Yale School of Management - Campaign - Alumni Volunteers

"I feel a responsibility to help students, especially other joint-degree students, find great jobs that incorporate business and environment." — Ann Grodnik FES '05, '06

I never really considered myself a recruitment volunteer, but when I think back on what I have done since graduation, I have put a lot of time and energy into helping current students and recent alums find work that they are excited about. Seattle-Northwest is a regional investment bank that does work in public finance, fixed-income sales and trading and asset management. Of the one hundred people who work here, five are School of Management alums, including the CEO and president and the two people who run our Portland, Oregon, office. There is interest at the firm in recruiting SOMers partly because they’ve been so successful here, but also because public finance — finance at the intersection of the public and private sectors — just matches the mission of the school.

Technically I’m focused on energy and environmental finance but my work runs the gamut. It includes anything that has to do with the environment, from helping to structure financing for recycling projects in rural Idaho and a wind farm on a Native American reservation in Oregon to exploring opportunities in regional greenhouse gas emission offset trading. Beyond that, I help out on work that involves financings for cities, counties, and public utility districts throughout the Northwest. I think it is a really nice fit for SOM grads who see the benefit to society, are interested in the burgeoning field of environmental and tax credit finance, and who can relate this to being a leader in business and society. It’s a very easy connection to make.

A lot of recruiting is mindfulness. I get job postings passed on from friends and colleagues all the time. You ask yourself: Is that just going to sit in your inbox or are you going to forward it on to someone at the Career Development Office? Do I know a student who might be interested in this? I feel a responsibility to help students, especially other joint-degree students, find great jobs that incorporate business and environment.