Acquiring Technical Skills

On March 30th, I had the opportunity to participate in the Women’s Stock Pitch & Leadership Summit at William & Mary’s Mason School of Business alongside Jay Thompson, Alden Wagner, and Vivian Xi. In 2017, I attended the conference and wrote an article about it. I was also part of the stock pitch team in 2018, but this year I’m particularly proud that my team made it to the final round to present our T-Mobile pitch in front of all conference attendees and sponsors! It was great to have had the privilege to connect with professionals and passionate students from universities all over the globe. Our journey to the final round, however, was not without serious commitment and prior experience I have attained throughout my undergraduate career at William & Mary.

The stock market is absolutely fascinating, and simultaneously, a system that is highly complex and difficult to understand. It was through Smart Woman Securities (SWS) that I was first introduced to investment opportunities within the stock market. I led my first stock pitch team the Spring of my freshman year. Typically, a freshman would not assume such a leadership position, but I just so happened to have some experience with following the stock market, and an executive board position with SWS, which enabled me to lead the team. From that, I found opportunities in corporate-sponsored competitions like Point72, and I was selected for university competitions like the Undergraduate Investment Conference at the University of Michigan.

I am Vice President of Financial Modeling Club which has been instrumental in developing my understanding of various financial models including discounted cash flows, relative valuation, and merger models to name a few. I love creating presentations for our weekly Monday meetings which breakdown the complex nature of select models. It’s thrilling to solve problems with quantitative assumptions that are made based on qualitative information. It takes two to tango and I love how my news-based knowledge of a company allows me to assume reasonable growth or margin assumptions of a company’s financials.

Last Spring, I wrote a great article on the Mason Investment Club (MIC) as I have become more involved with them throughout my time at William & Mary. MIC continues to be one of the few clubs I regularly attend as an upperclassman. Instead of being seminar based for educational purposes like SWS, MIC provides weekly updates on the stocks we hold in our portfolio across multiple sectors.

Every skill I’ve refined through Smart Woman Securities, Investment Club, and other opportunities to pitch, has fueled my high-level interest for the stock market! I hope to do something with investments once I graduate, because I would love to start each new day absorbing the latest information about politics, international events, technological advances, and the latest information on businesses, companies, and corporations.