Heloise Ham Scholarship Fund
2020 Scholarship Winners

Suriya Babu is a graduating senior from Rutgers Business School with a major in finance. Having discovered an interest in M&A and strategic advisory early in his college career, Suriya completed various investment banking internships including a sophomore summer analyst role at Citizens Financial Group in the Leveraged Finance team as well as a summer analyst position at Moelis & Company. Suriya will be starting full-time as an Investment Banking Analyst at TD Securities upon graduation, and enjoys NFL, online shopping, and Netflix in his free time!

What was your biggest take-away from your participation in the CFA Research Challenge regarding the investment profession?

Working on the CFA Research Challenge taught me important lessons about the importance of teamwork, time management, and the combining of qualitative & quantitative skills in order to produce an excellent final product. Given that the competition took place during the active fall 2020 semester, it was often difficult to balance the project with classes as well as full-time recruiting. Nonetheless, I learned that powerful communication skills between members of a team along with strong time management is critical when managing multiple deliverables simultaneously. In addition to this, I found that while the quantitative aspect of a research project is certainly important, it must be combined with robust qualitative analyses in order to provide a holistic view of any given topic.