Nearly 30 students traveled to New York City in October for a tour of several important financial sites organized by members of the Student Managed Fund (SMF), a student-led organization that manages approximately $400,000 provided by York College for educational purposes.
Accompanied by Dr. James Norrie, Dr. Syed Uddin, and Dr. Pawan Madhogarhia, who advises the SMF, students received training on the Bloomberg terminal and a tour of the Bloomberg headquarters building.
That was followed by a presentation from Brian Welker '89, a managing director at Champlain Advisors, LLC, who is involved in client origination, due diligence, and project management activities. Welker discussed the private equity landscape in the current economic environment and provided career advice to students.
He graduated magna cum laude from York College with a degree in Accounting and earned a Master of Science in Finance. Welker has more than 24 years of private equity fund investment experience, having also worked at Allianz Capital Partners, where he was responsible for monitoring a portfolio of $2.5B+.
At NASDAQ headquarters, Managing Director Chris Dearborn gave the students a tour, and they participated in the closing bell ceremony at the NASDAQ MarketSite Studio.
Thoughts from students who participated:
“Brian Welker shared with us some books that he found interesting and useful within his career. After the presentation we spoke a bit about the Student Managed Fund and what kinds of investments we are able to use inside the Fund. This was a great interview of private equity investing but also gave me a look into what my degree could lead me to in the future.”
“I think the trip to New York was a great experience for myself and the SMF. I know some people that previously didn’t have an interest in finance started to find it fascinating and want to learn more about it. Just being able to travel to the headquarters of these companies and see how they operate was really cool."
"I have always been interested in private equity, and it was great to learn more about that from Mr. Welker. I really enjoyed him explaining all the positive sides and negative sides. I also really enjoyed learning about his past work experience as well. It was great to learn about how he worked his way up, and the impact networking had.”
“Visiting the NASDAQ building was also very interesting, and it was great to listen to Mr. Dearborn about his past work experience and how he grew up through the major change in investing. I was mainly interested in learning about his hedge fund management, so it was great to ask him questions about his time managing a hedge fund.”
