Stephanie Salem--Class of 2019
We chatted with first-year Stephanie Salem before she headed to the West Coast for her summer internship.
Tell us about your life before Fuqua.
I grew up in Minnesota and went to college in Chicago at Illinois Tech where I played soccer on a full ride scholarship. I studied finance and interned at Target’s corporate headquarters in Minneapolis before my senior year of undergrad. I returned to Target upon graduation and spent the past six years there working in corporate finance. Over the past two summers, I led trips to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where my team of high schoolers volunteered at the Mephibosheth House, a home for kids with disabilities. The kids at the “M House” had disabilities ranging from autism and down syndrome to deformities and cerebral palsy making them wheelchair-bound. Never have I met kids with so much joy and perseverance, which was especially inspiring given many of them were abandoned, abused and forgotten. These trips were pivotal in my decision to attend Fuqua, as I want to pursue a career in social impact.
Where are you heading this summer?
Over the summer I will be interning with Nike in finance. I will be part of the Global Business Planning team, which is a team that rolls up the financials for all of Nike and its subsidiaries (i.e. Converse, Hurley, Jordan). I will specifically be working on a project related to Selling, General & Administrative expenses. I’m excited to continue to build my analytical skill set while seeing the high-level strategic decisions Nike is making in the dynamically changing retail environment. A long term goal of mine would be to obtain a full time offer from them and move into their Global Community Impact team. One cool part of the Impact team (that a Fuqua grad leads!) is an organization called Girl Effect, which has the goal of getting girls more active and helping them build confidence through sports.
Do you have any advice for the Class of 2020?
Be open-minded as you come into school. Because I wanted to do social impact work, I automatically assumed I would look to recruit in the impact investing space or nonprofit space. Nike will give me an opportunity to combine several passions of mine: sports, impact, finance and retail!