HIGH FINANCE

Harnessed, helmeted and alternately dangling from or wobbling on an elevator cable 30 feet in the air, finance junior Greg Kaniecki probably was not thinking about the application essay he’d written for the Investment Management Leadership Program (IMLP) months earlier.

Had his mind drifted from the high ropes course to his successful essay, he would have seen that, in an unusual sense, he was getting exactly what he’d wanted from the program and the Notre Dame Institute for Global Investing (NDIGI) that developed it.

“NDIGI gives its scholars no boundaries and sets none for itself,” he’d written.

 “No boundaries.” The high ropes course is just one example. Part of a two-day retreat in August at Pretty Lake Camp in Mattawan, Michigan, the course taught IMLP students about leadership by challenging them to work closely in pairs. Partners were instructed to stay in physical contact the whole time, fighting the impulse to grab a line with both hands or move at their own pace.

At the end, students said they had learned about trust, encouragement, communication and empathy in ways they couldn’t have imagined.

As the inaugural IMLP cohort, the 47 finance juniors, who were selected from an applicant pool of 128, will take part in other valuable opportunities until graduation: being mentored by alumni, immersions, internships and career preparation. The goal is to provide an in-depth finance education that centers on practical application with a focus on ethical awareness.

IMLP isn’t the only impressive initiative from NDIGI, which was established in 2015. Under the leadership of the institute’s first managing director, Kevin Burke (ND ’89), who started in 2016, NDIGI quickly found its footing to develop a number of opportunities for students at the Mendoza College and across campus, including:

• London-based courses International Portfolio Management (IPM) and Emerging Market Investing (EMI)

• A financial modeling workshop on Saturday afternoons in February

• The non-credit course Venture Fundamentals that produced a team that won the national 2017 Undergraduate Venture Capital Investing Competition

• A partnership with the nonprofit Girls Who Invest to increase the number of women in portfolio management and executive leadership in the asset management industry

Additionally, NDIGI hosted panel discussions, dinners, networking trips and specialty courses to strengthen tomorrow’s financial leaders.

And there’s more to come. “We want to challenge our students so they can ultimately become a voice for Notre Dame in the finance industry,” Burke says. “We’ll consider any creative idea.”

In other words, no boundaries.

Learn more about the Notre Dame Institute for Global Investing at ndigi.nd.edu