K. Alyssa Dan

In the Fall of 2017 I took a high impact Finance class called Dealmakers in M&A. The class is geared towards Private Equity like transaction in different high finance fields. This was a very interesting environment for me to be in because I discovered that high finance was not a career I wanted to build for myself. However, the biggest thing I did learn was how to communicate complicated financial concepts in clear and concise terms. I felt as if by the end I could write "High Finance for Dummies" or be one of the narrators of The Big Short.  I think this was also my competitive advantage in this class. 

​

Our last case assignment for the class was a case competition in which we presented to a panel of Mays faculty and industry professionals. These were high finance guys and were not messing around. My main role on the team, besides group decision making, was creating the slide deck. I was very interested in this because I felt that I had learned the basics on the transactions and could communicate in few words on a slide the main idea of each point we wanted to present. Therefore, the slides I created highlighted the important information and minimize the fluff in our presentation. I was also able to assign presenting roles to each of our presenters. I enjoyed this part of designing the presentation because I was able to recognize and capitalize on each team members strengths. At the conclusion of the competition our team ended up placing third out of seven teams and I was extremely proud of the work my team and I did and how we were able to communicate our ideas and recommendation.