Student Profile: Riley Glosick '18

Talk about optimizing available resources—Isenberg senior Riley Glosick ’18 has put it all together. In the classroom, the Finance major and Commonwealth Honors College student has excelled in courses theoretical and pragmatic, never receiving less than a 4.0. She has complemented those insights with continuous learning from two high-quality internships, this summer with Wellington Management in Boston and last summer with MassMutual Financial Group in Springfield.

Back at Isenberg, she has strengthened her finance skill set through hands-on technical and softer skills via club activities with the school’s Minutemen Fixed Income Fund and the UMass Finance Society. And as a three-semester teaching assistant in Corporate Finance, she has thrived as a role model and trusted friend to other Isenberg students.

“In truth, those three semesters as a T.A. have been my favorite experience at Isenberg,” Riley confesses. “They allowed me to reassess finance basics and, more importantly, to help other students.”  The internships, she continues, also added value. As an equity research intern with Wellington, which serves institutional clients in 65 countries, Riley focused on the global insurance industry, researching the impact of technology. Her analysis, targeted to Wellington’s portfolio managers and analysts, shed light on “investable” opportunities.

That largely solitary research role contrasted with her more team-based activities as an Investment Operations Intern with MassMutual. That, she notes, included among other things monitoring trades, investigating trade discrepancies, and proposing efficiency improvements in time-sensitive securities management processes. “For me, both internships fit perfectly, offering valuable technical and social learning experiences.”

Club Experience Adds Value to Internships

So did her club activities at Isenberg. In the Isenberg-based Minutemen Fixed Income Fund, where she served as president, Riley created reports on high-yield corporate bonds, improved her fluency with Bloomberg terminals and technical reports and filings, and mentored other students. Her membership in the UMass Finance Society boosted her networking skills with Isenberg alumni and other students.

“Without question, my club work gave me an edge in my internships,” she remarks. “Arriving with technical skills for analyzing companies and industry specifics, I went to work better prepared than many of my fellow interns.” Riley also credits her classroom experiences with finance lecturer Robert Feingold, whose unrelenting focus on real-world issues and practice, she notes, has been a huge influence.

Kudos to Isenberg and its Culture

When Riley arrived at UMass in September 2014, the Hampshire Regional High valedictorian had no idea what her major would be. “In touring UMass during my first year, I sensed something special about Isenberg and its culture,” she recalls. Combined with her facility with math, that made finance a natural fit. But be sure to note, she emphasized, her sequence of discovery: “It was Isenberg first, then business.”