A Day in the Life of a Gabelli School student: Madison Koury ’18

Undergraduate | Feb 15, 2018 | admin

What does a typical Gabelli School student’s day look like? There are some common themes, but each one goes a little differently depending on the student’s campus location, major, extracurricular activities, and internships.

Madison Koury, BS ’18, is a business administration major with a primary concentration in marketing. She is completing secondary concentrations in finance and in communications and media management. Koury is also an investor-relations intern at Star Mountain Capital.

Read on for a detailed look at a day in the life of Madison Koury.

8:30 a.m.
I wake up and start my Thursday-morning routine. The first thing I do is check my email, and I send a quick reply to a question that one of my freshman Gabelli academic advising students has about her schedule. While I’m getting ready, I scroll through the headlines of The Wall Street Journal on my phone. I make a mental note of an interesting article about Amazon’s search for a new headquarters, as it is something we will likely be discussing in my Global Finance and Trade in the Post-Crisis World class.

10:00 a.m.
I make the walk to Faculty Memorial Hall for my liberal arts elective, Fundamentals of Communications and Media Studies. Today in class, we discuss the media logs we have been keeping to track our viewing habits of entertainment media. Part of our focus in this course is the history of the television and media industry, which is a topic I find extremely interesting, especially because I previously had an internship at the Food Network in advertising sales and marketing.

11:30 a.m.
After dropping my books off, I get on the Metro North to head to my internship at Star Mountain Capital, a private-equity firm in Midtown Manhattan. Once I get to Grand Central Station, I quickly run into UrbanSpace Vanderbilt to pick up lunch before going into the office. UrbanSpace Vanderbilt is probably one of my favorite places in Midtown. It has literally every type of food you could be craving.

12:00 p.m.
When I get to the office, I meet with my manager to see what needs to be worked on today. I am on the investor relations business-development team, which is the group responsible for maintaining relationships with existing investors (who are called LPs) and managing the re-up and co-investment process.

Investor relations also involves reaching out to potential investors and organizing various events. Members of our team are attending conferences in Denver, Colorado, and Miami, Florida, later this month, so I am using a customer relationship management system, or CRM, to pull the contacts of LPs in those areas and set up meetings with some of them. After I make some calls to the LPs in Denver and Miami, I work on editing a PowerPoint that will be presented to potential investors in Austin, Texas, next week.

3:30 p.m.
It’s time for smoothies! Every day at 3:30, we take a quick break from working and recharge with a smoothie. There’s a different kind for every day of the week, and today we are having the Green Goddess!

After I finish my smoothie, I work on filling out a Request for Proposal, or RFP, which is used to give a prospective investor information about our firm, including our fund details, risk-management plan, and operation personnel.

6:30 p.m.
After finishing up the rest of my responsibilities at work, I come back to Fordham and settle into my apartment. I have a virtual session for my online class, Marketing for Financial Services. The lectures that are delivered through multimedia content focus on the tactics and strategies associated with the marketing of financial services, which so far has been super helpful to my position at Star Mountain.

8:30 p.m.
After I finish my homework, I quickly change out of my work clothes. My friends and I are heading to Clinton Hall on Arthur Avenue for dinner and trivia night. I have no class tomorrow, which means I will be free to run errands and start the weekend early!