The University of Notre Dame Institute for Global Investing (NDIGI) and the Mendoza College of Business are announcing a new partnership with Girls Who Invest, a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing the number of women in portfolio management and executive leadership in the asset management industry.
NDIGI, a research and teaching institute located within Mendoza, will coordinate the partnership with Girls Who Invest. The focus is on creating a pipeline of talented young women and raising awareness among asset management firms of how gender diversity can better serve investors.
“A career in investment management can be very rewarding and intellectually stimulating; however, currently there are very few women in this field,” said Kevin Burke, Notre Dame Institute for Global Investing managing director. “As part of NDIGI’s Women in Finance Initiative, we are pleased to partner with Girls Who Invest for the launch of a 2018 residential program on Notre Dame’s campus. We share the same goal to recruit more women to study careers in finance and investing, to help women discern and navigate their entry into investment management, and to provide educational, programming and professional networking opportunities to ensure both short and long-term career success.”
Kevin Burke
The effort is intended to address the low number of female investment managers in the industry, which has sunk from 10 percent in 2009 to less than 7 percent today, according to recent reports. Yet research shows that diverse teams are better equipped to help investors realize their goals. By providing talented young women with access to a rigorous educational program, a hands-on internship experience, and the support of a robust, ongoing community, Girls Who Invest and NDIGI seek to inspire and empower the next generation of young women to successfully become tomorrow’s leading investors.
“Diversity is a key tenet of the mission of Mendoza, as well as for developing visionary leaders who can meet the challenges of the rapidly changing global marketplace,” said Roger D. Huang, Martin J. Gillen Dean of the Mendoza College of Business. “Our partnership with Girls Who Invest will help us meet a significant need in the finance industry by educating young women to take on roles that they may not have considered previously.”
The Notre Dame Institute for Global Investing will host 50 young women participating in the 2018 Girls Who Invest Summer Intensive Program on the Notre Dame campus next summer. Rising college sophomores and junior students from across the country will participate in the four-week program, providing the students with the opportunity to learn core investment concepts from some of the most respected business professors in the nation. This new partnership will allow Girls Who Invest to expand its flagship program from 60 young women this summer to 100 next year.
The curriculum will cover asset management while also offering training in ethics, presentation skills and interview preparation. The program will feature speakers from across the industry. Following its completion, Girls Who Invest will arrange six-week paid summer internships for the students at leading asset management firms to apply the skills they have learned in the classroom.
Girls Who Invest is a nonprofit organization founded in April 2015 to inspire and empower young women to pursue careers in asset management — a field challenged by a lack of diversity. Its goal is to have 30 percent of the world’s investable capital managed by women by 2030. The organization also partners with the University of Pennsylvania, where 60 young women attended its Summer Intensive Program this year. Another 292 participated in two additional online learning programs that launched this summer.
“Our rigorous Girls Who Invest 10-week Summer Intensive Program prepares college-aged women to enter the industry on investment teams across all asset classes and become skilled allocators of capital,” said Kathleen Powers Dunlap, CEO of Girls Who Invest. “Together with sponsors like the Notre Dame Institute for Global Investing and the Mendoza College of Business, we are making a meaningful contribution to the industry, to investors everywhere and to the careers of these young women.”
Visit Girls Who Invest’s website for more information: girlswhoinvest.org.
Originally published by at news.nd.edu on July 28, 2017.