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Ross Overline

Jun 01
Love2

Humility

By Financial Leadership, Humility No Comments

At Scholars of Finance, we have six core values that are at the center of what we teach: Integrity, Compassion, Humility, Curiosity, Impact, and Courage. Each month, our members vote on the “Value of the Month”, which helps focus our discussions on topics pertinent to that value.

Humility was our value for May and we spent a lot of time thinking and talking about it as a community, so I wanted to share some thoughts on this value as we enter the summer. Here are our epithet and principles for Humility:

Humility

Know thyself

  • Serve a purpose greater than yourself
  • Cultivate gratitude for what you have 
  • Recognize both your strengths and limitations
  • Ask for and share honest feedback regularly

In today’s society, “Humility” is often synonymous with “Modesty”. According to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, Humility is “the state of being humble.” Both it and humble have their origin in the Latin word “humilis”, meaning “low.” The definition of “humble”, in the dictionary, is “not proud or haughty: not arrogant or assertive”. Many people think it means having a “low” opinion of oneself – that it is the opposite of “arrogance”.

The Scholars of Finance view of humility, however, which we have been taught by our mentors and leading thinkers, philosophers, and spiritual teachers, actually places humility at the center of a spectrum between modesty and arrogance. It’s not thinking too highly or too lowly of oneself. That said, we believe humility can be summed up in two practical ways: 

  1. Accurate self-appraisal; and 
  2. Overcoming our ego. 

David Brooks captures both points beautifully in his book The Road to Character, when he writes, “Humility is accurate self-awareness from a distance. It is moving over the course of one’s life from the adolescent’s close up view of yourself, in which you fill the whole canvas, to a landscape view in which you see from a wider perspective, your strengths and weakness, your connection and dependencies, and the role you play in a larger story”. We view humility as overcoming our ego so we know the truth about ourselves holistically. I’ll unpack this using our epithet and principles.

Know thyself

In order to know ourselves, we need to see ourselves clearly. Our egos can be fragile, and fragile self-perception often gets in our way in life. 

When we read David Brooks’ writing, we see a few ways in which it is difficult for us to know ourselves. It is difficult to face our strengths and our weaknesses. We hear people say they are “self-made”, having difficulty acknowledging how everyone in their lives leading up to that point played some role in who they are now. Often, when we see “the role we play in a larger story” it can throw some of us into an existential crisis, facing how infinitesimal our lives may be in the grand scheme of things – in a world of eight billion people and in thousands of years of recorded history. 

The principles of Humility outline four critical components of a “system” that helps us to know ourselves, empowering us to overcome all of these potential obstacles. 

Serve a purpose greater than yourself 

To diminish the ego, we need to work against self-centered tendencies. The primary way we can do this is by focusing on serving a purpose greater than ourselves so our daily life is not “all about me”. Doing so keeps us focused on the bigger picture, so we don’t become self-obsessed or begin to think we are the center of the universe. When we focus on ourselves too much it can feed our egos. Conversely, a focus on others reinforces altruism and selflessness. It is the antidote in (and through) action. 

Cultivate gratitude for what you have

Greed, as we often discuss, is one of the largest risks to our character that we face in the finance industry, and the cause of many of the problems in the system we have seen throughout history. We do not believe “Greed is good”. Greed is thinking “I need more” or “I don’t have enough”, when we have more than we actually require. On the contrary, Gratitude is feeling, thinking, and/or knowing “I am content with what I have” or “I have enough”. Gratitude empowers us to experience contentment – this repels fear and anxiety, which can often be self-centric. Gratitude is our day-to-day shield against a relentless pursuit for more.

Recognize both your strengths and your limitations

Our ego – our sense of identity – often needs to protect itself, so we run from the less convenient realities about who we are. However, being open to even the hard truths about ourselves keeps us attuned to reality. Embracing these hard truths stops us from falling into a fragile-ego-protection trap, where we are blind to our own limitations. By recognizing both our strengths and limitations, it keeps us in the center of the spectrum we opened this post with and allows us to have an accurate sense of self. It ensures that we don’t become too modest or arrogant either. We have a full and balanced view of ourselves. 

Ask for and share honest feedback regularly

Lastly, we can only see a part of the picture of ourselves. Because we are an interdependent social species, how others perceive us is also important. While our self-esteem should be intrinsically sourced, others can and will often see strengths and limitations, realities about ourselves, that we won’t see on our own. They help us see blind spots and tell us how our behavior impacts others. By asking for and sharing feedback, it creates an environment where others will help us to stay in touch so our egos don’t blind us to difficult truths.

Conclusion

At Scholars of Finance, we need to take a wider perspective because of the impact investments have on the world. There are several truths about ourselves we need to remain constantly aware of. 

  • If we achieve our goal of instilling stewardship and integrity in the finance leaders of tomorrow, we will be managing billions of dollars one day and have great influence. We need to take this very seriously. 
  • We are in a culture and society that venerates wealth – in a system that has perpetuated increasingly divergent socio-economic disparity – and we can easily be influenced by our environment. 
  • Focusing on our own needs is healthy inasmuch as it equips us to be our best, but too much self-centric focus can stop us from seeing the bigger picture.
  • In Wall Street, greed can easily creep in, slowly, gradually over time, almost imperceptibly, and can undermine our better intentions and desire to help others. 
  • Our success in finance can get to our heads, our egos can get inflated as our sense of self swings toward arrogance, making us more prone to selfish behavior, greed, and ethical lapses.

Preparing for those risks is at the core of our mission at SOF and Humility is a value that requires a lifetime of constant cultivation. We never “arrive”, we only constantly improve (sometimes face setbacks), and continue to develop humility. It’s a plant that needs to be watered regularly to grow and thrive. So, our community encourages you to test the four principles. 

As we begin to enter the summer season and many of you begin new internships, or for the investors reading, you prepare to close deals, go back to the office, and continue to advance your careers, we invite you to join us in thinking about how you are exemplifying humility in your life and work. 

  • Revisit your mission and values – are they bigger than yourself? Do you have them written down and does your greater purpose resonate and feel real and personal?
  • Express daily gratitude, whether it be alone, with friends, or even asking others what they’re grateful for; list 5 things you’re grateful for today.
  • Take an inventory of your strengths and your weaknesses, perhaps with 15 minutes of journaling time this week.
  • Ask 10 people in your life for 360 feedback. Find out what your mentors, family, friends, and other peers think about you holistically. 

Doing these things will help you play to your strengths and manage your weaknesses, will strengthen your relationships, and will help you to do more good and make a greater impact on people. And in the spirit of humility, these practices will help us know ourselves so that we can overcome ourselves and be true stewards. 

As we venture into June and our value of the month is “Curiosity”, I would love to hear what you learn. Feel free to reach out and share your thoughts or questions. At SOF our greater purpose is to inspire character and integrity in the finance leaders of tomorrow. We’ve made progress but still have so much to learn. We would be grateful for your honest feedback.

Mar 31
Love2

Integrity: You Only Have It When You Know You Don’t

By Integrity, Principles No Comments

At Scholars of Finance, we have six core values that are at the center of what we teach: Integrity, Compassion, Humility, Curiosity, Impact, and Courage. Each month, our members vote on the “Value of the Month”, which helps focus our discussions on topics pertinent to that value.

Integrity was our value for March. Here are our epithet and principles for Integrity:

Integrity

Do what’s right

  • Do the right thing, always
  • Build trust through transparency and accountability 
  • Honor your responsibilities and commitments
  • Speak the truth at all times

We utilize integrity in both a moral sense and as a barometer of trust. It both calls us to do what is “right” while also calling us to be trustworthy. These are mutually reinforcing. There are millions of pages written about what is “right”, which have culminated in an abundance of religions and moral philosophies informing how we collectively act. However, I will unpack the question of how to “define what is right” in a later blog post. For now, I will offer one example that I think is not overly controversial, builds trust, and happens to be one of our principles – to speak the truth at all times.

Many people I’ve spoken with over the years have shared that integrity, or honesty, is a core value of theirs. We rarely meet someone who claims they need to become more honest. And while I hope that this is simply a result of surrounding myself with honest people, I often wonder if this actually reflects a lack of self-awareness? Or something even worse, that our collective standard for honesty or truth is diminishing? According to the Pew Research Center, I’m not alone in wondering, as a majority of people (51%) think that misinformation online is a problem that won’t be fixed.

However, speaking the truth at all times, for many of us, seems like a “given”. It is presumed that we will do this and that we already do this. If we were a liar, how could we live with ourselves? Yet, taking time to reflect on this principle and just how profound and radical it is, opens our eyes to just how much room we have to grow in honesty. Dinner with a friend, his niece, and a couple of her classmates recently got me thinking about this. Since “Speak the truth at all times” was the principle we spent the following week reflecting on there was a timely opportunity to dig into it with our organization as well.

The young woman was a senior in high school. I was visiting my friend when she and her friends also happened to be visiting him as well (he’s a cool uncle worth visiting). They explained to me that their classmates cheat on tests rampantly. Everyone turns off their cameras on Zoom, gets on a group FaceTime, and they take the exam together. It’s become commonplace. I was a bit shocked.

As I felt myself begin to judge, the maxim “judge not lest ye be judged” came to mind. I realized that I am not one to judge because I am not perfectly honest. As I started to think about my own shortcomings, a couple of Zoom-related “white lies” that I have told struck me. I started talking to our students and some of my friends about these and many of them reported doing the same things. 

For one example, have you ever been distracted on a Zoom call, whether with work or email, been asked a question, and said something to the effect of, “Sorry, my (audio, wifi) cut out (or insert other technical difficulties), can you say that again?” I’ve done this more than once. When I ask this question on Zoom calls, almost everyone smiles knowingly or nods. 

When I shared this with one of my teammates last week, they shared an example of a small concession of the truth in their own lives too. Notably, one person shared that they will sometimes do 10 push-ups in the morning just to be able to tell people they worked out that morning – to seem productive and disciplined. But they acknowledged that the statement “I worked out this morning”, while true, generally implies they spent at least 20-30 minutes exercising, which was not the case.

Personally, I was hardly even aware that I was making small concessions of the truth. It reminded me that we stray from the truth in small ways, oftentimes almost imperceptibly. This can lead to much larger concessions of the truth over time. Simon Sinek talks about this snowball effect in his recent book The Infinite Game, which my mentor Anthony Paquette sent me – the phenomenon is called ethical fading. Ethical fading is a well-studied process by which we “slowly and gradually make moral or ethical concessions sometimes unconsciously which compound into increasingly significant ethical failures.”

This concept implicates us in a high-stakes relationship with honesty. We need to be thoughtful and diligent about cultivating integrity. Especially if we are going to be finance leaders and investors – making decisions with millions of dollars – where the upside to being dishonest has lured many down the wrong path (and into jail). Every one of us can benefit from taking the time to introspect on our integrity. If you’re reading this and thinking, “you’re wrong, I’m completely honest and none of this applies to me”, just set aside 30 minutes and ask yourself these questions:

  • Have there been any times in the last month where I have not been 100% honest, even in small ways?
  • Is there something I’ve been holding back from saying to someone that needs to be said?
  • Have I been 100% honest about how I feel about things with the people close to me?
  • Does my language sometimes imply more about what I’ve done than I actually have?
  • Has someone said something to me recently that made me defensive? Could there be some truth in their statement that I am overreacting to?

None of us are perfect, and that’s ok. What’s important is that we are willing to own up to the times when our integrity lapses. It’s how we approach these moments of ethical fading that can either lead to a slippery slope of low integrity decisions or a career built upon trust that is rightfully earned. 

I believe that all of us doing this in our own lives can inspire many more to do the same. Just like talking about mental illness can break the stigma and fuel recoveries, talking about ways our honesty has slipped can break the stigma of failure and fuel deeper relationships, whether with loved ones or teammates. Counterintuitively, it builds trust with others as people recognize your self-awareness and conscious effort to hold yourself to a high standard of integrity. 

With that, I hope you haven’t judged me as you’ve read my confession about my own shortcomings (being honest about this stuff does feel vulnerable!) and I also hope that you’re feeling even just a little motivated to examine areas in your own life where you can grow in integrity. And, if you’re really inspired, I hope you’ll talk about it with others to get accountability and grow with them too.

Feb 27
Love0

Impact: How Excellence Unlocks Change

By Impact No Comments

At Scholars of Finance, we have six core values that are at the center of what we teach and strive to lead with: Integrity, Compassion, Humility, Curiosity, Impact, and Courage. Each month, our members vote on the “Value of the Month”, which has increasingly been at the center of discussions we have at both undergraduate chapters and among our national team.

For the month of February, our Value of the Month is Impact. Some of our members asked me to share a brief background on why Impact was selected as one of our core values and how it helps us achieve our mission at SOF. So, I am going to walk through the value, its “epithet”, and the 4 principles we believe reflect this value. I hope to explain the rationale behind them and provide you with some examples and questions to help you consider how these may apply to you personally. Here they are:

Impact

Do excellent work

  • Accept nothing less than your best
  • Develop credibility through consistency
  • Operate patiently and think long term
  • Live a healthy and balanced life

We use the term “Impact” interchangeably at the organization to mean two things. Most commonly, we use  “making an impact” to mean doing excellent work that advances our mission. Secondly, we “make an impact” on others, our organization, and the world by doing good, making a difference, or making lasting, positive contributions to society. The latter has become incredibly common today. We believe our mission of inspiring character and integrity in the finance leaders of tomorrow will make an enormous impact on the world in this sense. Ultimately, It will change how billions of dollars are invested and allocated – toward solving problems, improving communities, and helping people thrive.

Do excellent work

We define Impact as “doing excellent work” because we believe that is integral to making an impact (the “doing good” kind). Our vision is a future where all finance leaders steward the world’s capital to serve the greater good. This requires several components. First, we need ALL finance leaders on board. Yes, they need to view themselves as stewards – as fiduciaries who are entrusted with capital on behalf of others in a role of service. They do need to be motivated by improving the world around them, rather than self-gain, greed, or power. Accordingly, at Scholars of Finance, we often emphasize developing “highly principled” future leaders as the means of achieving this vision. But a clear reality is that we also must be the “highest performing” future leaders as well if our members are to enter finance, succeed, and ascend the ranks of leadership and reach a level of seniority where they can make a significant impact. They need to do excellent work to get in the door and then climb the ladder.

So, with that in mind, let’s break down our four principles for Impact, which we believe define the behaviors that reflect this in action – and also discuss why they are so important.

Accept nothing less than your best

Finance demands this from us. The gravity of our future decisions demands it. We believe members of Scholars of Finance will one day allocate millions or even billions of dollars. That’s an enormous responsibility and deserves our very best effort because those decisions can influence thousands of lives – and many more. I sometimes reflect on the precision that engineers at NASA or SpaceX have to employ in their work, and I genuinely believe investors should apply the same level of rigor in trying to allocate capital to its highest purposes – where it can do the most good. Practically, today, this looks like being detail-oriented, doing thorough research, and thinking critically. It’s putting in the extra effort.

Develop credibility through consistency

Finance is largely a relationship business. Our ability to bring projects to fruition or deals to close requires that others trust and respect us. Large and complex projects also require the collaboration of many people, so we need to consistently build credibility, across teams, companies, and contexts. We need to be consistent so people know they can count on both our word and our work. They need to know we will deliver. Many of our speakers and mentors share that they only want to work with people they trust, and in Wall Street, expectations of excellence are incredibly high – trust has to be earned constantly. Ralph Acampora, one of our Advisors, who is renowned on Wall Street, often says “it took me 50 years to build my reputation, and it could take me less than 5 minutes to destroy it”.

Operate patiently and think long term

Short-termism has been argued to be one of the largest hindrances to advancing society as quickly as we are capable of through investment in innovation and moving capital toward businesses and products that are in our collective, long-term best interest. For example, many have argued that short-term profit pressure has slowed our transition to renewable energy sources, leaving us with the prolonged effect of pollution and carbonization of our atmosphere – all of which are creating growing costs we will have to pay for years from now. In addition to the need to be patient with our investing to unlock progress for society, we need to be patient to advance deals, as they are often complex and take time. For example, I spoke to the former CEO of a top investment bank that had once acquired another sizable firm, and the CEO said that they had been building the relationships needed to close that acquisition for more than a decade.

Live a healthy and balanced life

This may seem counterintuitive, and to some, almost tone-deaf considering what we hear about the lifestyle and workload of investors. Our members pursuing roles in investment banking dread the 80-100 hour work weeks they’ve heard horror stories about. Rightfully so, because that kind of lifestyle drives burnout and sleep deprivation, which can lower our moral awareness and, not surprisingly, dramatically reduce our cognitive performance. In finance, the stakes are often high, with millions of dollars on the line. Tending to our mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health is critical for our decision-making under those intense circumstances. Excellence requires us to operate at our highest levels, so sleep, nutrition, exercise, relationships, and every aspect of our lives need to be in order. Becoming an executive is also a multi-decade journey, which burnout would halt before we even get close to the “finish line”. We need to operate sustainably.

Conclusion

Hopefully, this begins to paint a picture of what Impact means to us at Scholars of Finance and why it’s important. Like most, we think it guides us toward making a difference in the world and people’s lives. And we also believe it entails holding ourselves to a high standard of excellence in the process. 

In the months ahead, with members, mentors, and speakers, we will dive deeply into each of these principles. We hope that, as February winds to a close and you reflect on your impact, you can identify a few ways to do even better work – excellent work – that advances a mission that’s important to you. 

Ask yourself: Are you doing your best work or spread so thin everything you produce is just “good enough?” Are you building credibility through consistency or creating for yourself a reputation for underdelivering? Are you thinking long-term or only thinking about this quarter, this month, or even this week? Are you living a healthy and balanced life or are you stressed, anxious, eating poorly, and barely sleeping? 

Taking a bit of time to pause and soberly face these questions will almost always yield actionable insights. I hope that you’ll set aside even just 15-20 minutes sometime after reading this to ponder these questions, and ideally identify 1-2 things you can change in the week ahead to make more impact. 

As I do the same, I am raising a virtual toast to you and to all of the long-term impact you’ll unlock as a result. 

Jan 12
Love1

A Call to Character Amidst a Defining Moment

By Compassion, Courage, Curiosity One Comment

Dear Scholars of Finance,

After reflecting on the events that recently transpired in the U.S. Capitol, I am writing to offer some encouragement and guidance on how we can grow and act as leaders in a time when our leadership is more important than ever.

On Wednesday, January 6th, millions of people went online and watched violent rioters storm the U.S. Capitol, witnessing the chambers of democracy being desecrated and looking on in suspense as the very principles the U.S. was built upon were challenged. The character of this nation was threatened. The House of Representatives and Senate reconvened safely that evening and completed the election certification. The democratic process prevailed over violence and intimidation. 

Following this day of infamy, five have been reported dead. The FBI has identified dozens of rioters to be prosecuted for egregious crimes. The current President of the United States has been banned from Twitter and Facebook indefinitely, and impeachment is under consideration. 

We’re living through a moment that will define our generation.

Many of us have felt scared or confused by what has in some cases been portrayed as the unraveling of the safety and security of democratic processes and institutions. Many of us were shocked or deeply disappointed that people would so recklessly defile the halls of Congress. Many of us are angry about the obvious inequality and inequity displayed, recognizing that several Black Lives Matter protests were treated more harshly, leading us to question how Capitol police would have responded had the rioters not been predominantly white. Some are not even surprised by the events, given the divided state this nation has devolved to and the vitriolic rhetoric of the current President. Some simply don’t know what to think or what to say.

The moment continues. With a presidential inauguration approaching and the deep division of our nation becoming increasingly apparent, it may last for weeks or months, maybe even years. 

Many of us are asking ourselves what our role is in this moment. What can we do? What should we do? The problems can feel so much bigger than us. The solutions can seem far out of our reach, lying in the hands of national officials, courts, or political leaders. How do we make an impact? Can we?

Yes we can. We can take action within our circles of influence, whether we only reach our family members down the hall or we reach hundreds or thousands. We can do something now and we can make a difference.

Our mission is to inspire character and integrity in the finance leaders of tomorrow. We may wonder what action we can take while still so early in our paths to becoming finance leaders and investors. What role does finance play in all of this? 

Eff Martin, a former Partner at Goldman Sachs and a close friend of SOF, once told us that “you need to build character now, so that in 15 years, when you’re put to the test and your decisions carry much more weight, you have the character to do the right thing.” One day, some of us will make decisions with millions of dollars and impact many, many lives. So, in this moment, as future finance leaders, we seek to examine how we can act with character to prepare ourselves for our future impact. In doing so, we can also make an impact right now.

I encourage all of our members, and anyone else reading this, to consider our core values of Courage, Curiosity, and Compassion and how to apply each of them in the weeks ahead. Here are a few thoughts to help you get started with your reflection and next steps:

Courage — There is deep division in the world which threatens the foundations of our society. Help solve this large and important problem. The situation in our country may get better from here, or, for a period of time, the state of affairs may get worse. Remain calm. Maya Angelou said, “Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.” Courage overpowers the fear that resigns us to this new status quo.

Curiosity — There will be many debates about what has happened, is happening, and will happen. First, seek to understand, then to be understood. We will naturally bias toward talking about these events only with people who share our worldview. Embrace diverse perspectives. Abraham Lincoln, who led the U.S. through arguably the most divided time in our national history, said, “Those who look for the bad in people will surely find it.” Curiosity extinguishes the flames of anger between us.

Compassion — There are people severely affected by what’s happening. Show empathy to those suffering. There are people who view this situation differently than we may. Show them respect and kindness. People will say things that initially offend us. Extend them forgiveness. Martin Luther King Jr. reminded us that, “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.” Compassion is our primary antidote to the divisiveness that plagues us.

Again, one day, many of us will be leaders in finance who help shape the economy and our nation’s political agenda. It is incumbent upon us to practice these values now to help heal our nation and prepare for the days when our actions have far greater implications. My sincere hope is that the last week and the months ahead can become one of the greatest periods of growth in our lives to date so that we can help avoid events like these from happening again, and that in the process, we help shape this moment into a foundation for a brighter future.

If you have questions, need someone to talk to, want to discuss how to uphold these values in more detail, or perhaps want to be a resource for others seeking clarity through this period, you can always reach out at hello@scholarsoffinance.org and a member of the team will be grateful to talk with you.

Best,
Ross Overline
Co-Founder, CEO

Oct 06
Love0

Important News About Our Vision, Mission, and Values at Scholars of Finance

By Values No Comments

At SOF, our vision, mission, and values are at the core of what we do and what we teach our students and members. 

In keeping with “Curiosity,” one of our core values, we’re always learning and growing. As our organization has matured, we’ve learned a lot about the world, finance, and ourselves. Our mentors and advisors have continued to help us improve how we inspire character and integrity in the finance leaders of tomorrow. Throughout this process and period of growth for SOF, we’ve decided to refine our vision, mission, and values to best represent what we believe future finance executives and investors need to embody.

Our team has spent countless hours discussing our vision, mission, and values, learning from experts, and gathering feedback from our community. After sending a survey to over 600 students and professionals in the SOF community to collect data, we then hosted 2 virtual town hall discussions with our community. We also held numerous one-on-one conversations with our mentors, Board of Directors, and Advisory Board Members, including Katie Lawler, Chief Ethics Officer of U.S. Bank, and Deb Schoneman, President of Piper Sandler.

We are pleased to say that we have finalized our updated vision, mission, and values at Scholars of Finance. 

Among many improvements, there are a few key changes you’ll notice:

  • “Compassion” is a new value on the list. We believe that serving others and fostering relationships through kindness, empathy, respect, forgiveness, inclusion, and generosity are critical for us to make a positive impact on people.
  • Principles were changed and are explicit. Now, our principles are closer to being mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive, while retaining brevity, and they are explicit and direct. We removed metaphors.
  • Each value includes an epithet. This was to summarize the essence of each value and provide additional clarity for what exactly its intent is. 24 principles are a lot to memorize and these epithets are a good starting point.

Here they are:

Vision: A future where all finance leaders steward the world’s capital to serve the greater good. 

Mission: To inspire character and integrity in the finance leaders of tomorrow.

Values:

  • Integrity (Do what’s right) 
    • Do the right thing, always
    • Build trust through transparency and accountability 
    • Honor your responsibilities and commitments
    • Speak the truth at all times
  • Compassion (Serve others) 
    • Foster relationships with respect and empathy
    • Offer kindness and forgiveness to everyone 
    • Be generous with your time, energy, and resources
    • Champion diversity, equity, and inclusion
  • Humility (Know thyself) 
    • Serve a purpose greater than yourself
    • Cultivate gratitude for what you have
    • Recognize both your strengths and limitations
    • Ask for and share honest feedback regularly
  • Curiosity (Know the world) 
    • Seek first to understand, then to be understood 
    • Realize that there is always more to learn
    • Value every situation as a growth opportunity
    • Pursue and embrace diverse perspectives
  • Impact (Do excellent work) 
    • Accept nothing less than your best
    • Develop credibility through consistency
    • Operate patiently and think long term
    • Live a healthy and balanced life
  • Courage (Act boldly) 
    • Solve large and important problems in the world
    • Stand up for what you believe is right
    • Remain calm during difficult times
    • Embrace change and help others do the same

We strongly believe that our updated vision, mission, and values more accurately represent an effective and ethical finance leader—the model our members should strive to emulate. As our mentors have taught us, building character will be a lifelong journey. We’re excited to be on it.

To ensure our vision, mission, values shape the culture of our organization and our community, we are committed to deepening their integration into everything we do, including by:

  • Centering our National Speaker Series around these values and their significance to our speakers.
  • Making our values the themes for our SOF Symposia in each of our core markets.
  • Revising our Leadership Development Program to better instill these values and relate them to finance.
  • Incorporating guidance for mentors and mentees in our Mentorship Network to help facilitate discussions about these values.
  • Fostering conversations about these values and principles at our internal meetings

If you are as excited about this as we are, you’ll be happy to hear we created a SOF Culture Book to easily share our values with others. This was inspired by the work of our friends at charity: water and is a great resource to pass along.

Thank you to all of you who’ve played a part in this process and for your continued support for Scholars of Finance. It’s you who have inspired our vision, mission, and values, and for that we are grateful. We believe the finance industry will be better off because of it.

Cheers,

Ross Overline

Co-Founder, CEO

Scholars of Finance

Jun 25
Love2

South Asian Allyship in the Age of BLM

By Courage, Curiosity No Comments

It’s bad to be Black in Desi culture.

Hasan Minhaj described it best. We shy away from the awkward discussions at the dinner table, let the racist comments slide, because, what do our parents know? British colonization (which ceased in India as late as 1947) had adverse effects on our parent’s values and biases. They grew up surrounded by Fair and Lovely ads, taunted by their classmates and parents for being “kala” (which means dark, or black in Hindi and carries a negative connotation), and exposed to these notions of anti-Blackness subtly throughout their lives. It only makes sense that once they immigrated, they translated these biases into American society. These stereotypes were reinforced by the de-facto racism that plagues our social and political institutions and the harmful rhetoric that our leaders spew, brushing the notion of white privilege under the rug.

Spending all of my formative years in Staten Island, New York, sheltered in the most-suburban and least-diverse borough of New York City, I easily internalized the casual racism and the “model minority” myth touted around my community. My parents instilled in me the drive that us first-generation Indian kids know too well. Anyone can work hard, get into the best-gifted programs and magnet schools, get the highest scores on all standardized tests, and eventually, get into the college of their dreams. So when I began attending a magnet school in Coney Island, Brooklyn, I was armed with the notion that everyone had an equal means of succeeding if they worked hard enough. Attending this school, however, came with an unintended side effect- for the first time in my life, I was exposed to children of all races and socioeconomic backgrounds. I went to school with the children of Academy Award winners, Ivy League legacies, and, alternatively, low-income students with drug-addicted and absent parents. Interacting with my peers helped me discern the intersectionality of race and socioeconomic status- it just so happened that the majority of the low-income students were people of color. It enabled my understanding that only a few years into their schooling, these students were already at a significant disadvantage compared to their privileged peers. But it was not until I took AP United States History my junior year of high school, however, that I could pinpoint the institutionalized racism in America, and the ripple-effect of longstanding policies that allow it to proliferate and adversely affect our Black community. It took an optional Advanced Placement class for me to recognize the significant whitewashing of our history curriculums, and the Eurocentric ideals that govern our social norms and beliefs, the effect of which has not been lost on the Asian community.

As Asian students, we proudly tout this “model minority” narrative, in which our immigrant parents have excelled as business leaders, innovators, and pillars of American society. We buy into this myth that we made it because we did the hard work, the work that our fellow Black Americans are too “lazy” for. We are so quick to ally ourselves with conservative groups intent on ripping apart affirmative action admissions processes, despite the fact that our minority is overrepresented at these leading academic institutions, and have minimal barriers to entry compared to our Black peers. What we fail to recognize, however, is that our families could only immigrate to this country subsequent to the Civil Rights movement, through the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which increased Asian immigration by five times. We turn a blind eye to the fact that our success in America has been directly contingent upon the bravery and struggle of the Black community throughout the 60s. We buy into this divide and blissfully ignore our privilege as non-Black people of color. And now, our silence is deafening. How is it that we proudly support examples of Black excellence such as the Obamas, rappers, and NFL and NBA athletes but remain silent as our Black brothers and sisters are ruthlessly murdered in our communities by the very force that has sworn to protect them? How is it that we ingratiate Black culture into our own through the likes of Nav and Drake, but are hesitant to step forward and speak up against the injustices and casual racism that persist in our Desi communities? How is it that we have normalized our silence on these issues, simply because they don’t affect us? 

A lot of us, as first and second-generation immigrants have the privilege of handpicking the elements of our culture that we identify with. And for us, racism and the model minority myth will not be one of them. Educate yourself, it is not the burden of Black people to educate you. Have those tough conversations at the dinner table. Share Black stories. Uplift Black voices. Utilize your privilege and platform to support the people and culture we revere so deeply. For our Black communities, this is more than just an Instagram trend. It’s reality. 

 

Educational Resources

  • To Watch:
    • Stream “Views for a Vision” to donate money to BLM
    • When They See Us
    • 13th
    • Dear White People
    • Who Killed Malcolm X?
    • All Day And A Night
  • To Read:
    • Stay Woke: A People’s Guide to Making Black Lives Matter, by Tehama Lopez Bunyasi and Candis Watts Smith
    • No More Heroes: Grassroots Challenges to the Savior Mentality, by Jordan Flaherty
    • I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness, by Austin Channing Brown
    • Stamped from the Beginning, by Ibram X. Kendi
    • This Book is Antiracist: 20 Lessons on how to Wake Up, Take Action and Do the Work, by Tiffany Jewell
  • To Donate:
    • Black Lives Matter: funding the BLM movement
    • Innocence Project: Non-profit dedicated to overturning wrongful convictions and bring reform to the justice system
    • National Bail Out: Black-led and Black-centered organization aiming to create a national community of leaders who have experienced incarceration
    • Black Visions Collective: Minnesota-based Black, trans, and queer-led organization committed to dismantling systems of oppression and violence
    • NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund: Nationwide organization that fights for racial justice and investigates police-involved murder
May 03
Love2

Finding The Leader Within

By Curiosity, Humility No Comments

“Um… I-” I stuttered as my interviewer raised his eyebrow at me. I felt the heat rising to my face slowly until words clumsily stumbled out of my mouth, barely coherent. It was transparent to the four upperclassmen in the room grilling me that I was grossly underprepared. The next hour crept by, each question stinging me harder than the latter. My lack of knowledge was apparent. Finally, the hour was up, my torture was over. I gathered my resume and stumbled out of the room, frustrated. It was the first month of business school and I was already struggling.

As the elevator lurched down to the lobby of Stern’s Tisch Hall and screeched to a halt, I held back my tears. How was it that I was so unprepared? Why did they expect me to know all these advanced questions for a club interview? What are technicals?These questions continually circled through my head, especially when listening to my friends detail their positive interview experiences later that day in the dining hall. They laughed, sharing the inside jokes and connections they had already made with their interviewers while I dejectedly slurped up my Jamba Juice smoothie through a drenched paper straw. It was clear to me that I had no idea what breaking into business, tech, or finance entailed. Going to Stern, I thought the next four years were going to be a piece of cake. I was going to learn everything I needed to in class, and magically secure my dream job, touting my business school’s name at every major firm. In an hour, my mindset shifted from overconfidence to anxiety. How was I going to get a job if I couldn’t even get into a club at Stern? What do I need to learn and by when? How does everyone already know everything?

The anxiety persisted throughout my first month of college. I had only applied to and got rejected from one club, and had no direction with how I should be developing myself professionally. I turned to LinkedIn, scouring upperclassmen profiles, figuring out how to get involved, remain proactive, and abate my consternation. One day, when I thought all hope was lost, I received a message from Trent Madill, Chief of Staff Intern, reaching out to me about an organization called Scholars of Finance and the opportunity to co-found an NYU chapter. Thinking it to be a spam message, I checked the link attached to see the legitimacy of the website. Shocked by its extensiveness, I messaged Trent back, indicating my interest. My interview was lined up within the week, and this time, I was determined to be overprepared. Reading through the key tenets of Scholars of Finance, I was instantly drawn to the mentorship aspect. I needed guidance on how to navigate the complex world of finance and all it had to offer.

As I sped through the interview and onboarding process, it became evident that Scholars of Finance was an organization that would prioritize my professional needs and growth. The open conversations I had with our CEO, Ross, and our National Management Interns, Jake, Trent, and Mason, all gave me a platform to pitch myself confidently to the organization while being candid about my struggles and lack of knowledge. As elections for the NYU chapter rolled around, I knew I wanted to become as involved as possible, so I ran for President and had the privilege of being elected. Unfortunately, I was under the impression that becoming elected would be the hardest part when in reality, the arduous challenges were yet to come.

Having had extensive leadership experience in high school, I anticipated I already knew everything there was to know about leading and managing people. However, my first month as President was a complete disaster. My inability to properly delegate work and empower others to complete it became painfully obvious. My Slack Direct Messages were filled with feedback from my fellow leadership team members explaining how they felt out of the loop and unable to actually complete any work, and as I took over major initiatives, I left little room for collaboration. As this continued, I quickly became bottlenecked by all the work I needed to complete, resulting in the poor organization and execution of our programs. It was only when I spoke candidly to Ross that he identified the underlying issue. “Leadership is not about doing everything yourself. It’s not about controlling or forcing others to do it either. The best leaders empower others to reach their full potential and don’t have to lift a finger themselves.” I cried as Ross continued (I wish I could say that was the first and last time), because, deep down, I knew he was right. I needed to grow and make a significant change for the sake of my chapter and co-leaders. And so, I consistently sought his feedback and implemented SoF’s philosophy of being slow to speak and quick to listen. Consequently, it did not become hard for the NYU chapter to grow and become one of the highest functioning and engaged chapters in the organization. All it took was a little guidance.

And so, Scholars of Finance made me realize true leadership and mentorship is not just about learning technical knowledge or professional development. It’s about investing in someone’s growth to make them the best possible version of themselves. Looking back on this year, I can confidently say that Scholars of Finance has made me a much better leader and manager while equipping me with the skills to continue my growth in the future.

 

— 

Shivi Chauhan is the President and one of the original Co-Founders of the New York University chapter. She is currently a freshman at NYU Stern majoring in Finance and Data Science with a minor in Public Policy and Management. Along with Scholars of Finance, Shivi is a Copy Editor and Staff Writer for the Stern Gould Standard, a Research Assistant in the Management and Organizations department through the Stern Program for Undergraduate Research, and she will be joining NYU’s premier raas team, NYU Raas Malai, this coming fall. In her free time, Shivi likes to learn new languages and cook with her family.

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