Ivy Years

My much-anticipated, whirlwind trip to Boston for Harvard Undergraduate Women in Business’s Intercollegiate Business Convention (HUWIB – IBC) took place this past weekend. Organized by the lovely ladies at Cornell’s branch of 85Broads, the twelve of us made our way from Ithaca to Boston in three cars after 6 hours on the road, during which Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the USA” came on way too many times (yet we still belted it out every time).

By the time we got to our hotel it was already nightfall. We drove to Cambridge and was shown around Harvard Square and Harvard Yard by our unofficial host. Sorry Ithaca, but Cambridge is what a legit college town should look like – festive shops, classy restaurants, preppy boys dressed in swoon-worthy black topcoats and Burberry scarves traveling in groups, actual civilization etc. Ithaca just has hippies. Everything’s definitely a lot closer on what we saw of the Harvard campus, which has its advantages. I do love Cornell’s gorgeous hilly landscape though.

(85Broads girls walking in Harvard at night)

The actual conference on Saturday morning took place at the Westin Copley Place in downtown Boston. 800 women from over 100 schools, with all Ivies represented. To my male colleagues, no, it was not an ultra-feminist, men bashing convention like you imagined. Professionalism, balance, curiosity, success marked the underlying themes.  The delegate bag was filled with goodies from Dior, American Eagle, Citigroup, P&G, Raymond James, Bain & Co., and the works. The opening keynote was in a surprising format – casual interview style Q&A with Anne Sweeney, president of Disney-ABC Television Group. This was interesting because the closing keynote was from one of ABC’s biggest competitors – Alison Gollust, Executive VP Corporate Communications from NBC Universal.

(Alison Gollust, NBC, wearing this season’s on-trend gorgeous knee-high boots I might add)

My morning was a series of hilarious chance encounters. I saw people from Vancouver who flew in just for the conference. At one workshop, I unknowingly sat down at the same table as Jenny Hu, whose fame resonates in Sauder far and wide It took a few seconds for us to put the pieces together, having never met despite going to the same school for a year and hearing each other’s names every so often. I also finally met Yingna Liu face-to-face, who was a Harvard volunteer. I’ve “known” Yingna for two years through blogging, awesome eh?

The breakout sessions I attended were

• Finance 101: Investment Banking, Investment Management, and Sales & Trading – panelists from Barclays, Credit Suisse, Raymond James, Citigroup, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs
• Conquering the Case Study Interview – panelists from Oliver Wyman, Bain & Co., Parthenon, Monitor, Boston Consulting Group
• Beyond Banking: Venture Capital, Private Equity, and Hedge Funds - panelists from Colcomgroup, Blackstone, Harvard Business School
• Career Fair

Finance 101 was highly informative (one of the panelists was a Cornellian) and touched upon family life in relations to women in finance. The Case Study one was my favorite, and not only because Jenny Hu busted out her elite Strategic Consulting Mentorship Program skills. At this session, we broke into small groups and tackled an actual BCG case, led by associate Hana Adaniya.  Hana gave us tons of practical tips that I will definitely apply to my project with the Cornell Consulting Group.

A few very rough takeaways for consulting case study interviews

1. Paraphrase the question, extract the key point, do not repeat the whole thing word for word
2. Don’t rush through your explanations
3. STRUCTURE AND SEGMENTATION ARE GOOD, always have some kind of framework and walk the interviewer through it
4. Always provide alternatives when laying out solutions
5. But do make a final decision
6. BCG for one will usually have numbers and calculations. If you don’t have numbers you might be barking up the wrong tree (or wrong branch of the structured tree diagram)
7. Always close your response with insight -> what’s the bottom line impact? What are some next steps?

Most inspiring keynote goes to Johanna Hanneke Faber, VP for Pantene, Proctor & Gamble. She had an amazing career story and an absolutely wonderful personality that projected, simply, a love of life and different cultures. I will probably apply to P&G because of her (actually getting an internship there will be a different story entirely). Side note: I really appreciate the IBC people giving us the contact list for ALL the business delegates at the end of the day.

(Ladies from Cornell 85Broads at the convention. Wow, we’re photogenic.)

Even though I was exhausted by the end of the day – 800 women strutting around in heels for an entire day, the thought in itself is terrifying – I did manage, in typical female practicality, to squeeze in a little shopping time after the career fair. While the Louis Vuitton’s and Armani’s of Copley Place Mall was out of my price range, I did snag some Harvard/Boston souvenirs for friends and family.

The only issue I had was with the sneak-peak movie trailer shown by Alison Gollust in her closing keynote. The movie is called It’s Complicated and starrs Merryl Streep as an ambitious career woman, mother of three, and divorcee who falls for her now-remarried ex-husband (Alec Baldwin) and becomes “the other woman” in a complicated love triangle. After an entire day of valuable career advice, female empowerment, promotion of the entrepreneurial spirit, and heated discussions of work-life balance, showing a trailer which insinuates that a successful woman who has it all still can’t be happy without a man might not have been the most ideal take-away message. It was entertaining though (ha).

Finally, quotes to end an overall amazing convention.

FIND MENTORS. FIND MENTORS. FIND MENTORS. – This was emphasized by at least 5 speakers

In your first six months in investment banking, do NOT expect work-life balance. – Finance panelists

It’s not who you know, it’s who knows you. – Alison Gollust I think, NBC