“There’s no gray area in terms of conduct,” said Michael Faridi ’02, a managing director, Credit Sales at Morgan Stanley. This nugget of wisdom was just one of the many insights shared by a panel of Gilman alumni as part of the Wall Street 101 program, a day-long immersion into careers in finance for students to experience through interactions with Gilman alumni working in the field.

Added John Clarke ’83, a securities litigation partner at DLA Pipers, “Morgan Stanley wants to talk to somebody with integrity. They have no interest in speaking with someone who is cutting corners.” These ideas were revealed during a conversation hosted and moderated by Bruce Cameron ’74, founding partner at Berkshire Global Advisors.

Cameron further emphasized the importance of learning to speak effectively in public. Vijay Prabhakar ’94, senior vice president at Two Sigma Investments, remarked on the value of learning how to argue convincingly but also to accept when you are wrong gracefully. Northampton Capital Partners associate Joseph Melancon ’18 put anxious minds at ease by sharing that he didn’t even know he wanted to work in finance when he graduated from Gilman.

The panel discussion was the second stop of the day for the 25 seniors. Earlier, the group visited with Matt Berger ’10, principal at the Wolfson Group. Berger had divided the students into three groups and challenged each to present to him on the environmental factors that could impact a firm’s willingness to invest in different asset classes. In addition to pressing the students with challenging questions — which they answered well with informed responses — he offered a few pieces of (semi-) unsolicited advice, much of which could naturally be connected back to the Gilman Five:

1. Excellence can never be commoditized.
2. Well-rounded generalists are highly sought after.
3. AI can never replace human networks.

Before meeting with Berger, the troop toured Lower Manhattan, visiting sites near the actual Wall Street — including Federal Hall, the New York Stock Exchange, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and the Charging Bull — that helped to contextualize New York’s rise to prominence in global financial markets.

Said Berger after the event, "It was so much fun to have the boys this morning. Unsurprisingly, they were incredibly prepared, asked great questions, and left the room in better shape than they found it."