The Student
Experience
The 2011 GW REFA mentees pose in the Capital Markets Trading Room at the GW School of Business. All 12 mentees participated in high-level internships in New York City this summer.
GW’s Wall Street Advantage While Wall Street firms were making thousands of job cuts during the depths of the recession, GW students were being hired by prestigious firms including J.P. Morgan, UBS, Credit Suisse, Bank of America, and Citibank. The university’s success in helping students find employment in some of the most competitive jobs during one of the country’s worst recessions was, in part, driven by the GW Real Estate and Finance Alliance (REFA) Mentorship Program. The mentorship program was first envisioned in 2010 by the REFA Board of Directors, a group of 45 GW alumni and parents who are managing directors, partners, and CEOs at the nation’s leading investment banking and real estate firms, to create a connection with current GW students and provide the mentorship necessary to secure high-level internships and jobs. Recognizing that students need advanced career coaching and training in order to successfully compete for high-level starting positions on Wall Street, members of the Real Estate and Finance Alliance Board contributed more than $100,000 to 16
get the program off the ground and spent hundreds of hours developing the program’s curriculum. “The Real Estate and Finance Alliance Board is passionate about creating a connection with current students,” says Josh Kuriloff, BA ’81, Vice Chairman at Cushman and Wakefield and co-chair of REFA. “Many of its members never had the opportunity to connect with alumni when they graduated and they wanted to make it easier for graduating students to gain insight and advice on the hiring process to improve their chances to get hired.” The REFA Mentorship Program began in the fall of 2010 with seven highly qualified GW students in their junior year who participated in 50-plus hours of resume review, interview preparations, financial modeling, and a specialized course in career management strategies taught by Bryan Erwin, BA ’97, a former Goldman Sachs vice president and current director of the Advocacy Center at the U.S. Department of Commerce.