A Smart Investment

Real Estate and Finance Alliance matches students with alumni mentors.

All 12 of the 2011 Real Estate and Finance Alliance mentees (above) are participating in high-level summer internships in New York City after receiving mentoring from alumni.

Jessica McConnell Burt

While Wall Street firms were making thousands of job cuts during the height of the recession, GW students were being hired by prestigious firms including J.P. Morgan, UBS, Credit Suisse, Bank of America, and Citibank.

The university's success in helping students find employment at some of the most competitive jobs during one of the country's worst recessions was, in part, driven by the GW Real Estate and Finance Alliance (REFA) Mentorship Program.

The program was first envisioned in 2010 by the REFA Board of Directors, a group of 45 alumni and parents who are managing directors, partners, and CEOs at the nation's leading investment banking and real estate firms, who wanted to create a connection with current students and provide the mentorship necessary to secure high-level internships and jobs. Recognizing that students need advanced career coaching and training in order to compete for prestigious starting positions on Wall Street, members of the REFA board contributed more than $100,000 to get the program off the ground and spent hundreds of hours developing its curriculum.

"The Real Estate and Finance Alliance board is passionate about creating a connection with current students," says Josh Kuriloff, BA '81, vice chairman at real estate firm Cushman and Wakefield and co-chair of REFA. "Many of its members never had the opportunity to connect with alumni when they graduated, and they wanted to make it easier for graduating students to gain insight and advice on the hiring process to improve their chances to get hired."

The REFA Mentorship Program began in fall 2010 with seven students in their junior years who participated in 50-plus hours of résumé review, interview preparations, financial modeling, and a specialized course in career management strategies taught by Bryan Erwin, BA '97, a former Goldman Sachs vice president and current director of the Advocacy Center at the U.S. Department of Commerce. The mentees also attended training seminars and alumni presentations, as well as committed to extensive study beyond their typical course work. By summer, all seven students had prestigious internships.

"The connection with alumni who opened doors at their firms and dedicated their time to coach us through the interview process has made a huge difference," says Bill White, a current mentee who accepted an investment banking summer internship at UBS. In the fall of 2011, GW School of Business Dean Doug Guthrie dedicated resources from the school's F. David Fowler Career Center to expand the program to 12 students. Mentees from the program's inaugural year, who are now seniors, committed themselves to mentoring the next class of students to get them ready for their summer internship.

"After our successes, it is our turn to help other GW REFA members thrive," says Erin Moretti, a current mentee who accepted a summer internship at J.P. Morgan in private wealth management.

For the 2012 academic year, all of the mentees from 2010 had job offers waiting for them when they graduated, and all current mentees have high-level summer internships that they hope will lead to full-time employment when they graduate.

The REFA board hopes to continue to grow the mentorship program and expand the services of the career center to reach as many students as possible.

"We live in a rapidly changing world, but one thing that is still paramount is the importance of networking and personal relationships," said Richard Goldstein, BA '81, managing director at Havens Advisors, an investment firm. "We want to create a culture of alumni support where our students have the opportunity to build these networks to help them with their careers."

Interested underclassmen should contact the F. David Fowler Career Center in Duquès 560 for more details.

To learn how you can support the REFA Mentorship Program, please contact Sunny Levitt at 202-994-6704 or levitts@gwu.edu.

School of Nursing Receives First Planned Gift

Annetta Weiss (center) stands with School of Nursing Dean Jean Johnson (left) and Senior Associate Dean Ellen Dawson during an event celebrating Ms. Weiss' gift.

Annetta Weiss, BA '65, always knew she wanted to give back, but finding the right area for her philanthropy was a challenge.

"I was looking to give somewhere that would really fulfill me—that would move me in some way," Ms. Weiss recalls.

When her longtime friend and financial adviser, Tom Curtis, BA '81, MA '95, encouraged her to consider the George Washington University as a beneficiary, she was intrigued. Ms. Weiss grew up in Washington, D.C., and her parents, both federal government employees during World War II, wanted her to pursue an education at GW. She enrolled at the university in 1961, the same year John F. Kennedy took office, and was on campus when Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech less than a mile from her room in Strong Hall in 1963.

"We were right in the middle of everything," she says. "The world was right outside our door."

In 2009 Mr. Curtis, a planned giving donor himself, introduced Ms. Weiss to GW Senior Planned Giving Advisor Jane Kolson, and the two began their quest to identify a recipient for Ms. Weiss' estate.

In June 2011, Ms. Kolson took Ms. Weiss on a tour of GW's Virginia Science and Technology Campus. The visit included a walk-through of the new School of Nursing simulation lab and a meeting with the school's dean, Jean Johnson.

Ms. Weiss was immediately impressed by the quality and dedication of the nursing faculty and saw an opportunity to raise the profile of the school, which was established in 2010. In addition, Dean Johnson reminded Ms. Weiss of her aunt, Frances, a nurse and midwife who was present at Ms. Weiss' birth.

"Frances was more like a grandmother to me; we were very close. When I visited the School of Nursing, I got that feeling I had been searching for," Ms. Weiss says.

Nearly three years after her search began, the university held an intimate ceremony honoring Ms. Weiss' two-part gift, which Dean Johnson describes as "significant, and the first of its kind, for the School of Nursing"—an endowed scholarship to aid graduate students in the Nurse Practitioner Program and an endowment for the dean's discretionary fund in memory of her Aunt Frances.

"The reach of this gift goes so far beyond the students who reap the benefits of this scholarship," Dean Johnson says. "Every student who benefits from this gift will care for thousands of people in their careers. This gift has a wonderful, multiplying effect."

Ms. Weiss designated the bulk of her planned gift to the Nurse Practitioner Program, a distance-education curriculum that prepares nurses to take on the role of a primary care provider. The program, taught almost entirely online, allows students to remain in their communities while pursuing advanced education. Distance-education students are ineligible for most kinds of financial aid, so Ms. Weiss' scholarship will help keep finances from being a barrier to education.

"This gift is very special to me," Ms. Weiss says. "I wanted what was best for GW and for me. Our quest led me here, and it's reassuring to know that what I'm doing is special."

Women Global Leaders

Students attend conference in Abu Dhabi with help of Mount Vernon Legacy Fund.

Professor Michelle Allendoerfer (third from right) and GW's delegation of Women's Leadership Program students and graduate teaching assistants at the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. (From left) Shaeera Tariq, Samantha James, Anna Loup, Amanda Dudley, Michelle Allendoerfer, Michelle Jurkovich, Deise Galan.

When a group of undergraduates headed to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates in March, the official purpose was to make presentations at an international women's leadership conference focused on sustainability. But the journey offered many more experiences, including exposure to a different culture, networking opportunities with women from around the world, informal discussions about global development, and dinner in a palace.

"It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience," says Michelle Allendoerfer, an assistant professor of political science who accompanied the students to the three-day conference. "I think the students will really cherish the cross-cultural experiences they had. But even more, as they interacted with students their own age, I think they realized that young women all over the world have some of the same stresses."

Overseas conferences usually focus on the work of graduate students, but the Women as Global Leaders Conference, which takes place every two years, provides a rare opportunity for undergraduates to present before an international audience. Nine students involved in the Women's Leadership Program on the Mount Vernon Campus were selected by conference organizers to make presentations at the conference, hosted by Zayed University, United Arab Emirates.

Students paid their conference registration fee, but travel expenses were provided by the Mount Vernon Legacy Fund, a philanthropy initiative on the Mount Vernon Campus.

When it appeared that the registration fee was out of reach for one student this year, Rachelle S. Heller, associate provost for the Mount Vernon Campus, worked out an arrangement: The student and her family would provide half the fee, and the university would underwrite the rest.

A Mount Vernon Campus staff member mentioned the situation to an alumna, who then offered to pay the family's half. "It was a fabulous show of support from our alumnae," Dr. Heller says.

—Mary Dempsey

For more information on the Mount Vernon Legacy Fund, the Women's Leadership Program, or other Mount Vernon Campus initiatives, please contact Liz Raymond at eraymond@gwu.edu or 202-242-6606.