Hi Kate! Thank you for taking the time to speak with the Investment Society today. To start off, could you please tell us a little bit about yourself?
I'm currently a senior at Wellesley majoring in Economics. I am in Wellesley Women in Business—I was on their E-Board for a few years. I'm currently the president of Alpha Kappa Chi, which is one of our campus societies. I have really enjoyed taking on leadership roles in different types of organizations on campus and really grew to appreciate the necessary work of being involved in a student-run organization.
How was your experience at State Street as a Portfolio Management Intern? What was the recruitment process like?
The internship was fully remote. However, I think it was a really successful internship. Specifically, the portfolio management group I was interning with is a part of the Investment Solutions Group of State Street Global Advisors, which is the asset management subsidiary of State Street Corporation. I really had a great team that I worked with, and they focused on three different areas within asset management, so defined contribution and the retirement aspect of investment management. We focused on real asset strategy and tactical asset allocation. I got to see three different parts of the asset management industry. Despite the internship being remote, I still had many one-on-one meetings with different people throughout the team and took the time to learn as much as I could. I was given a lot of resources to fill the knowledge gap coming in, especially coming from an economics background and not having that hardcore finance/investment background.
The recruitment process is a funny story. Initially, as a sophomore, I found out about State Street through an ISOC run Boston trip. That's how I actually learned about State Street pretty early on. I didn't end up interning with them that summer but they were kind of on my radar going into my junior year internships. I had a list of different investment management companies that I thought I'd want to intern with and I ended up just applying to State Street and made it through. I would say that the process happened in the earlier part of my junior year. I found out by November that I had the internship. To be honest, it wasn't a super intense recruitment process, like I know some of my other friends went through in their internships. There are several rounds but all pretty behavioral-based questions, I would say.
What did your day-to-day look like at State Street?
Aside from the set meetings that I was able to attend, every day there's a morning meeting with the portfolio management group, and then different meetings throughout the week. I obviously attended all of those meetings and then in my downtime, I was working on my different projects. The nice thing about those projects is one was more technical based. I was working in Excel and working with index return data from Bloomberg software. I was able to have it on my remote desktop so that was cool. My other project was more of a research type project where I was able to work with a portfolio manager and I helped contribute to a published paper on the topic. I would say I was given a lot of autonomy over the work that I had to do especially since it was remote. I was obviously sitting alone in my house; nobody was looking over my shoulder. I wasn’t able to really work with other interns, which was unfortunate, but I was still really busy with the day-to-day work that I had.
The projects and the paper that you worked on sound really interesting. Could you expand a little bit more about what exactly you did in these projects and what they looked like?
Sure. Like I mentioned, there are two main projects. The first project was on Excel and I was working with one of the more quantitative portfolio managers. I was looking at index return data, so different indices that the portfolio was invested in. For example, NASDAQ or Dow Jones or different real estate indices that are in the portfolio that one of the managers manage. I was tasked with downloading monthly return data from those indices and doing a big data dump into Excel. From there doing some fun—I would consider it fun, I don’t know about anyone else *laughs*—statistical analysis on those different return data. The second layer to that is that I was helping a portfolio manager analyze different performances of the portfolio managers within the team, based on the trades that they made from those different indices throughout the month. There's this portfolio and each manager can decide if they want to place different trades based on how they think the market will do. I was able to go back—this was all previous data from previous months—and see the different decisions and trades that the portfolio managers made and evaluate them. The other project was more of a long term research project. I was researching real estate investment trusts and I was working with a portfolio manager to write a paper on the future of these securities and how they've been performing in the pandemic, and why it might still be a valuable asset class to be invested in.
When and how did you know you wanted to pursue something within finance? A follow-up to this is how did you spend your summers?
Actually, the answer comes from how I spent my previous summer. Before State Street, two summers ago, I interned with a large corporate retail company. They owned Ann Taylor, Loft, Justice, and Lane Bryant. Actually, they just filed for bankruptcy. It's unfortunate, but anyway I was interning in their planning and allocation department. But while I was interning there, the company was starting to go under and I was able to attend a lot of talks with the CFO of the company. It was a public company so I just found myself interested in how public companies operate in terms of their shareholders and board. I felt like I was shadowing more people and trying to have one-on-one meetings with people from the finance department just because it fascinated me more. Coming out of that retail internship I realized I wanted to do something more on the finance side.
I think Investment Management specifically interested me because it's institutional investing so a lot of the clients, they're not individual people. They’re institutions. They’re college endowments and pension plans, foundations, etc. It's very important the work and I'm really passionate about the clients of asset management. For example, Wellesley wouldn't be able to survive all these years if it wasn't for institutional investors and portfolio managers making those day-to-day decisions on behalf of Wellesley's pension plan portfolio or endowment. So, I think it goes back to the most basic level: the clients that State Street specifically works with and other types of clients within investment management. I would also want to touch upon my economics background. Economics is very different from finance and there's not a lot of overlap, but I think coming in with a really strong economics background, like being able to understand macroeconomic policy, the central bank, the Fed, and what they do—that actually really affects investors, and people who work in the markets. Coming in with a really strong economic background from Wellesley also helped me a lot to transition into the finance world.
What did you study at Wellesley? Were there any specific classes that you took that helped you?
I would say it's interesting because I feel like now I'm starting to take classes as a senior that are a little more niche. I just finished Term 1, International Economics with Joseph Joyce, and that’s a great class. That really gave me a stronger understanding of macroeconomic policy, exchange rates, and different global currencies, which is a very solid foundation for anyone wanting to go into finance- to have a higher-level understanding of what is going on in the world.
I am taking Finance Theory now and this course is the most applicable to finance knowledge.
What skills or qualities do you think are necessary to succeed in the role you were in?
You just really need to be genuinely curious and interested. You have to have that curiosity for sure, otherwise, it’s just not going to be interesting for you because it is a very complex industry. Secondly, I would say given the virtual layout of the internship—but I'm sure that this is also true within an office setting— you do have to have really strong communication skills. This might be a misperception of the industry that you don't need to have those soft people skills, you just need to be really analytical and understand data, but I would say you really have to have communication skills. Written skills are incredibly important, especially in portfolio management because communication with clients is huge. Those communication skills—being able to write, speak, and articulate your ideas and thoughts—is very important.
Is there any other advice that you would like to give to students who are looking into pursuing a finance career?
Yes! So to reiterate, I first interned in corporate retail, and then interned in investment management, so two very different industries. In your undergrad career, you really only have maybe two or three internships- that is really not a lot of exploration opportunity.
Even though you intern in a specific role, so for instance, don't think that you have to be tied to that role, or don't totally disregard the industry because you didn't love the specific work you were doing. As an intern, try and meet people outside of your team or division. Try and have one-on-ones with people from all different facets of the company (Seek out possible Wellesley alums at the company!) Because at the end of the day, you are an intern and I would leverage that ability to ask questions, not just to your own manager, your own team, but really try and explore the overall company. You might find out that you're really interested in actually marketing or sales within the finance industry. I know everyone always says this, but honestly have a very open mind because you're not going to figure it all out with just one or two internships. You really have to explore.
Lastly, what is your favorite hobby outside of work/academics?
I really love retail and shopping and keeping up with different market trends within retail. I really like finding and researching new companies and learning their stories and missions. I also enjoy running and exploring new cities. I live in Boston right now so running here is a great way to learn about the city more and get outside.
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