The Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley has been ranked #1 for finance research among almost 150 business schools worldwide in a new global research ranking.
Theranking is based on publications in the top six finance journals as well as a host of other top-tier economics, finance, and business journals from 2000 to 2023. It was prepared by the Olin Wells Fargo Advisors Center for Finance and Accounting Research at Washington University in St. Louis.
Berkeley Haas finance faculty came out on top for per-capita research output over the 23-year period. On average, they published .71 papers in top journals every year.
“We know that our finance faculty is incredibly strong, and this is quantifiable proof that they are true rock stars,” said Dean Ann Harrison. “We are very proud of the strength and influence of our finance researchers.”
The ranking considers articles published only by finance professors, as well as non-finance professors who have published at least three papers in the top three finance journals.
“Our group provides cutting-edge research in finance, and this ranking is a testament to it,” said Associate Professor David Sraer, chair of the Finance Group. “Given our brilliant junior faculty, I am confident this trend will continue in the future!”
Growing up in Albuquerque, N.M., R. Martin (Marty) Chavez relied on his mother’s wisdom to help him forge his personal and professional identities.
“I remember sitting around the dinner table and by brother said, ‘I want to do something that helps Hispanics,’” Chavez said at an April Haas Dean’s Speaker Series event, co-sponsored by the Berkeley Culture Center. “My mom said, ‘that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. If you really want to help Hispanics, be really successful and be really visible, and that’s the way you can help Hispanics.’”
Chavez went on to do just that. After serving in a variety of senior roles at the investment banking company Goldman Sachs, he is now vice chairman and partner of Sixth Street, a San Francisco-based global investment firm.
A trailblazer who was among the most senior openly gay Latino Wall Street executives, Chavez helped turn trading into a software business by using data-based modeling.
“One thing that Goldman taught me is we don’t predict the future, because we can’t,” Chavez said. “Anyone who’s predicting the future is a charlatan.” Instead, he said, focus on having a “really deep model of what is going on right now, and then you can inspect that model and maybe you’ll find things that can go wrong in the future.”
A successful professional life, Chavez added, is about striking a work-life balance.
“There is just your life, and your short, sacred list of personal priorities,” he said. “Know those priorities. Make every choice according to the waterfall of your priorities.” Chavez shared his priorities, which start with “peace of mind” (which includes sleep and meditation), family, and then work.
“If (work) is not on your top-three list of priorities, you’re in the wrong company,” Chavez said.
(L-R) Xavier Jefferson, Frank Zhang, and John Graft took second place at the Chicago Booth IM Conference and Stock Competition.
John Graft, MBA 24, admits that he went “a little overboard” competing in four stock competitions during his first year at Haas. But the hours spent paid off. His team’s stock pitch in front of judges at University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler led to a coveted summer internship offer at his first-choice firm: Harris Associates in Chicago.
“The person who interviewed me at Harris had listened to me pitch at the UNC competition,” Graft said. For Graft and a group of Berkeley Haas students focused on careers in public markets investing, stock pitch competitions are an integral part of the Haas finance experience, allowing students to synthesize stock research and network with top firms that often judge the competitions.
Public markets investing is on the rise at Haas, said Bill Rindfuss, executive director of strategic programs for finance. Six first-year students seeking positions in public markets investing accepted summer internships at top investment firms including Blackrock, TCW, PIMCO, Clearbridge, Harris Associates, and Neuberger Berman.
“A decade ago we had up to a dozen MBA students going to public markets investing roles in a year,” he said. “Over time, student interest shifted more to tech investment banking and venture capital. While those interests remain strong, it’s great to see public markets investing bouncing back.”
Multiple internship offers
In a particularly difficult year for hiring, Haas exceeded expectations this year, with some students receiving multiple offers, said Ryan Tan, MBA 23, a Double Bear and the Berkeley Haas Investment Club president, who has worked closely with undergraduate and MBA peers to create more finance opportunities. That included bringing an impressive array of top industry speakers to Haas like Christina Ma, MBA 01, a partner and head of Greater China Equities at Goldman Sachs; Ben Meng, MFE 03, executive vice president and chairman of Asia Pacific at Franklin Templeton, and Ben Allen, MBA 05, CEO of Parnassus Investments.
In a particularly difficult year for hiring, Haas exceeded expectations this year, with some students receiving multiple offers. — Ryan Tan, MBA 23
Wearing many hats, Tan is also a graduate student instructor for the undergraduate Financial Economics course and a principal with the pioneering Haas Sustainable Investment Fund. (Since 2008, student principals in the Sustainable Investment Fund have more than tripled the initial investment to over $4 million, learning about SRI and ESG investment strategies and practices.)
Students in the public markets investing track agree that their group is collaborative, helping each other both in class and during job searches. They’re also given the chance to participate in a half-dozen stock pitch competitions that the club enters annually.
At competitions, teams develop a thesis around a stock or bond, build a financial model to value the security, evaluate the risks of the investment, and build a Powerpoint after synthesizing the research. “You put this together and pitch the security to a panel of judges, all of whom work at the top investment management firms,” Graft said.
Navigating pitch competitions
MBA students credit Tan for mentoring teams on how to navigate a pitch competition.
“He helped us to understand what the judges were looking for,” said Austin Schoff, MBA 24, a co-president of the Haas Investment Club, who led an MBA student team at the MIT Sloan School Stock Pitch Competition last November. Haas placed second at MIT Sloan, second at Chicago Booth, and third at the UNC Alpha Challenge.
Austin Schoff, MBA 24, Ryan Tan, MBA 23, and Meredith Albion, MBA 24, accepting their third-place check at the Kenan-Flagler Alpha Challenge.
Schoff, who came to Haas planning to pivot from private wealth management, landed an internship this summer with the equity research team at TCW.
“Ryan has done an enormous amount of work,” said Steve Etter, who teaches finance at Haas and is a founding partner at Greyrock Capital Group. “It’s nice to see when a student goes beyond himself for the benefit of all.”
Xavier Jefferson, MBA 24, competed in a pitch challenge online hosted by Columbia Business School and at the in-person event at Chicago Booth.
“At Haas, we go to as many challenges as we want and that gives you exposure to all the firms and prepares you to pitch a stock or bond,” he said. “That’s a huge part of the interview process, and having the practice of pitching gives you a leg up.” A Toigo Fellow and a Haas Finance Fellow, Jefferson will intern at Clearbridge this summer.
“At Haas, we go to as many challenges as we want and that gives us exposure to all the firms and prepares you to pitch a stock or bond.” —Xavier Jefferson, MBA 24
After participating in multiple pitch competitions—as usually the only woman or one of two women—on the team, Meredith Albion, MBA 24, noted that the competitions would benefit from having more female members.
As a Berkeley Haas Finance Fellow in investment management Albion was assigned a female mentor, who helped prepare her to interview for summer internships. (All 12 of the Finance Fellows named each year are assigned a Haas alumni mentor.) Albion credits her mentor with helping her land an internship at PIMCO in Newport Beach this summer. Like other first-year MBA students in the Investment Club, she plans to work on the Haas Sustainable investment Fund next year and integrate sustainable investing into her career.
With Albion, Schoff, and Graft at the helm as co-presidents of the Haas Investment Club —Tan said he’s confident that Haas will continue its success.
“The message we need to get out is that if you come to Haas for investment management and sustainable investing you will be involved and plugged in, you will be given mentorship,” Tan said. “And people get jobs.”
Tarek Mohammad and Jin Kim, both MFE 23, launched hyphen labs in November 2022.
When Jin Kim and Tarek Mohammad, both MFE 23, met at orientation for the Berkeley Haas Master of Financial Engineering program last year, they instantly connected over a shared passion for blockchain, crypto, financial systems, and entrepreneurship.
Intense discussions, many times lasting until 4 a.m., led Kim and Mohammad to launch hyphen labs, a platform for industry decentralized finance (DeFi) trading. DeFi is a broad term for applications and projects in public blockchain geared toward disrupting traditional finance.
While at Haas, hyphen labs was accepted to the UC Berkeley SkyDeck accelerator cohort, and was the first MFE-founded startup to make it into the Techstars accelerator program. Kim and Mohammad, who launched hyphen in November 2022, are now heading to Miami and Boston to raise a seed round.
In this interview, they discuss what led them to Haas, the experience of launching a fintech startup, and the challenges ahead.
Haas News: Tell us a bit about your background and what led you to Haas?
Tarek Mohammad: I have a unique story because I come from a unique place. I studied economics and actuarial science as an undergraduate in Lebanon. However, starting in 2019, Lebanon experienced huge economic turmoil. The government defaulted on its government bonds, and then the banking system defaulted. I lost all my personal savings. By that time, I was working for KPMG as a consultant. Then Covid hit. During that period, the ammonium nitrate explosion hit the Port of Beirut in August 2020. The KPMG office was five minutes walking distance away from the explosion and one of my managers died.
With all of this change and turmoil, I decided to create a fintech startup. I quit KPMG. By then, I’d decided that the banking system needed to be fixed, and the only way to do it was through blockchain because with blockchain, there are no intermediaries. Then I applied to the Master of Financial Engineering program at Berkeley Haas and arrived in the states in March 2022. During my studies, I won the Franklin Templeton Blockchain contest in Palo Alto. After this, Jin and I decided to partner on a venture together and never looked back.
I’d decided that the banking system needed to be fixed, and the only way to do it was through blockchain. — Tarek Mohammad.
Jin Kim: I am from South Korea and worked in AI research as a machine learning researcher. That got me interested in trading with AI algorithms and a professor at my school. I started and ran a small hedge fund focusing on U.S. equity and crypto investments using AI. Though trading was still my thing, crypto trade got me more into the blockchain itself. So, I went to work as an investment analyst intern at the VC arm of Dunamu, the biggest crypto exchange in Korea. Since I liked finance trading, algorithms, and crypto, I thought I should attend a master in financial engineering program. The best program out there happened to be Berkeley, which is also near Silicon Valley. It fit both of my goals: to get a bit more academic and hands-on experience in the field and exposure to people who like to take risks and try new things.
What does the company do?
Mohammad: What we’re trying to do is build an infrastructure for institutions to be able to get crypto exposure, specifically on DeFi. So, if say, BlackRock wants to access the DeFi infrastructure or trade on crypto on DeFi, they can use us because we provide a solution. We hold custody of their assets and provide them with a DeFi interface and infrastructure that provides some compliance and comfort.
When did you realize that your idea was unique and could work?
Kim: It wasn’t a simple “aha” moment. We interviewed our potential clients every day to hear what they needed and found that every client is different, so their respective needs are also different. It helped us greatly to pause every now and then to review what we learned. With these quick pauses and iterations, we saw a pattern emerging with many people dealing with a problem that was worth looking at. Then we had a feeling about what would work.
We saw a pattern emerging with many people dealing with a problem that was worth looking at. — Jin Kim
What are some of the challenges that you all are facing while building a startup?
Mohammad: It’s a perfect time to be a builder, but it’s a challenging time for fundraising, especially over the last few weeks with the banking meltdown. On the personal side, we also have unique challenges. As international students, it isn’t easy with our visas. Many international classmates immediately go to work after graduating for visa reasons instead of going into entrepreneurship directly. But running a startup, we needed to consider our visas while we figured out the payroll, hiring, and acquiring talent. Moreover, we also needed to figure out the product itself. I’m talking to customers every single day.
What did it mean to get accepted to Techstars, and how has the experience been?
Mohammad: It’s really a great community. It’s a hub for entrepreneurship, one of the biggest hubs in the world, and one of the biggest funds. Of course, the process was challenging, with a low acceptance rate. But it’s an ecosystem. You’re surrounded by people you can relate to, people who are builders and ex-founders. So, it’s more of an ecosystem for us. It’s a lifetime membership.
What are some ways in which the Berkeley Haas community has helped you throughout this process?
Mohammad: We worked within the MFE network and the broader Haas alumni network. We get a lot of answers regarding our product and our company’s direction from talking to these people. So mostly, we think about this from the networking side and how existing students and MBAs with industry experience can help us shape our direction.
What was something that really attracted you to Berkeley Haas and how has being in Berkeley helped you in your pursuits?
Mohammad: Maybe it’s a cliche, but some of the greatest startup companies come from Berkeley—firms like Intel, Tesla, and SanDisk. These companies are considered the north stars in their respective industries. Being in the Berkeley ecosystem pushes you every day to create and innovate. Beside Techstars, we got into SkyDeck, the incubator batch. This allowed us to connect to founders on campus. School for us was not just a place to study, but also a workspace to meet fellow founders and innovators. Finally, the campus location near Silicon Valley in the Bay Area boosted our reach outs and accelerated our product discovery. And I think that the international aspect and diversity here helps. On the mentor side, we are lucky to have Linda Kreitzman, founder of the MFE program and a current lecturer, and Professor Christine Parlour as mentors.
School for us was not just a place to study, but also a workspace to meet fellow founders and innovators.— Tarek Mohammad
Kim: Berkeley was such a great place to connect with people from faculty to alumni. So many people helped us out or referred us to people who could be of help. It was a humbling experience. We often ask whether we deserved all this help. We hope to do the same for other Berkeley founders, peers, or alumni to pay it forward.
(L-R clockwise from back row) Teo Gumusoglu, Yining Yan, Elias Mufarech, Nick Goomer, Adebola Adeniyi, John Graft, Xan Wood, Didi Pritakinari, Daniel Billostas, Xavier Jefferson, Meredith Albion, Hoi Wong. Photo: Jim Block
Xavier Jefferson, MBA 24, worked as a general analyst in wealth management before arriving at Haas, where he planned to narrow his focus to land a job as a securities analyst concentrating on stocks and bonds.
“When I looked in the mirror, I saw a capital allocator, someone responsible for making investment decisions,” Jefferson said, “And I came to a point in my career where I needed to find ways to be exposed to the next level of investors and thinkers outside of books, podcasts, and blogs.”
That ambition led him to Haas, where he is now among the 2022 Finance Fellows, first-year, full-time MBA students pursuing careers in finance fields that include investment banking; private equity and investment management (including quantitative finance); and entrepreneurial finance (which includes VC, fintech, and impact investing).
Students receive a $5,000 cash award, and are assigned mentors, who are Haas alumni working in finance, including recent graduates and senior executives.
William Rindfuss of the Haas Finance Group
“The one-on-one mentoring by alumni in the field provides high-level perspective and advice, which the Fellows capitalize on in seeking opportunities, and then succeeding on the job in these fields,” said William Rindfuss, executive director of strategic program for the Haas Finance Group.
The 2022 Fellowship recipients, all MBA 24, include:
Investment Banking: Nick Goomer, Didi Pritakinari, Daniel Billostas, Adebola Adeniyi
Entrepreneurial Finance: Yining Yan, Elias Mufarech, Hoi Wong
C&J White Fellows (selected in the spring before matriculating): John Graft and Teo Gumusoglu
The mentor edge
The Finance Fellowship program launched 17 years ago, expanding over the years as more MBA students pursued finance careers. All Fellows are chosen based on their experience and preparation in their stated area of interest, the clarity of their goals and career plans, and interviews. They all receive priority enrollment for finance electives.
Finance Fellow Nick Goomer said the program has given him the opportunity to learn directly from his Morgan Stanley mentor.
“Despite his busy schedule and responsibility, he has taken a hands-on approach to help me curate my unique story, and learn about how the tech world is shifting in our new market landscape,” Goomer said. “He is a force of nature within the tech investment banking industry, and I am incredibly grateful to have him as my mentor.”
Yining Yan worked in blockchain venture capital in Singapore before coming to Haas.
Yining Yan, who worked in blockchain venture capital in Singapore before coming to Haas, said that a mentor will play a critical role in her career development in the Bay Area.
“Having a mentor who is deeply rooted in the industry will be the most effective approach for an international student to plug into the local entrepreneurship and VC investing ecosystem,” she said.
Making venture capital more equitable
Fellow Hoi Wong, who was a business operations manager at fintech startup Bluevine before he arrived at Haas, is driven toward entrepreneurial finance for reasons that hit close to home.
“My parents were immigrant small business owners who leveraged a loan to start and grow their business, despite only having a grade-school level of education,” Wong said. “Entrepreneurship was one of the major levers that helped my family rise from poverty.”
Wong plans to pivot from the operating side of fintech to the investing side by joining a fintech-focused venture capital firm. He’s also exploring venture capital investing within major financial services firms.
“As a first-gen student, I believe one way to make venture funding more equitable is by changing who is in control of the money, and one way to do that is to become a VC investor myself,” Wong said.
2021 Finance Fellows, from top left, clockwise: Anojan Palarajah, Mallory Bell, Ali Ware, Alex Rohrbach, Robyn Barrios, Jordan Bell, Alex Sborov, Nonso Nwagha, and Ricky Ghoshal. (Missing from photo: Elias Habbar-Baylac and Sunny Uppal) Photo: Jim Block
As a Black woman, Mallory Bell is on a mission to change the face of venture capital.
“My personal goal is to diversify what the venture capital world looks like,” said Bell, MBA 23, one of 11 students recently named 2021 Finance Fellows at Berkeley Haas. “Money is fuel and if you are in venture capital you can be the one fueling the companies you want to succeed.”
Haas Finance Fellowships are awarded annually to full-time MBA students based on their applications and interviews. Awardees receive a cash grant and priority enrollment for finance electives. They’re also assigned a mentor who provides career advice and support in their chosen field.
In addition to Bell, this year’s Finance Fellows, all first-year MBA students, include Bell, Elias Habbar-Baylac, Alison (Ali) Ware, Anojan Palarajah, Alex Rohrbach, in Entrepreneurial Finance; Jordan Bell, Sheetij (Ricky) Ghoshal, Chinonso Nwagha, and Praneet (Sunny) Uppal, in Investment Banking; Robyn Barrios in Investment Management; and Alexandra Sborov, who received the CJ White Fellowship earlier this year.
This group’s career interests lean toward the global intersection of finance coupled with technology and social impact, said William Rindfuss, executive director of Strategic Programs with the Haas Finance Group.
“Some of our students will be providing strategic advice to high-growth tech or biotech companies from the Bay Area offices of major investment banks or joining a fintech startup or established firm using blockchain technology for financial inclusion,” he said. “Others will be investing venture capital in startups in sectors with social impact.”
The importance of mentoring
A critical part of the fellowship is mentoring. CJ White Fellow Sborov said her mentor, Allan Holt, a senior partner at private equity firm Carlyle, has shared insights about the industry and helped guide her inquiries about investing in different asset classes.
Jordan Bell, who worked as a financial institutions examiner for more than seven years at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco before coming to Haas, was connected to mentor Adam Levine, MBA 20, and a Goldman Sachs investment banking associate.
Levine “has taken a hands-on approach in helping me craft my unique story, prepare my technical analysis, and discuss trends and deals within the technology industry,” Bell said.
“Adam tells it like it is and doesn’t sugarcoat anything, and that is exactly what I was looking for in a mentor to ensure I am the most competitive and well prepared candidate possible,” he said.
Growing up in Albuquerque, N.M., R. Martin (Marty) Chavez relied on his mother’s wisdom to help him forge his personal and professional identities.
