This B-School Is The Go-To Pipeline For Investment Banking Internships Focused On Tech

Rita Wiley, MBA ’22, secured a summer associate internship at middle-market investment banking firm Piper Sandler in San Francisco. She also accepted a full-time position with the firm beginning after her graduation.

RECRUITMENT BEGINS ON WEEK ZERO

At Haas, the intern recruitment process begins almost immediately, during Week Zero. It starts with an overview on the industry, and then rolls into a weekly Investment Banking Speaker Series. MBAs then break into smaller study groups to help each other prepare for coffee chats and research the different firms. Then, students schedule individual coffee chats with the banks in which they are most interested.

“It’s definitely a grueling process. You basically come in and need to decide whether you’re doing investment banking or not and hit the ground running,” says Rita Wiley, MBA ‘22, who interned this summer at Piper Sandler and will begin working with their healthcare team full-time after graduation. She is also a Diversity Fellowship recipient which comes with extra compensation on top of the regular offer.

While MBAs gravitate largely toward local tech and life sciences coverage banks, there’s a lot of variety in the types of firms. Students can choose whether they fit best at a bulge bracket bank, like Morgan Stanley, or an elite boutique or a middle-market bank. Haas also has a well-paved path for students who want to find internships in New York or other locations, Rindfuss says.

Wiley graduated from West Point Military Academy in 2015 with a degree in life sciences, and served as a military police officer for five years. After taking a medical retirement, she decided to get an MBA. She thought she would focus on finance, but wasn’t sure how that might look. She first considered investment banking in those first information sessions at Haas. 

“I wasn’t sure which route I wanted to go, but investment banking seemed to open up the door to a plethora of other opportunities. It was the best avenue to get me up to speed, especially with my military career and nontraditional background,” she says. 

She applied to Piper Sandler because it is a middle-market firm mostly focused on mergers and acquisitions, but is growing into other sectors. The San Francisco healthcare team where she will work next year is among the leaders in the sector. 

A CONNECTED ALUMNI NETWORK

Haas’ pipeline to West Coast banking basically feeds itself. The B-School has been a leader in the area’s Investment Banking interns for many years. Those interns secure jobs in the Bay Area banks who then come back to their alma mater to find recruits for their banks’ summer associate positions. Plus, the sector is in a record-breaking year for mergers and acquisition volume, and most of that is coming from tech, Rindfuss says. 

Rawool Sahu, MBA ‘22

“The largest share of our students have gone to the Bay Area, and so most of our installed base of alumni are here,” Rindfuss says. “If you want to do investment banking, and you want to do it in the Bay Area, advising the most active and interesting clients, then you absolutely should come to Haas.”

The B-School has a base of very engaged alumni who come to networking events, participate in the Speaker Series, and who are willing to connect with students one-on-one. That’s how Sahu was connected with the boutique firm, Moelis & Company, where he will work full-time in healthcare-focused investment banking.

“One of the things I enjoyed about being in a smaller office is I got a lot of access to many of the managing directors who pulled me into conversations with the clients,” he says. “Those were some of the most interesting aspects of the internship for me because I was on phone calls, listening to the CFOs and CEOs, and thinking about the company’s next direction. Whether they were trying to sell a company or acquire a company, listening to how they think that through was a great learning experience.”

GREAT STUDENT SUPPORT

Christine Jan, MBA ‘22, grew up in Taiwan and earned her undergraduate degree in finance. She worked in wealth management in Hong Kong at UBS. Her MBA experience at Haas was her first exposure to American-style education. 

“I came from a background where you go to school and do whatever the teachers tell you to to be successful,” says Jan who

Christine Jan, MBA ’22

interned this summer and got a full-time offer with Morgan Stanley’s tech team, located in Menlo Park. “Haas helped completely change my mindset to crafting my own story and how to position myself. I’m used to selling products to clients, but I never had to sell myself.”

Jan worked closely with Haas’ Career Management Group, spent hours talking to alumni, and found support with classmates throughout the recruitment and application process. She and Wiley were part of the same small study group that helped prepare her for meetings with banks and prepare her applications.

“At Haas, we had a great mix of Executive MBAs, Evening and Weekend MBAs and full-time MBAs, and we have a lot of classes and clubs that are cross-cohort,” she tells Poets&Quants. “We shared resources, bumped into each other in class, and shared points on how to tackle different situations in the process. That came through in a lot of the conversations I had with the banking alumni.”

During her internship, Jan assisted in fundraising for IPOs, debt financing and mergers and acquisitions. She will work with the Morgan Stanley tech team full-time after graduation.

“The biggest and most happening deals are going here in Silicon Valley, especially for tech. The world is coming here to raise funds, and that’s just how it is at the moment,” Jan says. “I really like the global mindset on the worksite.”

DON’T MISS THE WORLD’S MOST SOUGHT-AFTER EMPLOYERS & EMPLOYMENT TRENDS IN 2021 and UC-BERKELEY HAAS MBA CLASS OF 2023: MORE APPS, SMALLER CLASS

Questions about this article? Email us or leave a comment below.