Kathleen Powers Dunlap was looking for 60 young women interested in asset management.
She found 1,500.
“It was a surprise. We’ve read and heard a great deal about how women aren’t gravitating towards careers in asset management, so we thought we would have to do a sales job to get more women interested,” says Powers Dunlap, CEO of Girls Who Invest, a non-profit group dedicated to growing the number of women in portfolio management. “It’s been a real eye-opener to find out how interested women are in our industry.”
Earlier in June, Girls Who Invest kicked off its second Summer Intensive Program at the University of Pennsylvania with 60 college freshmen and sophomores.
Though no formal marketing program was established this year, Girls Who Invest sought applications from students interested in asset management and received 1,500 responses via the web, 500 of which were qualified responses.
“We didn’t do very much marketing at all. There was some social media, and there was word of mouth from young women who had been alumni of the program,” says Powers Dunlap, a 30-year asset management veteran who most recently served as chief business strategy officer for Fiduciary Research and Consulting. “We had 500 clearly incredibly qualified women interested in our program, and that signaled loud and clear that we had to do more, grow faster and get better.”
Overwhelmed by the number of qualified young women, Powers Dunlap sought ways to expand the program’s offerings. With the help of the CFA Institute and Coursera, the organization scaled its program online to give each qualified applicant the ability to engage with the program. Between the students on campus, and the students engaging online, Girls Who Invest is reaching 363 college freshmen and sophomores in its second summer.
Through the CFA Institute, freshman students can access an Investment Foundations course of study online to help them gain a more complete understanding of the financial landscape. After completing the program, students receive a certificate and a credential to enhance their candidacy as job applicants.
Through Coursera, sophomore students can access the Wharton School’s Business and Financial Modeling specialization, a sequence of courses and a capstone project that culminate in a joint certificate from Wharton and Coursera. These students can also access an additional 17 courses provided by Coursera.
“We invited the women we couldn’t take into our in-residence program to participate online at no cost,” says Powers Dunlap. “By the end of the summer, we will have served more than 400 women.”