Student Profile: Energy Finance

Rakesh Shankar ’09
Co-leader, Energy Club and Private Equity Club
Post-MBA Position: Morgan Stanley

I was born and raised in Kuwait and went to high school in India and then undergrad at a small liberal arts school in Maryland. After college, I worked for Economy.com, a macroeconomic research and consulting firm in Philadelphia, for seven years. I spent the last three years as their lead energy economist.

By the time I applied to business school, I had been an energy economist for some years, and I loved the energy field. I was interested in international and geopolitical relationships, in the Middle East, and in economics — and energy was where all these interests met. My goal was to get into energy finance. I looked at schools that had a strong energy community. That was one of the reasons that Yale was an easy choice. The challenges in the energy space are perfect for the kind of students we attract, for people who are interested in taking on important problems.

In my internship search, I went the investment banking route. The school has a well-established investment banking recruiting path. We have relationships with every bank out there. We have alums at every bank. The Finance Club here does an excellent job of training you for the interviews.

At Morgan Stanley, you start off as a generalist: in the summer internship and for the first year out of business school, you sit in a pool and they staff you out on projects. We have alums in the energy group at Morgan Stanley, as well as in other groups, and they helped me find projects that had an energy focus. I had a great summer. And while I’m focused on energy, I’m really looking forward to the chance to look around and see what else is out there when I go back full time.

Interviewed on April 16, 2009.