club – Ciocca Center for Business, Ethics, and Society Blog

March 27, 2023

WIB Hosts Fiona Boyle ’21 to Share Female Finance Experience

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. Continue reading “WIB Hosts Fiona Boyle ’21 to Share Female Finance Experience”

October 2, 2020

Brittany Alkes ’15 Shares Sales Industry Insights

Nick Bettenhauser ’24, George Caldwell ’24, and Cole DiGregorio ’24 are current freshmen who are not wasting time. The three Sales Group chairs are making the most of our virtual semester by connecting with alumni, getting advice, and creating opportunities. Just one month into the fall semester and the group invited Brittany Alkes ’15, client development consultant for Thomson Reuters, to speak to the Sales Club on Thursday, October 1.

Brittany Alkes ’15 shared valuable advice, including:

Branding: start now! Create a LinkedIn account and start connecting with Alumni
Be Active: when on LinkedIn, be active and post articles that will gravitate towards your clientele
Personalize, Listen, Read, Share: share things that represent you, your company, and the beliefs of both
Holy Cross: work on skills like selling yourself and branding before you graduate
Alumni: add every alum you meet on LinkedIn

Stay tuned for more events! Make sure you are on the mailing list by registering for a student business club.

May 1, 2020

Annual Mock Super Day Held Virtually

Connecting via Zoom during COVID-19 has become the new normal for Holy Cross students and this year the the annual Mock Super Day was a virtual event held on April 29th by the Finance Club through the Ciocca Center for Business, Ethics, and Society at the College of the Holy Cross. Club chairs Allie Silge ’20 and Piotr Pogorzelski ’20, worked with Pam Ahearn, director of employer engagement in the Center for Career Development, to organize seven alumni and 11 students to participate in the event. Ahearn hosted the event and mapped out the evening to have each student interview with each alumni via breakout rooms.

Special thanks to our alumni interviewers for sharing their time, knowledge and advice — Brendan Grady ’89 of KeyBanc, Sydney Latour ’17 of J.P. Morgan, Ted Lynch ’84 of Bank of America, Jay Mackie ’19 of Barclays, Matt McCrann ’94 of Citi Bank, Pat O’Reilly ’16 of UBS and Dan Vucovich ’18 of Barclays.

We have enjoyed working with our graduating Finance Club chairs over the year – Piotr Pogorzelski’20 is an Incoming Investment Banking Analyst at Barclays Investment Bank and Allie Silge ’20 is an Incoming GTP Analyst at UBS. Best of luck on the next chapter! We hope you will share your story and success with current students as alumni have with you. Congratulations!

May 2, 2018

2018 Sales Club Competition – Event Review

The 2018 annual Sales Club competition (photos here) was held in Smith Labs on April 12th where contestants pitched a new item to the Holy Cross bookstore. Eight groups from all four class years entered the competition and were given five minutes to pitch their idea to a panel of judges.

The judges, Anthony Ruoti ‘12, Clayton Krueger ‘17 and Linda Paquette, Merchandise Specialist at the HC Bookstore, rated each group based on three factors:

the viability of their idea,
how well they pitched it
what their sales/marketing strategy looked like

After listening to the pitches, the judges stepped outside to deliberate while the contestants awaited the final decision. After 15 long minutes they returned with their decisions…

3rd Place: $100 – Clare Connolly ’18 and Kim Hickey ’18 took home the third place prize for their ultimate gift basket. This prepackaged gift basket is a low cost way to incentivise consumers to purchase more than they normally would.

2nd Place: $150 – Gabe Castagna ’18 was awarded second place for pitching the Tile, a bluetooth device tracker that makes it easy to find anything from your keys and wallet to a teddy bear. Gabe demonstrated the strong need for this item on campus and pitched an effective sales and marketing strategy.

1st Place: $250 – Matthew Whalen ’18 and Johnny Rourke ’18 took home the first place prize with their energetic pitch for Holy Cross hawaiian shirts. From top to bottom, Matt and Johnny’s pitch captivated the judges and had them saying, “I need one of those Hawaiians!”

Thank you to our judges, and the other student teams who presented:

Kevin Finnegan ’20 & Matthew Wilcox ’20
Donny Ganim ’20
Mackenzie Breen ’21 & Hope Goodman ’21
Graham Struthers ’21
Andrew Williamson ’21 & Owen O’Connell ’21

Want photos? Check out the Facebook album. Recap written by Ben Lodge’18, co-chair of the sales club.

November 14, 2014

J.R Butler ’08 Translates an HC Degree to a Successful Sales Career

On Monday, October 27^th the Holy Cross Sales Group hosted J.R Butler ’08 in a workshop on translating a Holy Cross degree into a successful career in sales. During his time on the hill, Butler found success both in the classroom as a Sociology major, Art history minor and as a Varsity athlete playing for the Men’s Hockey team. More recently, he has been busy in his professional career, recently being named as Regional Sales Director at VM Turbo, one of the fastest growing tech companies in the Boston area.

To Butler, the three most important things that Holy Cross can offer a student interested in sales are: an inquisitive mind, critical thinking skills, and the ability to interact with a variety of people. As liberal arts students, we are taught to understand a wide variety of topics at a deeper level that allows us to apply these skills in the real world. Furthermore, we learn to make reasonable arguments that would appeal to a wide variety of people. Someone with a successful career in sales utilizes these skills to find why a client may need a service or product and is able to help the client understand why it is necessary to the well being of his/her company.

The Holy Cross Sales Group thanks everyone who was able to attend the event and we encourage those who are interested in sales to attend any future meetings. Our next meeting is Monday, November 24, 2014 at 7:00pm in Stein 120. We look forward to seeing you there!

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Thanks to Kyle Larkin ’15 and the Holy Cross Sales Club for inviting J.R. Butler ’08 back to campus for a lively talk on the sales industry. As always, don’t forget to “like” us on FACEBOOK and follow us @HCPrebusiness Watch for our next blog post…

Cassie Gevry
Associate Director, Entrepreneurial Studies