Joseph Kennedy, Business Major and Volleyball Player, Heading to Georgetown
Joseph Kennedy has arms for volleyball, but now he's also armed with a B.S. in business from Martin Tuchman School of Management and will make Georgetown University his next stop for an M.S. in finance.
Kennedy, from Tucson, Ariz., discovered at 15 that he preferred the rush of volleyball more than the deliberacy of golf, which was his childhood passion. He also found that among 50 schools offering Division 1 men's volleyball, only NJIT provided the high-caliber academics of Albert Dorman Honors College and proximity to Wall Street.
Off he traveled to Newark, carrying so many high school Advanced Placement credits that he finished college in three years. He's thrilled about how his decision worked out — "It was perfect. Definitely the best one I could have made," Kennedy said. He said the Highlanders are unknown in the Southwest, "But I'm making a dent."
Inside and outside of class, Kennedy worked on research with Stephen Taylor, assistant professor of finance. In one project, they devised a new way of measuring a company's devotion to the environment, social justice and fair governance, known as ESG in business circles. Their method is not finished, but it will lead to a 0-10 score which investors could use to guide decisions about where to buy and sell stock with fewer concerns about owning a piece of an unethical company.
"We had to come up with a way to evaluate companies for how ESG they operated," Kennedy explained. "We had to make it quantifiable so it could be streamlined and automated. It was difficult because there's a big disparity between what companies reported and what Bloomberg had in data. We brought in so much data that we broke Excel and had to move to another computer."
"It was great having Joe participate in multiple fintech classes that I instructed over the past two years, and I was happy to recommend him for several graduate school programs," said Taylor. Fintech refers to financial technology, which is the trend of merging expertise in business and computing, recently made into a new major.
"We met several times for coffee and after class to discuss the work of a quantitative analyst in the private equity and hedge fund areas. Joe used his time during the courses to develop both technical and financial skill sets that will be beneficial to pursue such roles in the future. It is rewarding to see him moving on an upward trajectory after leaving NJIT and we all wish him the best in graduate school and in his future career," Taylor added.
Classes and volleyball took up most of Kennedy's time, but he managed to join NJIT Investment Club, working his way up to the role of portfolio manager during his fifth semester. He also got together with acquaintances back home to form Southwest Investment Club, unaffiliated with NJIT, which he said is currently doing a bit better than the S&P 500.
"It's basically a cohort of about 30 people from a bunch of different backgrounds. We have a speaker once a month, and we talk about different stocks, different trends in the market, how we're thinking about things, leveraging the diversity we have in the group. Each member puts in $1,000," Kennedy explained. He said a few members are current or former teammates, family friends and various professionals such as accountants and attorneys.
Kennedy also took internships during his time here, which included JPMorgan throughout 2021 and 2022, and SVB Securities this summer. He landed the latter position after mentorship from Tuchman board member Harry Silver, formerly of Goldman Sachs. He said career assistance has also been vital from SEO USA, which helps minority students get into exclusive business roles. Kennedy qualified because he is Mexican, on his mother's side.
Before heading to Georgetown — he was also accepted into Columbia, University of Southern California and Vanderbilt — Kennedy stopped to offer advice for new business students. For students coming from places like Tucson, his advice is to make sure northern New Jersey's quick pace of life is the right fit. For business students generally, "The advice is that you have to really start early. You don't have any time to waste. It's not that you need to know what you want to do, but you have to start figuring out what is out there and that has to start in the first semester of your freshman year," the future Hoya said. "Trust me, we had plenty of fun, probably too much … But you have to be efficient with your time."
