Biography
Lauren O’Banion appreciates a good competition. As a Division 1 track and field athlete during her undergraduate studies at the University of Utah, Lauren was up for the challenge upon entering Goizueta’s Master of Finance program.
After majoring in Finance at Utah, Lauren relocated to Georgia where she secured a summer internship with Regions Bank working within their asset-based lending group. “This experience, coupled with my desire to broaden my knowledge of finance and gain real-world experience, led me to pursue a Master of Finance at Emory University,” she says.
Even with a background in finance, Lauren was pleasantly surprised at the skills and knowledge she was learning throughout her time in the program such as investment banking, coding languages, financial technology, derivatives and various asset classes – even improving her ability to create professional reports and presentations.
“As someone who thought they knew a lot coming from a finance undergraduate background, I was surprised to learn so much about coding languages such as Python and RStudio, and how to use them for financial data visualization,” she says. “The program also provided hands-on experience creating sell-side reports, hedge funds, ESG impact investing funds, and other financial projects while honing my teamwork skills through collaboration with diverse groups of people.”
One highlight during her time was a practicum course which focused on various group projects throughout the year. One such project was creating a hedge fund where Lauren and her team developed a fund that invested in U.S. infrastructure, allowing them to book trades on Bloomberg and back-test their portfolio's historical performance against a benchmark like the S&P 500 or competitor ETFs.
“Overall, the program challenged me to go above and beyond my own expectations,” Lauren says. “I learned that I am capable of pushing myself past any obstacle to achieve my goals, especially with the support of the people who I found here at Goizueta.”