A Summer with Girls Who Invest

Written by Claire Kafeero (W’25)

From a professional standpoint, this past summer was the best summer of my life, and I owe it all to Girls Who Invest (GWI). As a sophomore, I remember being thrown into the world of recruiting and not really knowing where to start. Conversations surrounding investment banking and consulting clouded my judgment as I truly wasn’t interested in either. I had no clue what I was going to do. Luckily, while aimlessly scrolling through TikTok I landed on a video talking about GWI. With two weeks left before the deadline, I knew that I had to apply and take this chance.

Girls Who Invest is a summer program that is dedicated to teaching young women about buy-side roles in finance, specifically in investment management. The founder and CEO, Seema Hingorani, started this program with a goal of ‘30 by 30,’ meaning that by 2030, 30% of investment funds should be managed by women. They have the Online Intensive Program (OIP) and the Summer Intensive Program (SIP). I was a part of the SIP cohort where we spent 4 weeks at Penn doing intensive financial training followed by a 10-week internship at one of their partner firms. Within the program, we were matched with mentors who were experienced professionals within investment management and alums from GWI.

Returning to Penn this summer and being surrounded by women from all over the country from different schools and backgrounds was so refreshing. Everyone was so eager to get started on the content and learn. A lot of the finance and accounting topics we learned were ones I had already learned in ACCT1010 and FNCE1000. However, during the semester, I felt like I was going through content just to be ready for the test. Now, I had the chance to really focus on the content and simply learn just to know the knowledge. We had professors from Penn, Duke, and UNC come in to teach us the content. I was seeing finance from such a unique perspective and was really starting to see myself doing this type of work in my career.

For my internship, I was matched with JP Morgan, working in the Private Bank in New York. Terrified was an understatement of how I was feeling. Even though we had spent weeks reviewing content, I still didn’t feel ready. Even with all these nerves, I felt so much better knowing that I had 12 girls from my cohort there to support me. At the bank, I worked on the Generalist Solutions team. Our focus was helping create the Private Bank’s view on the markets based on daily news and the stock market. Our role is to work with advisors and clients to help persuade them to invest with JP Morgan. My manager and team were beyond helpful in getting me acclimated with the day to day activities. I really enjoyed this role because my work had a high visibility. At the end of the summer, I published a piece about the tech sector’s performance which was posted on the public Chase Wealth Management website. They brought me along to all meetings and I even got to go to Wall Street and watch one of my co-workers speak on CNBC, which was great.

One of the most rewarding aspects of the internships were the daily lunches we had with senior women at the firm. Managing directors from Wealth management and Asset management came to talk to us and gave us very candid insight and advice about careers in finance that you would not get from a typical speaker series. We were asking questions about the markets, handling relationships, family, and etc. Just seeing these women still have meaningful relationships and families and kill it in their careers was super inspiring. It showed me that I can have both if I work hard for it.

I learned so much about finance from a new lens within JP Morgan. I would not have had this experience without GWI. I made so many friends and connections through the program and I am so excited to continue cultivating these relationships. I went into this past summer not thinking I was cut out for a career in finance. Now, I am ready to learn more about the industry and help reach Seema’s goal of “30 by 30.”