School News

Empower Possible

As a finance major on the pre-med track, NYU Stern junior Nisha Parikh believes that her business education will benefit her career, just as it has already benefitted her work with Project Empower. This nonprofit organization provides competition-based educational programs to schools throughout the New York Metro area. As Project Empower’s associate executive director, Nisha is passionate about the cause of educating New York City middle and elementary school students about business by hosting competitions where the students role-play as a CEO of a recognizable company or non-profit organization. She explains, “We are expanding our organization nationally and aim to reach 100,000 students by next year. What’s just as exciting is that a number of Stern students have taken a deep interest in the cause. We’ve had more than 100 Stern student volunteers.”

“I learned a lot of skills at Stern that I directly implement at Project Empower,” Nisha adds. “I now have a strong business foundation that has helped me to effectively manage an organization, build out a sustainable infrastructure, determine long-term goals and a realistic trajectory for achieving them, create a scalable model that ensures brand affinity and build national partnerships. Stern has also taught me invaluable leadership skills that I use daily at Project Empower.”

One of Nisha’s favorite classes was “Foundations of Financial Markets,” with Professor Alexi Savov, “because I greatly enjoyed the subject material and real-life application that came from it,” she says. “Professor Savov challenged the class everyday by taking the material and applying it to real business situations; for example, he taught us how to make regressions on current stock market data. The course changed how I approach problem-solving by helping me to understand both the micro and macro view of situations and how to apply general knowledge to the financial space.”

Using what she has learned at Stern and skills she has honed at Project Empower, Nisha has interned at UBS Wealth Management Research, BlueMountain Capital, and Women Aware. And while she is still considering her career choices, she remains open to the many opportunities she has available. “I keep an open mind because you never know--you may fall in love with something you never thought you would like before.”