Kellogg Career Treks

1/3/2012 - Standing in the New York headquarters of BlackRock Inc. at 6:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning in November was not first-year student John Meehan’s idea of a relaxing weekend.

But it was worth getting up early for the opportunity to visit five investment firms on Kellogg’s inaugural Emerging Markets trek to New York City.

“You can’t learn this sitting in a classroom,” he said. “Talking to people who have been in this business for 20 years is invaluable. You get to actually go and see what they’re doing every day.”

More than 400 Kellogg students will participate in one or more of the school’s 50 career-trek programs this year. Typically, 12 to 15 students visit four to six companies on treks across the country and around the world. Some of the larger trips over holiday breaks include up to 30 students. The trips feature on-site visits with executives to learn about industries from alumni working in the field.

This year’s treks will explore a variety of fields in a number of cities, including:

•  Venture capital in San Francisco, New York, Boston and Chicago
•  Entrepreneurship in San Francisco
•  Luxury goods and retail in San Francisco, New York and Paris
•  Investment banking in New York, Chicago and Hong Kong
•  Design in San Francisco and Chicago

“The treks are a great way for students to hear industry insights directly from these companies,” says Mike Schaefer, assistant director of Kellogg’s Career Management Center. “And it’s a good way to get the Kellogg name out in these fields.”

Meehan was one of the organizers of the New York Emerging Markets trek, the first to focus on investment firms in the emerging market space. Students on the trek visited a number of companies, including:

•  BlackRock Inc.
•  Emerging Global Advisors LLC
•  Prince Street Capital Management
•  Astra Investimentos Co.
•  Mirae Asset Global Investments

Trek leader Roy Liao ’13 said it was easy to organize the Emerging Markets trek to New York, since so many alumni were happy to be involved. The Kellogg Alumni Club of New York helped the students with contact information and suggestions, and the result was a day of meetings with high-level executives in one of the fastest-growing areas of investing.

“Each company brought out multiple people so we could talk about investment strategies, macroeconomic factors, how these firms generate value for their clients, why this firm is different from others and how they view emerging markets completely differently from how they view mature economies — and where they see investing going in the future,” Liao said.

“You can try to research those things online, but until you actually talk to the individuals who do it on a daily basis, you don’t get to what they really think. It was a unique opportunity.”