Eros Georgiou ’25 is the kind of student every career counselor dreams of. As he started his freshman year, he wasn’t willing to accept the fact that internships are hard to come by for first-year students. So, during his winter break, he spent hours networking and reaching out to alumni at various finance and investment firms, eventually landing an interview and lining up a job at investment bank Cambridge Wilkinson for this summer.
Georgiou spends his days communicating with investors, which include investment funds, family trusts and even sovereign nations. He listens to deals being pitched or has conversations to discover what kinds of investments his clients are looking for.
“I really clicked with my VP and he includes me on everything,” he said. “I’ve been given a decent amount of responsibility and have seen ways my work is actually being used.”
Georgiou said this summer’s experience has helped him refine what kind of a job suits him within the finance sphere.
“I like to do large institutional transactions — how the world operates is largely based on these large institutional fundraising deals,” said Georgiou, who is majoring in math and economics. “The internship taught me finance and definitely showed me what I want to do. It taught me how to network, how to be professional, how to do a call with an investor on a deal.”
While Georgiou felt prepared and confident in starting work this summer, he did need some more professional clothes and a computer that was up to the challenge. He also knew he would miss the income he normally made from a paid summer job and wanted time to apply for positions for next summer, a process that takes place about now. So, he applied for a Summer Experience Grant from the College of Arts & Sciences to offset some of these expenses. Much of this funding comes from alumni donations.
“It gave me the time to really get all that I could from the internship experience,” he said. “The Cornell network is a great community; all of the opportunities I’ve had have been because of alumni.”
