On March 22, 2023, the Women in Business Club hosted an alumna speaker, Fiona Boyle ’21. She shared her experience of being a female in the finance industry. Read more to hear takeaways from the audience, written by Olivia Evans ’23.
Fiona Boyle graduated from the College of the Holy Cross in the spring of 2021. She was an Economics major and Art History minor. Upon graduation, Fiona had to navigate the new world that COVID had created for society when it came to the search for a job. During her senior year at Holy Cross, she connected with an HC alumnus on LinkedIn. Later that year, the same alumnus posted a job opening on LinkedIn for a position at a start-up company in Fintech named Mirador. Fiona then reached back out to the alumnus, applied for the job, and later ended up getting an offer and accepting the job. Mirador is now a six-year-old company.
Fiona shared her day-to-day responsibilities at Mirador. Essentially, she creates financial reports for ultra-high-net-worth individuals; therefore, she is responsible for tracking portfolio performance data and building reports to help clients view and understand their assets. Fiona mentioned that Mirador has an excellent onboarding training program for new employees that many refer to as “Mirador University.”
Furthermore, Fiona wanted the audience of the presentation to leave with three main takeaways.
- The first takeaway; is to build your individual network. She suggested one do this by seeking out new opportunities by meeting and talking to new people.
- The second takeaway; is to find a mentor at your first place of employment after graduation. Fiona suggested that it helps to have a person that you can ask the “silly” and/or “stupid” questions to when you are new to a company. She also said that it is beneficial to have someone to whom you can vent appropriate thoughts and concerns to.
- The third takeaway; is to find a place, more specifically, a workplace,
where your voice can be heard. She mentioned how it is important to find a place you like to be at and look forward to going to every day and/or seeing yourself at after visiting or interviewing. She suggested that you ask yourself, “Where do you and/or would you feel the most comfortable?”
At the end of Fiona’s presentation, she offered some tips.
- The first of which is that a liberal arts degree allows one to pick up new things quickly, and, therefore, gives one an upper hand or that slight edge in comparison to other job candidates.
- The second tip was more specific to Mirador, but she suggested that at a start-up, everything an employee is doing can and will make an impact, but one has to be expected to move, learn, and adapt quickly. She also mentioned that at a start-up, one’s hard work is greatly appreciated and noticed.
- Lastly, she told the audience to be and/or continue to be intellectually curious!
Thanks to Fiona Boyle ’21 for sharing her time and expertise, and Olivia Evans ’23 for writing this event recap.