SUMMER 2002 •
VOLUME 7, NUMBER 1
Mount
Holyoke's Business
and Technology Alumnae Mentors
BY JANET TOBIN
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Analisa
L. Balares '99 |
As an
economics and mathematics major who is an old hand at econometrics
and differential equations, Analisa L. Balares ’99 is fond of
quoting statistics. Yet when she "talks numbers" about women’s
performance in the business world, she feels anything but cheerful.
Although women make up close to half the workforce in this country,
according to a 2000 Catalyst census of women corporate officers
and top earners, women represent only 12.5 percent of the corporate
officers among all Fortune 500 companies. And women top earners
represent a mere 4.1 percent of all top earners in the Fortune
500. (Catalyst is an organization dedicated to advancing women
in business.) Balares, director of development and new ventures
for Milestone Capital Management, has worked in high-technology
investment banking at Goldman Sachs and is a veteran of the prestigious
Sponsors for Educational Opportunity (SEO) training program. She
wants to help Mount Holyoke students, 9 percent of whom over the
past ten years have gone into finance upon graduation, buck corporate
trends--giving them a competitive edge through mentoring, "in the
trenches" career education, and networking opportunities.
Two
years ago, Balares, Ekaterina V. Aleksandrova ’00, Yuliya S. Smyk
’00, Ayesha Vera Yu ’97, and some other Mount Holyoke friends
founded the Mount Holyoke Business and Technology Alumnae Mentors,
alumnae volunteers who help students and each other advance in
the fields of business, finance, and technology. Its members often
return to campus to present panel discussions on everything from
how to secure an internship to the unspoken expectations of corporate
culture. In March, the group, in collaboration with several student
organizations and College departments, organized a business, finance,
and technology conference on campus.
Says
Balares, "Our goal was to bring the best practices from professional
conferences for women, such as the annual Harvard Women in Business
Conference and Columbia Women in Business Conference, Women in
Wall Street Conference, and the 85 Broads conference. We also
wanted to include the benefits and privileges of training from
programs like SEO. These programs represent the highest standards,
and we wanted students to benefit from them. They are rigorous,
effective, and enable participants to be much more competitive,
given the difficult market environment."
Close
to sixty students took advantage of the Mount Holyoke conference’s
industry tutorials and career panels on topics that included technology,
law, investment management, media and entertainment, investment
banking, advertising and marketing, nonprofit organizations, and
venture capital, as well as opportunities to network with professionals
in prominent positions within these and other fields. Said Nandita
Singh ’03, "The panels were helpful and inspiring because of the
‘real’ advice we received from alumnae who have extremely successful
careers." Among these alumnae were Yu, a vice president at BNP
Paribas; Leylac M. Pekin ’00 of Duval & Stachenfeld LLP; Aleksandrova,
of JP Morgan Chase’s Structured Finance Group; Smyk, of Morgan
Stanley’s Commodities Trading Group; Raluca Z. Dalea ’01 of JP
Morgan Fleming’s Investment Management Group; and Evguenia A.
Sokolova ’01 of JP Morgan’s Global Risk Management Group.
Ninon
Marapachi ’02 has already cracked the "difficult market environment"
and also cofounded Mount Holyoke’s Finance Women’s Network with
Sara Menker ’04. Marapachi, who majored in economics and minored
in the fundamentals of problem solving, had a job secured at Merrill
Lynch months before graduation. "I got an internship at Merrill
Lynch in my sophomore year," she says. "By the time it was over,
I realized that I wanted to work in the company’s equity derivatives
department. It was the job I had always dreamed of: fast paced
and challenging. Upon my return to Mount Holyoke, I organized
the Financial Women’s Network to help others learn about the types
of careers available in the financial sector. The network collaborated
with the alumnae to organize the conference."
In
summing up the conference, David Machowski, the College’s director
of recruiting and employer relations, noted, "This event exemplifies
how generous our alumnae are with their time and wisdom. On top
of their extraordinarily busy lives, they are creating meaningful
ways to connect with students." As the beneficiaries of this unique
and personal form of investment, Mount Holyoke students are sure
to profit.
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