On a Friday night in March, the UPrep Investing Club hosted the first UPrep Tech and Business Conference on campus. For two hours, 17 UPrep students learned from speakers who work in tech and finance industries. UPrep senior Evan H., the leader of the club, said the conference was years in the making and involved alumni, staff support, and inspiration from fellow students. Recently, I spoke with Evan to learn more about this student-led event. 

How did you get involved with the UPrep Investing Club?

I joined the club during my freshman year because I was starting to think about getting a job. I had money saved from reselling shoes in Middle School, and I wanted to know what to do with that money. The goal of Investing Club is to show different career pathways in finance and to educate members about saving responsibly. Phin Mahlum ’22 was the Investing Club leader who graduated my sophomore year, and I asked to step up as a co-leader with another student who has now graduated, Diego Rubiralta ’23.

How did the idea for the conference come about?

Last year, we started hosting regular monthly club meetings, inviting guest speakers, and using the investing simulator on Investopedia, which is a website that hosts articles and tools to help people learn about investing and finances. Last spring, we invited Heidi Richardson, UPrep’s former Investment Manager, to speak to the club and her presentation really stuck with the club members. So, I wanted to offer similar guest speaker opportunities, and make them more accessible to the UPrep community. I had done Launchpad in the winter of 2023 and, through that experience, I knew that we had a strong network of alumni in finance who were willing to connect with us as current students.

Fast forward to this fall when UPrep announced that there was support for student club leaders to create their own conferences. I had heard about the SOCCs (Student Organized Consent Conference in Seattle) held at UPrep in February and I knew about the UPrep-sponsored Young Men’s Conference, and I was inspired. I reached out to the school administration about hosting a conference created by the Investing Club, and they said yes!

What did you want conference attendees to take away from the experience?

I wanted the students to hear from alumni who graduated from UPrep who are successful in their careers. UPrep has this amazing network of alumni that I don’t think many of our students know about. Every alum I contacted about this conference and my Launchpad project responded to me. Even if they couldn’t work with me, they took the time to respond. These are people who really value their high school experience and want to get involved.

This is such a cool opportunity to hear from someone working in finance who we could actually connect with and ask questions of. This kind of information sharing isn’t available on the internet. We ended up having one alumni speaker join us virtually for the conference: Henry Ehrenberg ’11, who is the co-founder of Snorkel AI. Current UPrep parent Andrew Selby, who works in finance, also spoke. It was so cool to have both the tech and finance perspectives present at the conference.

What were your key takeaways?

My favorite part of the conference was seeing attendees asking so many questions! I also loved hearing about two successful people who are from different fields and how they found their way into their current roles. Ultimately, I want to say how incredible it is that we have access to this network of alumni who I can now text or call when I have a question. I’ll be an alum soon, and while I don’t know exactly where I will go, I know I will be a lifelong investor.  

YOU CAN READ MORE ABOUT HOW MEMBERS OF OUR COMMUNITY LEAD A LIFE OF LEARNING HERE.