2019 - 2021 FMA Magazine

Leadership Program
PARTICIPATIONS
FMA strives to identify diverse and underrepresented
students and prepare them for
application to national financial leadership programs.
In 2021 alone, FMA students placed in over 20 such
programs. The mentorship and early identification
that FMA provides rendered student acceptances into
elite programs, including those of Citibank, Goldman
Sachs, Seizing Every Opportunity, Searchlight
Capital, Girls Who Invest, and Evercore, – to name a
few.
According to AJ Stanley, “Diversity programs allow
women and minority students who attend ‘nontarget’
schools (which include both predominately
white institutions such as Auburn University, and
Historically Black Colleges and Universities) to create
inroads with a firm, catalyzing the formation of a
professional network and unlocking access to the
highly-competitive recruiting process.”
Financial institutions have a duty to maintain teams
of investors that best reflect the diverse backgrounds
of the clients they serve, and in turn, studies show
diverse teams yield higher returns and have better
team dynamics.
Michael Parker, who has attended several leadership
conferences, shares, “Being a minority, it has been
crucial to my personal growth to be surrounded by
such a diverse group and be able to witness individual
successes. To see people of color and women pursue
and succeed in their careers provides me with hope
and makes me optimistic about this industry’s future.
I firmly believe that individuals become the product
of the groups they associate with, and there’s nothing
better than being a part of such a diverse and high
achieving organization.”
FMA believes in this cause and pushes women and
minorities to lean in – to engage early, and allow their
voices to be heard.
FMA 2019-2021 MAGAZINE 33