Angel Investors and Broker-Dealers. I sent an email to her to fix the interview or information call for the following morning. 

The interviewer called me the following morning and gave me a brief description of the job responsibilities that I would have at the company. Some of the responsibilities that I would have include data review and modification using Excel, quality assurance of data, import into client customized ProSeeder sites, content development for the client demo sites, market research, and other projects as needed. It sounded exciting over the phone and I was already ready to go for this internship. The interviewer asked me if I had ever used excel before. That was when I felt very confident while answering that question because I had already built many financial models such as Option pricing model (both binomial and Black-Scholes model), Bond pricing model, firm valuation model and Merger model to name a few. I told her that I had built some models in excel. Right after she heard that I knew how to use excel, she said, "Ok, then see you on next Thursday at the office". She asked if I knew anyone else who could work at that office. I knew of a friend who was looking for an internship over the fall semester, so I recommended him to her and they both setup an interview for the following week. 

This moment was the moment that I had been working hard for for last one year. The next thing on my agenda is to do my best at this internship and climb up the ladder.