Business 101

Initially, my interest in business grew its roots in finance, and specifically, the market. I was fascinated with applying engineering methodologies to help predict stock prices and back testing ideas with large data sets. Although most of my interest was garnered from self study and research, I decided that reaching out to the Mays Business school at Texas A&M was the next logical step.

Through Mays, I joined several extracurricular organizations to help expand my knowledge about finance.
First, I joined the selective Aggies on Wall Street (AOWS) organization. Through this course, I learned about financial modeling, I networked within Mays, and then took a trip up to New York with my nineteen other classmates. We visited around twenty firms during our two week stay in New York, including J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, PwC, and several smaller hedge funds. This was an excellent chance for me to see the lifestyles of the investment bankers in the city. Below is a picture of our group of talented individuals posing with the famous NYSE Bull:

2011 Aggies on Wall Street

Next, I was admitted to the prestigious Titans of Finance. Our of the fifteen members of the class, I was one of two engineers that were allowed past the gates of entry. Our diverse class included finance, accounting, real estate, economics, and a few other majors as a part of the whole. We were official members of Titans 12, following our leader and teacher, Britt Harris (http://robinthecoach.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Britt-Harris-bio.pdf), who is currently CIO of the Texas Teacher Pension fund in Austin with $120 billion in assets under managment. Britt lectured us every other week on the intricacies of macro investing and graciously took our class and significant others out to eat dinner. Britt's vast amount of resources and friendly personality help bring in successful leaders to lecture our class every now and then. Below is a picture of our group with Glenn Hutchins, CEO of Silverlake.

Titans of Finance XII. Glenn Hutchins, CEO of Silverlake. Britt Harris, CIO of Texas Teachers Pension. Jerry Strawser, Dean of Texas A&M Business. Sorin Sorescu, Head of Texas A&M Finance.

The Titans of Investing class taught me much about the financial markets and about life in general. I have so many profound, pleasant, and inspiring memories from this class. Titans is an active part of each graduate of the program to this day and I try to make it back for dinners whenever I am in the College Station area. I hope to give back to the community in my life because of all that I have received.

Finally, I participated in Horizons. The goal of Horizons is to pair current students up with a summer internship in investment banking or management consulting. I decided that investment banking seemed interesting, so I pursued the banking guild. Also, Horizons partners students with mentors in the industry, such as hedge funds, investment banks, private equity, entrepreneurship, etc. Through the help of my mentors and the Horizon program, I received an interview and internship offer from Goldman Sachs in Houston.

I worked at Goldman Sachs in their oil and gas investment banking division in the summer of 2012. I learned an incredible amount about the oil and gas industry as well as the definition of hard work. It will remain one of the experiences that I can always draw upon anytime my life enters a turbulent patch. I am incredibly grateful for this opportunity that many others dream about.