Working as the head of an investment management firm for 19 years, Steve Wilson found himself frustrated by the gender disparity he saw in the field. He wanted to hire women as investment professionals but struggled to find enough who were trained and qualified.

“I realized that colleges weren’t preparing enough women to enter the field,” Wilson explains. “I think it was a combination of a lack of awareness of career opportunities and perhaps, to some degree, self-selection — with too many fully qualified women thinking ‘I’m not good enough, so I’m not going to try’ or ‘It’s a hostile space, so why would I put myself out there?’”

So he decided to tackle the problem head on and launched a second career as a UConn School of Business faculty member. Last fall, he started an experiential learning program called the Opportunity Fund Project. The multi-semester program is open to everyone in the School of Business and particularly targets three groups: women, younger students, and underrepresented communities.

“We learn the basics in an introductory class covering accounting, economics, finance, and capital markets,” Wilson says. “Once students complete that, they take the next course, where they actually manage a sliver of the University endowment by buying and selling stocks they have uncovered and vetted.”

Besides teaching students the technical material, the program also helps them develop the soft skills and self-confidence critical to getting coveted internships and career-building entry-level jobs in finance. Wilson took a group of students to London last spring break to visit companies and investment shops to further broaden their perspectives and build their confidence. “We’re the bridge between Storrs and Wall Street,” he likes to say.

To widen and deepen student participation, Wilson teaches an “everybody” cohort that is
open to all, as well as a women-only cohort. He also encourages all students to start the
program earlier in their college careers, welcoming first years, sophomores, and juniors into the student-managed fund domain that traditionally recruits seniors.

The program proved successful in its first year, growing to 42 students by the spring semester, including 22 women and 37 non-seniors. More than 30 percent of the program’s students were from underrepresented communities.

Wilson says he was inspired to start the Opportunity Fund Project to honor his mother, Barbara B. Lapides Wilson ’55 (BUS), who overcame great odds to get a college education. She lost her father during WWII. Her widowed mother, who had a 6th-grade education, worked hard to support Barbara and her sister. Despite being an excellent student, Barbara didn’t think she could afford college — until she was offered a scholarship to UConn. That opportunity changed her life, allowing her to graduate and build a career in social work and educational guidance. The Opportunity Fund Project, he says, is his way of paying it forward at the place that gave his mother the chance to build a better life.