It's been an exceptionally busy term and like everyone the Society has had to adapt to the changing environment of COVID-19. They've have moved everything online, had more speakers and collaborated more than ever before!
It’s been an exceptionally busy term, and like everyone we’ve had to adapt to the changing environment of COVID-19. We’ve moved all our activities online and have gone to great lengths to make sure there’s tonnes of opportunity for our members to join in. We’ve also been lucky enough to have some really inspiring speakers and even collaborate with some amazing societies both at the University and beyond!
Our goal is to ‘Engage, Enlighten, Empower’. To engage a global network of aspiring students from any gender and degree background; enlighten your interest in finance with support and guidance to thrive for their full potential; empower women and promote gender diversity in finance and professional careers. We hope we’ve done that this term!
Over the summer started with our first ever online series: Meet Our Alumni. The series aims to build awareness around the broad array of career opportunities available in the finance sector, as well as helping graduates and final year students prepare to enter the workforce during this unprecedented time. All our speakers were graduates of the University and discussed a wide range of topics ranging from tax and finance, consulting and actuarial, data analyst to fintech.
Next, we kicked off this semester with a Welcome Event hosted for our new and old members to engage and network with us. We also took part in the first Virtual EPS Societies Fair to recruit new members studying science and engineering degrees.
Later in the term, we were joined by one of the leading consulting career gurus, Gwyn Day. This event was one of our highest attendance and received the best feedback! More than 40 participants joined us for this session to hear Gwyn’s advice on getting your dream internship and job. As an ex-Head Banker with 20+ years of career coaching experience, he spends his time coaching students interested in finance, consulting, law, and tech. Gwyn is also a fellow of RSA member, IQ in the top 0.5% globally and a specialist in neurolinguistics. It was an honour to have him join us again!
The Bank of America were also kind enough to join us for another informative event to share their banking insights. Additionally, we were joined by Bank of England who gave us the opportunity to network with them and learn what day-to-day life is like for someone working in the banking sector.
In collaboration with the Business Society and Chemistry Society we hosted a ‘Getting to know Mars’ talk with Mars, a multinational corporation responsible for brands that put smiles on millions of faces. Some lucky members even had the chance to get some chocolates! Further collaboration came with UCL Women in Finance, Warwick Women’s Network and with several employers (PwC and the Newton Group) where we together hosted an inter-university conference. This was very exciting and a great opportunity to meet students from other universities!
We also invited two top fund managers from a Birmingham-based financial services company, Wesleyan to join us for not one, but two events. The first was on ‘Investing 101: What does an Investment Analyst do?’, and the other a masterclass on ‘Investing and Company Analysis’. We greatly appreciate the valuable time they gave us and all the information on investment banking careers, as well as their advice on what it takes to be successful in the industry. Then, we were joined by Nestle where we had a great networking session and got to know the insights of what it’s like working for them.
We ended the term with Chris Clark, a former Goldman Sachs Executive Director who he was kind enough to give us career advice, investing and trading in financial markets knowledge and circumventing the graduate recruitment process at investment banks! This event was yet another collaboration, this time with the Investment Society and Economics Society.
As you can see we’ve been super busy and are now looking forward to a well-earned rest! We hope everyone has a nice Christmas. See you all in 2021!
Pei Jie Lim
Marketing and Public Relations Officer, Women in Finance Society 2020-21
To find out more about Women in Finance visit their website www.birmingham.ac.uk/eps/wif.
There are 42 student groups in the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences. To learn more about their projects and activities head to www.birmingham.ac.uk/eps-societies.
