University of Notre Dame Program Seeks to Increase Gender Diversity in the Financial Services Industry

The Institute for Global Investing and the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana have teamed up with the nonprofit organization Girls Who Inve$t, with the goal of increasing the number of young women in portfolio and asset management. Recent studies have shown that the percentage of women who serve as investment managers had dropped from 10 percent in 2009 to 7 percent today. The partnership also will seek to raise awareness in the financial services industry of how gender diversity can better the services they provide to their customers.

The Notre Dame Institute for Global Investing will host 50 young women participating in the 2018 Girls Who Invest Summer Intensive Program on the Notre Dame campus next summer. Rising college junior students from across the country will participate in the four-week program, providing the students with the opportunity to learn core investment concepts from some of the most respected business professors in the nation.

The curriculum will cover asset management while also offering training in ethics, presentation skills and interview preparation. The program will feature speakers from across the industry. Following its completion, Girls Who Invest will arrange six-week paid summer internships for the students at leading asset management firms to apply the skills they have learned in the classroom.

“Our rigorous Girls Who Invest 10-week Summer Intensive Program prepares college-aged women to enter the industry on investment teams across all asset classes and become skilled allocators of capital,” said Kathleen Powers Dunlap, CEO of Girls Who Invest and a graduate of the University of San Francisco. “Together with sponsors like the Notre Dame Institute for Global Investing and the Mendoza College of Business, we are making a meaningful contribution to the industry, to investors everywhere and to the careers of these young women.”