Building the Culture and Community I Wanted to See

Abigail Copeland, OIP ‘23

ABIGAIL, A THIRD-YEAR STUDYING CHINESE LANGUAGE & LITERATURE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, REFLECTS ON HOW GIRLS WHO INVEST LED HER TO SPEARHEAD BERKELEY’S FIRST-EVER INDEPENDENT STUDENT ORGANIZATION FOR WOMEN INTERESTED IN FINANCE.

I love financial markets: Government treasuries, foreign exchange, a rogue election somewhere across the world, yield curves, repos—you name it, I want to understand from the ground up exactly how it works. For years, I’ve always spent significant amounts of time reading about markets and pondering how all of the pieces fit together. Having the opportunity to get a feel for trade transactions and market movements in real-time is incredibly exciting to me.

Despite my passion for markets, I was never considered a “typical candidate,” at least on paper, for a career in finance. I am a Chinese Language & Literature major and I have spent the past ten years living in a small town in Indiana. Luckily for me, that perception fell apart pretty quickly the more time I spent within the industry, and my sophomore year of college was truly life-changing. I was accepted into Girls Who Invest. I also started working on one of the committees for 100 Women in Finance, a global non-profit focusing on increasing women in finance, and received offers to work on the trading floor for Standard Chartered Bank, an emerging markets bank, and Morgan Stanley, for my sophomore and junior summers, respectively. I entered my sophomore year unsure of how my skills fit within the industry, and I left confident that I had a place within the larger ecosystem of Wall Street.

Despite having success within the industry, I frequently found myself as one of the few women in on-campus-related finance pursuits, and my skill set was underestimated due to my major and gender. This distortion and lack of space within the student culture was not only felt by me, but by other women I talked to as well.

As a large university with over 45,000 students, Berkeley has thousands of student organizations, with dozens of them focused on business and finance. But as of the end of Spring 2023, we remained one of the few major universities in the United States without an independent finance club for women.

Once I picked up more technical skills, had my internship offers lined up, and felt confident that I knew what finance was and how it worked, I decided to create Berkeley’s own permanent finance club for women. That’s how Women on Wall Street at Berkeley (WOW) was born.

I would spend my weekends in coffee shops working to formalize my vision. Not only did I want the organization to champion diversity and inclusivity, but it was also extremely important to me to build a team of like-minded women who pursued a varied set of asset classes. I gathered together an exceptional team of co-collaborators who had work experience at top buy-side and sell-side firms from the Bay Area to New York.

In the hypercompetitive and fast-paced club culture at Berkeley and other selective universities, it was important that my organization maintained a 100% acceptance rate, a practice rare at Berkeley. I wanted members from all years, majors, and backgrounds.

I learned a lot from building Women on Wall Street. Creating your own culture and organization from the ground up is immensely fulfilling, but often complicated and daunting at times. I was consistently pushed outside of my comfort zone, from having to leverage my (very poor) graphic design skills on Canva to create club branding, to figuring out how to effectively market the club to such a large campus population.

We created an interest form, showcasing that the club was open to everyone for the inaugural cohort of the club, and asked applicants why they wanted to join. I was overwhelmed by the responses. Our very first meeting in Fall 2023 was a panel of the Berkeley Girls Who Invest Scholars. We gathered together a group of Online and Summer Intensive scholars and expressed our passion and gratitude for the program. It makes me really happy to see our status as the unofficial hub for almost all Berkeley Girls Who Invest Scholars.

I decided that, in the spirit of helping as many women as possible, I would be completely transparent in sharing my knowledge, network, and resources. I emailed dozens of contacts and recruiters from firms around the country and asked if they would consider exclusively recruiting from our organization and coming to Berkeley to talk with our campus. We’ve been fortunate enough to partner with many firms around the country and build relationships with outstanding corporate partners.

We’ve only been around for a little less than a year, but we’ve already grown to the largest finance club on campus with over 105 members. The results are very clear: inclusivity leads to excellence. Countless women have received their dream internship or full-time job offer, been accepted as Girls Who Invest Scholars, and/or been awarded prestigious scholarships and opportunities. I have never been more convinced that by creating a welcoming and inclusive environment, you can cultivate the full potential of someone’s skillset.

None of this would have happened without Girls Who Invest. I frequently reflect on the impact that GWI has had on our student organization. It provided me with technical skills and knowledge, connected me with women across the country, and gave me the confidence to initiate change within my community. The core mission and inspiring story of how Girls Who Invest was founded gave me more hope when first starting the organization.

My aim is to demonstrate to younger women in undergrad that you can achieve your accomplishments and help other women at the same time. Women on Wall Street has had tremendously positive feedback so far, and we have exciting plans to further grow our club and see how we can expand our impact beyond the Berkeley campus.