Goldman Sachs Scholar

Goldman Sachs investment banking has opportunities for people from all backgrounds, such as finance, business, communications, and even social work. During the Goldman Sachs Internship program, Morgan State University and several other HBCUs nationwide had to propose a business model for PepsiCo for both Goldman Sachs and PepsiCo executives. To the average eye, including mine, it is hard to see the correlation between social work and investment banking. You would not have thought that a social worker would dive into the financial field. I can say that applying to be a part of the Goldman Sachs Diversity team was one of the best decisions I have ever made and has helped hone my skills as a social worker even further. Throughout this tenure, I have gained a much broader perspective of social workers' impact on the investment banking industry. While being a part of the diversity team at Goldman Sachs, we as interns have been able to identify the needs of multiple communities as well as the needs of investors and to understand what it takes to be a business executive in corporate America. This program can also help social workers understand the impact financials can have on the communities they serve, underrepresented, marginalized communities who do not have access to many financial services that finance America cannot and will not provide.

Being a social work major in this competition challenged my awareness of the logistics and the role that I would play because, as we all know, many social workers stay far away from the financial industry. I struggled to understand the very concepts of the pieces of training and business in general until I realized the goal of the competition, to be able to provide a product and service to a consumer, which I believe is something social workers do daily. People come to us for mental health services they can benefit from, and we as social workers must try and provide the best service possible, whether through counseling or evaluating a child's wellbeing. Whether we would like to admit it, corporate America influences social work, and basic business ethics still apply. We must be able to expand our minds and think like others and ourselves to see what would be best for our consumers. We must follow guidelines and principles to make people believe that we are there to help them and influence each person to want to speak out and advocate for themselves and others too, which I learned as a part of the program. Seeing and working with different viewpoints and ideologies brought the Morgan State University team a third-place placement in the final competition. Social work is all about working together to provide a service for a community, and Goldman Sachs training helps implement that. I would encourage any social work majors to apply and use this phenomenal internship program with Goldman Sachs as a stepping stone to furthering themselves and their skills as social workers.