As part of the Career Accelerate Modules (CAM), each class partakes in two field trips. On these trips, students get to visit companies and meet top level executives that are William & Mary graduates. The presenters talk about their line of work and luncheons give the students an opportunity to network with alumni at these institutions.
Last week my Financial Markets CAM visited Dominion and Capital One in Richmond. At Dominion, we got to meet the CFO, Vice President and several managers. They gave my class a presentation about how important their hedging operations and risk department is to the company. Dominion wants to provide a steady cash flow and income to their shareholders, and with the wild swings of heating oil, natural gas and crude oil; the only way to achieve this goal is through heading. The risk department then works behind the scenes to ensure there is no proprietary trading being conducted on the trading floor and ensure the checks and balances are in place. Next, we were taken in groups through Dominion’s trading floor to observe and talk with the traders about their day to day work. Some discussions included what their daily routine was, how Dominion needs to purchase their natural gas and heating oil at 10 AM for next day delivery, then submit their prices at noon and find out what their prices are at PM. Wholesale, retail traders; meteorologists and managers are all present on the trading floor 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Finally Dominion treated our class to a lunch with some William & Mary alumni and managers and gave my classmates the opportunity to talk with them on a casual setting.
The next stop on our trip was the Capital One campus. Their campus truly has a college campus feel. The campus has an athletic center and sports fields, and each of the five buildings have lounges, art work, coffee & juice stands, and cafeterias. We got to meet a manager, two Vice Presidents and a CFO of Line of Business who were all William & Mary MBA graduates. The presentation included discussions about Capital One’s line of business, how they grew to being a credit card issuer to becoming the 5th largest bank in the country, about securitization of credit card debt and risk management.
It was a very enjoyable trip and my class certainly learned a lot. It is a great change of pace to get outside of the class room and away from our Bloomberg terminals to see what we learn being done in real life. We are certainly looking forward to our next trip to New York City coming up.
