Alums, Students Talk Business in NYC

Author: Emily Thurber

Last Thursday, 40 Middlebury students and 25 alumni attended the Student Investment Club's (SIC) First Annual Young Alumni Panel held at DB Capital Partners in New York City. SIC Co-chairs Mashrib Zahid '02 and Eli Sugarman '02 developed the idea for the panel in place of the traditional SIC trip to New York so that they could reach out to a larger part of the College community.

Attendance at the event, which was publicized in last week's edition of The Middlebury Campus, turned out to be larger than the co-chairs had anticipated.

Alan R. Holmes Professor of Monetary Economics Scott Pardee noted, "It was a solid turnout, and some students were on the waiting list and disappointed that they couldn't go because we didn't have enough cars and drivers for the trip."

The goal of the panel was to bring together Middlebury students and young alumni from the classes of 1991 to 2001, so that the two groups could interact on a one-to-one basis. Despite the fact that there were more students than alumni, SIC secretary Saad Kamal '03 remarked, "Pretty much everyone got to talk to alumni one-on-one."

Pardee, who mediated the panel, shared his insights on the advantages Middlebury students have in the business world. He said that the strength of the College's Economics Department is what sets Middlebury apart from other top liberal arts colleges. Some of the economics courses offered at Middlebury are taught at a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) level.

"Wall Street friends of mine [not Middlebury alums] who are recruiting college graduates have told me that Middlebury students who have taken the basic finance courses here are now as well able to handle basic questions as MBA candidates from Wharton," said Pardee. He also noted the strength of Middlebury's math and computer science programs.

A "work hard, play hard" attitude was another advantage Pardee stressed in his presentation. He added that Middlebury students not only play hard but also play fair, citing a recent hockey game as evidence of this ethic. "You can't teach [these ethics] in the classroom, and yet they are the basis for succeeding in the real world," he remarked.

Panelist Kashif Zafar '92, who co-chairs the global fixed income group at Credit Suisse First Boston, attributed some of his success to the liberal arts education he received at Middlebury. He noted that it "pushed me to think outside the box and to take risks. Being an international student who had an intensive science background from high school in Pakistan, I felt that the Middlebury experience was instrumental in allowing me to venture outside my comfort zone."

Taking risks outside one's comfort zone was a major theme of Thursday's panel. Keynote speaker Ted Virtue '82, chief executive officer of Deutsche Capital Partners, emphasized the importance of risk-taking and reinventing oneself in order to keep up with rapid changes in the business world.

He also advised students not to let anyone else do what they can do for themselves. Virtue stressed the importance of being an innovator and an expert in a constantly evolving field.