By Cailin McKenna and Erin Shanahan
Four Gabelli School of Business finance majors are headed to Minneapolis to defend their title as international champions of the Professional Risk Managers International Association (PRMIA)’s Risk Management Challenge.
“The Bronx Bankers” — Chris McCloskey, GSB ’15, Blake Rodriguez, GSB ’15, Neal Suhkia, GSB ’15 and Stephen Hearn, GSB ’15 — will compete on March 6 with five other teams from around the globe.
The goal of the PRMIA Risk Management Challenge (PRMC) is to provide undergraduate and graduate students with the opportunity to solve real-life business problems with a risk management focus. The competition aims to develop and strengthen professional and social relationships between students and members of the professional community.
PRMIA allows students to sign up for a yearly membership and attend meetings, webinars and other learning and networking opportunities. As a freshman, Rodriguez joined PRMIA on his own. After learning about the Risk Management Challenge, he and his three teammates decided to give it a shot and signed up under the name “The Bronx Bankers.”
The challenge has offered the team opportunities from beyond the traditional setting of a classroom.
“We have been able to meet some amazing people, hear the perspectives of leading risk-focused academics and learn from a different perspective than the norm,” Rodriguez said.
Before the team could qualify for the championship for a second time they had to win a regional final. “The Bronx Bankers” submitted a two-page summary of how they would approach a case focused on the China Risk Finance organization (CRF). Their job was to outline the major issues that a business such as CRF could face in the Chinese market. This included issues such as macroeconomics, the Chinese saving market, predictive outputs and a system for implementation.
Once their summary was accepted, the team formed a comprehensive recommendation for CRF and presented its solution at the New York regional competition. Each of the 18 teams that competed in the Jan. 24 regional competition made a twenty-minute presentation followed by a ten-minute Q&A session. “The Bronx Bankers” came out on top and secured their spot in the international challenge.”
The regional event posed some difficulties for the team, which they say will better prepare them for the March 6 challenge. Many of the topics were completely beyond the realm of daily coursework and internships, and required the team to improvise, Hearn said. The final regional presentation was delivered to over 100 industry professionals and students, which has prepared the team for their upcoming international presentation.
These Gabelli undergraduates are the first from Fordham to make it to the international level of competition. However, MBA and MS in Quantitative Finance teams have competed at the regional level.
Both the regional competition and last year’s international competition provided the team with experience outside of the Gabelli curriculum. “The topics of the competition were completely foreign to us, so it was a great experience to learn about something that we have limited experience with already,” Hearn said.
“As fourth years, variety is very much welcome,” he added.
Additionally, the opportunity to meet and learn from the industry leaders and professionals about many of the most important issues in the market continues to be one of the most rewarding parts of the competition for the team.
“The Bronx Bankers,” whose team name is a reference to the New York Yankees, hope that they can stand as a reminder of the success that can sprout from the Bronx. They also hope to share their unique experiences in and outside of Hughes Hall with other business students. The experiences the team has had in the classroom rival the extracurricular opportunities they have been afforded.
“We have all been fortunate enough to hold various outside internships and have competed in multiple case competitions of this sort,” Suhkia said. “We have found the combination of these experiences with Gabelli courses to be incredible.”
In Minneapolis next month, the team is hoping for an intriguing case and to maintain its title as international champions. Teammates also hope to use their experiences from the classroom at this competition to spread the Gabelli name.
“This is an incredible opportunity to represent the Gabelli School of Business. We look forward to the opportunity to meet competing students and further the Gabelli name,” McCloskey said.