Student Profile: Gaining Perspective

Allan Coye '11
Internship: Goldman Sachs

I moved up to New York after college and worked in investment banking for two years and then in a kind of internal management consulting role at Lehman Brothers for a couple years. I learned a lot during this time, deepening my finance knowledge and skills and really enjoying myself. But when I got a chance to go to the buy side, I couldn’t resist. I got hired — basically I was the second hire in the Hedge Fund Seeding Group — at InvestCorp, which is based in Bahrain but wanted to establish more of a hedge fund presence in New York and the Western Hemisphere generally. We were trying to build a franchise and attract more Western institutional investors. We did great and the fund really grew and things were going great for me. I was already a vice president. But something nagged at me. I know a lot of people who are so consumed with making it to the next level that they never step back and ask if they’re doing it for the right reasons. They find themselves fifteen years later wondering what they’re going to do next.

I made the decision to go to business school a couple years ago. I wanted to take my time and not rush into a school. I really wanted to gain some perspective on my career, to figure out where my passions lay. I tend to like smaller communities. My most gratifying professional experiences have been on small teams and in small companies. I also loved working in places where people all had different backgrounds, skills, and experiences. As I got a sense of the culture of SOM, one of the things that stood out was that despite the small size, the students are just so diverse, both in terms of what they’ve done and who they are. But at the same time, they’re all linked by a desire to do something for society and not just business. There are a lot of SOM alumni who are very successful, but whether they’re leading a social enterprise or working for charity on their free time, this ethic caries through long after people leave Yale. For me, this was really powerful.

I’ve always been interested in the media and entertainment space. I love finance and I’ve watched with interest as sophisticated investors have begun moving into film and television, to see if they can bring real financial rigor and analysis to the business of creative arts content creation and distribution. I joined the Media and Entertainment Club in my first year, where I began to see that I really could marry my interests and skills. As a rising second year, it was particularly gratifying to be chosen to be co-leader of the Media and Entertainment Club for the 2010–11 academic year.

This summer I’m working for Goldman Sachs, working in the investment banking division in their Los Angeles office. I’m a generalist but I’m hoping to work on projects and transactions in the media space. I feel really prepared for Goldman Sachs, both through my experience and what I’ve learned here at SOM. The integrated curriculum has been everything I hoped it would be. But the thing that continues to surprise me is the dedication of the alumni and their willingness to help. That has been a big portion of what I consider the value of my experience thus far. I wouldn’t hesitate to pick up the phone and call or write a letter to an alum. My conversations with them have been an extremely important component of my learning and development. It’s like another element of the classroom for me.

Interviewed on March 25, 2010.