Post author Jack Cavanagh, a senior at the Martin J. Whitman School of Management, poses for a quick photo during his Goldman Sachs internship in New York City.
I was a scrawny freshman when I first opened the two bulky front doors of Syracuse University’s Martin J. Whitman School of Management. I felt even tinier when I first walked by its colossal atrium, and I was soon overwhelmed by the lively crowds passing through, full of faces I didn’t recognize. It was clear to me right off the bat that this whole college thing could be pretty intimidating. Thankfully, my Mom was right behind me, and she marched the two of us over to the Career Center, where I met a nice advisor named Emily Shaughnessy. She graciously welcomed me into her office, and I proceeded to gush about my freshman ambitions to work for the PGA Tour. Emily filled me with confidence and made it feel possible.
Now it’s almost four years later, and I’ve never worked a day for the PGA Tour (although I still follow it very closely). I couldn’t be happier.
Why? Because the awesome people at Whitman encouraged me to dream big, take my time figuring out which dreams to follow, and once I got hooked on finance, they helped me every step along the way.
Late last year, I participated in a virtual panel for prospective finance students, and our admissions team rattled off the many different extracurricular experiences that Whitman provides for its finance undergraduates. I realized then that I had done them all, and every single one was vital in my development here at Syracuse.
Cavanaugh leading a Whitman Investment Club meeting.
The first of these experiences was joining our school’s Investment Club. I joined as a freshman, where I followed along with their lectures and participated in pitches. My sophomore year was when I got seriously involved, as I took up a position on the e-board to start the year and later got promoted to the club’s president… and I had no clue what I was doing. Regardless, I put my best foot forward and was determined to grow the club. I enlisted the help of my best friend as VP, and together we turned things around. Ultimately, it proved to me that the hardest challenges reaped the greatest benefits, and this fueled what was to follow.
Next, during my sophomore year was a four-day group trip to Wall Street led by the Career Center and Christine Waby. Nineteen like-minded students and I visited groups of alumni working at eight different companies, all of whom graciously responded to our oftentimes naïve questions with real, actionable advice. The corporate world of Wall Street had previously been so ambiguous to me, but this exposure to the character and work ethic of our alumni in New York City helped me conceptualize what it would take for me to make it there. And I knew I had work to do.
In the back half of the following semester, I put aside my longstanding aspirations to go abroad to Japan and instead applied for The Orange Value Fund, LLC, led by Professor Fernando Diz, who was an apprentice and eventual co-author with our school’s principal donor, Martin J. Whitman. The Orange Value Fund is a two-year on-campus finance program that was designed to prepare and place finance majors in post-grad analyst roles. The curriculum is very specific andDiz’s classroom environment forced us to think critically and grow as future investors.
Another responsibility of the fund was its nearly $4 million portfolio, which today stands closer to $7 million in combined cash and investments. I was trusted to initiate and lead a team of analysts that successfully pitched a company that the fund now holds, and a key step in this experience was taking a class trip down to New York City to pitch this company to alumni at Third Avenue Capital Management.
The final steps in my development were my internships last year in Equity Research and Private Wealth Management, the former of which was a direct culmination of the experiences I had at Whitman. After meeting Christine Waby on the Whitman on Wall Street trip, I invited her into the Investment Club to speak to students about the trip and other opportunities. The next day, she asked me to meet and told me she had put my name forward as a potential candidate for a Goldman Sachs Spring internship in New York City. She also told me that she had already spoken with Professor Diz, who had not only approved of me leaving for a semester but also offered to write to Goldman Sachs on my behalf. In an instant, my six-month internship search, which had been both discouraging and anxiety-inducing, finally produced a north star that I could work extremely hard to chase. I ended up securing the internship, and after a fulfilling 10 weeks working in Goldman Sachs’ Global Investment Research department while taking online classes on the weekends, I got my return offer for this upcoming summer.
Since then, I’ve referred to this breakthrough as lucky to anyone who has asked about it. But writing this now, I realize it was not luck. Rather, it was the direct result of all the kindhearted people who believed in me at this school. Without them, this would not have been possible.
So, as someone with only a few weeks left on campus, this is an inevitable time for reflection. I’ll soon be transitioning from a senior in college to a “freshman” in the workforce, and looking back at my college experience, the key moments that pushed me to where I am today were when I faced unfamiliar challenges with pure determination. So that’s what I’ll be telling myself as I begin a career on Wall Street, and that’s what I hope you can take away from my story as an undergraduate student at Syracuse University.
Author Jack Cavanagh is a senior at the Martin J. Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University double-majoring in Finance and Business Analytics with a minor in Creative Writing. Hailing from Glen Ellyn, Illinois, Jack has become involved in a variety of activities on campus, including being the President of the Syracuse University Investment Club, a Senior Analyst for The Orange Value Fund, LLC, the VP of Finance for Delta Sigma Pi, and a member of the Syracuse Club Golf Team.
About the Martin J. Whitman School of Management: The Martin J. Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University inspires students for a world of accelerating change. Offering B.S., MBA, M.S., and Ph.D. programs, all accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), the Whitman School’s faculty includes internationally known scholars and researchers, as well as successful entrepreneurs and business leaders. Whitman continues to be ranked among the nation’s top business schools by U.S. News & World Report and Bloomberg Businessweek. To learn more about the Whitman School of Management, visit Whitman.syracuse.edu.
