The Lionsbridge cohort with the program’s creator, Chris McGowan CC’92.
COURTESY CENTER FOR CAREER EDUCATION
Anchored by a free, three-day, in-person workshop, Lionsbridge aims to equip students — primarily first- and second-years — with the basic skills required to enter the industry. Each day featured lectures and group exercises focused on a different topic: accounting; financial statement analysis and forecasting; and valuation. In the evening, the students went on alumni-hosted site visits to financial firms where they attended presentations, networked over dinners and got a feel for company culture.
“Finance boot camps have been around for a while, provided by third parties, at significant cost. The opportunity to offer Lionsbridge to undergraduates, in house, and leverage alumni expertise gave the program a uniquely Columbia feel,” says Kavita Sharma, dean of the Center for Career Education (CCE), which managed the program. “We made it clear from the outset that Lionsbridge was designed as an exploratory program. So if students decided finance is not for them, that’s fine.”
Lionsbridge is the brainchild of Chris McGowan CC’92, the founder and managing partner of CJM Ventures and an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at Chicago’s Booth School of Business. McGowan wanted to address some of the substantial shifts in financial recruitment that have taken place over the years, including employers’ expectation that new hires should be coming in on Day One armed with a baseline set of specialized skills.
In addition, an undergraduate’s pathway to landing a full-time financial role now often begins with joining a pre-professional club. Clubs can lead to internships and then job opportunities, but membership is often competitive and capped at low numbers. Students can sometimes find themselves caught on the outside and challenged to gain the experience they need.
“I wanted to do something for students who were like I was as an undergraduate,” says McGowan, who majored in pure mathematics but wasn’t thinking he’d pursue finance. “I was focused on the Core Curriculum. I was focused on my math classes, and my work-study and RA jobs, trying to keep my nose above water. I was also focused on trying to enjoy my time on our fantastic campus and in our amazing city!
“I thought, maybe there’s something that I can do to introduce students to the world of finance, in a way that would target students who didn’t have prior experience. Take them on the journey I went through, which was starting from ground zero.” The program he envisioned would be a practical way for students to learn skills but also, more broadly, to discover whether a career in finance even appealed to them.
The Lionsbridge program included group exercises.
COURTESY CENTER FOR CAREER EDUCATION
The majority of Lionsbridge attendees were from Columbia College, but Columbia Engineering and Columbia General Studies also had participants. Students dug in each day from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., then hit the subway for the site visits (hosted by alumni Giacomo Picco CC’99 of KKR, Sean Connor CC’05 of Blue Owl Capital and Olivia Howard CC’01 of Bain Capital).
“CCE has been running site visits to employers for a number of years, in NYC and more recently in San Francisco and Washington, D.C.,” Sharma says. “We know firsthand the value that seeing workplaces and meeting alumni and other professionals has on a student’s career exploration. It’s not only the opportunity to network and ask questions, but also the chance to experience the company culture directly that makes a significant impression on students.”
Alia Hobart CC’28 said the site visits were a highlight of her experience, especially the first night at KKR. “Listening to stories and gathering advice from those who were new employees, as well as those who’d been working there for many years, opened my eyes to what working in a successful investment firm could be like,” Hobart says. “My favorite piece of advice came from [managing director] Giacomo Picco. He said that the people we surround ourselves with measure our level of success, so surround yourself with good people who are passionate to inspire, challenge and guide you.”
CCE supplemented the classroom learning and site visits in a number of ways, including resume review and counseling; matching students with alumni mentors; and providing access to an online learning course, Wall Street Prep. McGowan has also returned to campus once a month for follow-up lectures (the next is on Saturday, April 12) and launched a Lionsbridge LinkedIn group for sharing ideas and conversation.
So far, the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Students gave the program high marks in post-workshop surveys, including the resounding endorsement that 100 percent of the participants said they’d recommend Lionsbridge to a friend.
“It gave me the confidence — and the community — to put myself out there,” says Tanush Sawhney CC’27. “I wasn’t just learning in isolation, I was also surrounded by peers with similar goals, and mentors who genuinely cared. Chris and the CCE team were incredible. They encouraged us to reach out to alumni during site visits, and those conversations often continued well after. I was struck by how open and honest many of them were — they didn’t just pitch their firm; they wanted to help us figure out where we’d thrive.
“That support system made all the difference,” he adds. “The guidance, the encouragement, the exposure — all of it played a huge role in my recruiting journey. I credit it as one of the biggest reasons I secured multiple offers [for this summer]. I’m incredibly excited to be joining Bridgewater as an investment associate intern, and Lionsbridge was a huge part of that story.”