Morgan Stanley CEO Talks Shop With McDonough Students

It’s not every day that you get to have the CEO of a huge corporation give you business advice, but nearly 200 Georgetown McDonough students were granted that opportunity when James Gorman, Chairman and CEO of Morgan Stanley, addressed them on February 5.

For a company like Morgan Stanley that receives more than 100,000 resumes a year, standing out can come down to finding the area of the company that that is the best fit, but interestingly enough many students present had already accepted full-time positions and internships at the company.

“It’s a big world and there are a lot of people out there,” Gorman said. “The talent is not the issue. The issue is passion and aligning your interests.”

A native of Brisbane, Australia, and Morgan Stanley CEO since 2010, Gorman emphasized the importance of the financial industry and large corporations (much like his own) for the global economy.

“If you boil down Wall Street to its simplest, it is the ability to match issuers with investors, people who need money with people who have money,” said Gorman to the crowd. “You can’t have an economy that is well functioning without a well-functioning capital market. The concept of matching issuers with investors is core to the way the economic wheel turns.”

The discussion was facilitated by Reena Aggarwal, Robert E. McDonough Professor of Business Administration, and the event was sponsored by the school’s Center for Financial Markets and Policy and the Financial Management Association.

regions: Washington, DC

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