Mentor Information

I heard about the opportunity to offer an internship from an announcement in the Big Blue Bulletin (BBB). In many fields, like medicine or law, I think students have a sense of what the content of the work will be, but in my field, it’s not obvious. I wanted to give Pingry students the opportunity to learn about the investment management industry and to have a real-world experience of what it’s like working in this field.

Over a period of five years (from 2013-2017), I’ve had different Pingry students intern at my former company, Cato Partners, for their ISPs. The students who did their ISP with me split their time in two areas. For part of the day, they would join me in whatever I was doing, especially if it was something interesting like a company meeting or conference call. Students also had to do independent work on researching an investment idea. For example, I assigned them specific projects, such as reading relevant articles in The Economist and analyzing different businesses, as well as writing up reports and making buy or sell recommendations. Finally, I asked students to keep a list of questions about anything that was on their minds and we set aside time each day to answer them. Some of the questions were about the financial services sector, some were about investing, and others about their projects. Frequently, we met for lunch to go over the questions.

It was a pleasure having students at my office. It was insightful to hear their fresh perspectives and I enjoyed some of the unexpected questions they asked. On at least one occasion, it was valuable to have a teen’s perspective, for example, when we were evaluating an investment in a newly-public company at the time. Our intern was able to provide us important user feedback for the company’s product and share his perspective, which ultimately impacted our decision on whether or not to invest in the company. As a project mentor, it’s rewarding to help students explore different career options and provide them with useful experiences that might help them to get summer internships or jobs in the future.

Yes! One of my former mentees, who secured an internship in investment banking, emailed me to thank me for the ISP opportunity. He told me that he wouldn’t have been able to get the internship without the ISP experience. A few other former mentees have also emailed me and told me how grateful they are for having been able to do their ISPs with me and that I helped spark their interest in a particular field. I appreciate these affirmations and it’s motivating knowing that my involvement with their ISPs has impacted the direction they are taking in their lives. I wish that when I was their age, I had an opportunity like Pingry’s ISP available to me!

I don't have any brilliant advice, but I can say that I genuinely enjoyed having the students around and I’m very glad to continue to be in a position to help them all these years later. In short, it is not always easy but it’s worth it.