In the midst of a busy midterms season, 10 of the Opportunity Fund Project women took time out of their schedule to visit NYC and go to the first meeting of the day with Ruane Cunniff, a NYC based long-only firm. The UConn Opportunity Fund has a special connection with Ruane Cunniff. During the fall semester, each student was matched up with a female mentor in the beginning stages of her career. These connections will give the women in the class a valuable partner to bounce ideas off of and look to for advice about navigating Wall Street as a woman.
The Ruane Cunniff meeting began as we met Sophie Garrett, a female analyst who has been with the firm for about a year. Sophie has been a key player in the connection between our two groups. After a quick tour of their new and modern office, the larger group was split into sections. Each section was to shadow one of the Ruane Cunniff female analysts for a portion of their day, who graciously volunteered their time.
These women took time out of their busy day to invite each group into their office and walk them through the daily schedule of an analyst. They stopped periodically to field questions about their work and also about what it is like being a female in a male dominated world. Each of the women had different investing tips and tricks, but they all shared the same sentiment; as a woman in finance, confidence and strength are key.
This shadowing experience gave the women on the trip an extremely valuable close up look into life as an analyst. Spending time with these gracious and accomplished women also served as inspiration for the students on the trip. Isabello DeLeo expressed that, “as a young woman still new at college, it was incredibly motivating to see other women in the beginnings of their careers already reach such success. It made me realize, WOW, maybe I can do this too.” She also noted that though they were in the beginning of their career, our mentors had their own offices!
Before leaving Ruane Cunniff, our group sat down for a lunch discussion with Sophie, Layton, and Alana, as well as a few other analysts at the firm. This conversation took a different tone as the analysts fielded questions about equity research, management profiles, and decision making in the office.
This visit to Ruane Cunniff provided the students with an in-depth and honest look into life in the office from the mentorship process to the purchase of equities. The Opportunity Fund women left the meeting with lots of new knowledge to help them in their equity research for their upcoming stock pitch, but they also left with advice for navigating the workplace during their future careers and internships. Lexi Hirning pointed out that this experience is truly immersive and provides an outlook that you can’t get from a lecture hall:
“The experience in itself taught me more about the day-to-day lives of individuals working in the investment industry in one singular day than I have learned in my entire academic career.”