Steve Wilson

Director of the Investment Management Initiative

I recently joined the faculty of the Business School as the Director of the Investment Management Initiative. I have taken on this role after 43 years of managing institutional equities for a long array of leading organizations both here in the US and In Europe. My mission is two-fold, to serve as a bridge for the students between the textbook and Wall Street and to increase access to the powerful experiential learning experience of managing real money in the stock market.

Since joining over the summer, I have focused on several aspect in expanding what we can offer to our students, by targeting more students, especially those from earlier in their academic life, females, and those from underrepresented communities. In September, I recruited 21 women (one third women of color) and began teaching them the building blocks of investment analysis and research. This is designed to prepared them to tackle their next challenge, joining the Opportunity Fund class where they will begin managing University Endowment funds in the spring. This will be a monumental advancement, not just for the school, but for the community of over 400 college Student Managed Funds (SMF) that are scattered across the country. It is my understanding that our Opportunity Fund will be the first and only all-female SMF in the nation, and combined with the preexisting UCONN SMF, we will be at gender parity, making us number one in America on this critical metric.