Making connections at the MBA Women in Investing Conference
In the fall, MBA students from 12 schools joined with industry representatives from more than 19 firms for the annual Women in Investing Conference (WIN) held at the Langham Hotel in downtown Boston. Participants came from as far as London and Los Angeles to partake in two days of networking and stock pitch competitions and to hear talks from investment management industry experts. It was exciting to participate in an event that highlighted intelligent, ambitious, and compassionate women. Investment management is a field with a small but growing number of women, and WIN, founded by our own Lakshmi Bhojraj, the Breazzano Family Executive Director of the Parker Center for Investment Research, is a truly special conference where we are able to get advice from prominent women in the industry.
Preparing for the Stock Pitch Challenge
The stock pitch portion of the conference consisted of teams of three to four MBA women who pitched a recommendation on any U.S. stock of our choosing. My teammates, MBAs Emma Liang and Vera Tang, and I began our preparation for the competition several weeks prior to the conference, but we ramped up on our road trip to Boston. We were allowed to pitch any U.S. stock had decided to stick with a company in an industry we all knew: food. We pitched a small-format grocery company that focused on fresh food offerings.
During our ride down, we worked on a few final tweaks to our financial models in the car and spent some of the trip finalizing our thesis points. We were excited to pitch our idea in front of judges and get their feedback. We were also assigned a mentor from Ivy Investments to help us develop our pitch. This was great value-add and she certainly helped us tighten our thesis points and the way were thinking about macro market effects. The judges were curious to hear us pitch as well and gave us advice throughout the day leading up to the competition.
The Stock Pitch Competition was scheduled for Friday morning, and we stayed up late the night before to perfect our presentation, which mostly consisted of us trying to synthesize all our information in a 10-minute presentation. This was no easy feat since we had a lot of data to fit in. Even though we did not place in the competition, we got positive feedback from the judges. The presentation went off without any problems, and most importantly, we were not thrown by the tough questions from the judges!
Connecting with industry executives
Beyond the stock pitching, we were lucky to hear from multiple industry executives and panelists about their experiences in investment management. Keynote speaker Pam Holding, co-head of the Equity Division for Fidelity Investments, spoke about her journey as a woman navigating the financial services industry. She talked about the choices you have to make each day and how important it is to prioritize what is important to you in terms of work-life balance. Pam’s speech really resonated with me personally, as it is often difficult for women in finance to carve out time for family life and extracurriculars. It was encouraging to see a woman balance both and advance her career in the process.
WIN was an inspiring couple of days, and it started and ended with networking events. This ties together the prominent theme of the event, which was to build connections with each other and motivate women to pursue careers in finance. Whether it be through speed networking sessions, informal chatting at the luncheon, or receiving feedback from judges, I made connections that I never would have without WIN.
By Margot Waldron, Two-Year MBA ’20