Spring 2025 Newsletter

Junior Year Winter and Spring Quarter Highlights at Santa Clara University: 

• I finished my Junior year of college at Santa Clara University in June, where I am majoring in Finance. Over my Winter and Spring quarters, I took a total of eight classes. In the Winter, I took Business Law, Financial Investments, Managing Human Dynamics (a Leavey Scholars Course), and my second of three required religion courses (Santa Clara is a Jesuit university). In the Spring, I took Corporate Financial Policy, Applied Investment Management, Operations Management, and Social Justice and Sustainability. I was also on the Dean’s list in both quarters and continue to be a member of the Leavey Scholars Program, the Leavey School of Business Honors Program offered to the top 10% of business students.

• I was invited to and joined two honors societies this quarter: Beta Gamma Sigma and Alpha Sigma Nu. Beta Gamma Sigma is an international business honor society for AACSB-accredited schools (in other words, the top 5% of business school programs around the world). Students who are in the top 10% of their class by the end of their junior year are invited to join. The second honor society that I was fortunate to be invited to was Alpha Sigma Nu. Alpha Sigma Nu is a Jesuit Honor Society that grants an invitation to the 4% of students in each graduating class who distinguish themselves in scholarship, loyalty, and service.  

• I continued to work in the Modern Languages and Literature department on campus.  

• I was elected as the Vice President of Finance (Treasurer) for the Santa Clara Chapter of Alpha Kappa Psi. As a reminder, Alpha Kappa Psi is the world’s largest and oldest professional Co-Ed Business Fraternity. I am responsible for managing my chapter’s multi-thousand-dollar budget, collecting dues, budgeting for events, reaching out to Santa Clara University for funding requests, and more.

• I attended the Women in Investment Annual Dinner at Santa Clara University, where I heard from four panelists about their experiences in the business world as women. This dinner was incredibly valuable, as I learned about some of the struggles women face in an industry dominated by men and what I can do to help bridge this gap.

• I attended the annual Leavey School of Business case study competition, where I was invited to judge fellow students as they answered questions about the case. This year’s case was about Nvidia, and I was fortunate to attend the panel after the event, where co-founder of Nvidia and SCU alumnus, Chris Malachowsky, spoke about the early days of Nvidia and how it grew to be the largest company in the world. 

Professional: 

• Over the past two quarters, I continued to do virtual coffee chats with industry professionals. In preparation for my internship at JPMorgan in their Commercial Bank division, I primarily spoke with people from JPMorgan, and especially those in the Seattle office in preparation for my summer internship there. I was able to meet with 18 people from the office in roles ranging from analysts to managing directors prior to the start of my internship. 

• I have now begun my internship at JPMorgan in Seattle. I am in the office five days a week, and I have been learning an incredible amount about the financial and banking world. It is hard to believe that I am already halfway through the internship program. In my next quarterly update, I will give a high-level overview of the internship and some of the things that I was able to learn! 

• In preparation for this summer internship, I took a few online courses. I took an Excel basics course on Coursera to brush up on some Excel skills, and a commercial banking course through Financial Edge to prepare with some of the skills required for my internship. 

Life:

• Over the Winter and Spring quarters, I made a few trips up to Tahoe to ski and I was fortunate to be able to go to Coachella this year with some friends. If you have not gone, I would highly recommend it – I will definitely be going back in the future!

• In terms of upcoming trips, after my internship ends in early August, I will be heading to Nashville, Boston, and Martha’s Vineyard for two weeks before heading back to Seattle. 

What’s Next:

• I will be interning for another 5 weeks at JPMorgan my internship is 9 weeks in total).

• I start my senior year (crazy that I am already almost done) in late September, and I look forward to soaking it all in this year. With that being said, I am able to graduate a quarter early from SCU, so I have decided to take the quarter off in the Fall instead of the Spring, so while I will be down in California for part of the Fall quarter, I will not be in classes. I plan to spend the Fall traveling with my mom, taking some online courses, continuing my work on campus, and reading, so if you have any good book recommendations, let me know and I will be sure to check them out!

Recommendation:

My recommendation for this mailing list is in a slightly different vein than in past emails. Instead of recommending a certain podcast to listen to or a mailing list to sign up for, I recommend reading The Wall Street Journal’s article “CEOs Start Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud: AI Will Wipe Out Jobs” along with other AI-related articles (many of you likely already have). As AI continues to grow faster, I was interested in learning more about what executives were saying about how it will impact their companies. While I don’t hope to scare anyone with this article, as someone who is beginning their career at a time when AI is cutting a lot of entry-level roles, I figured it was something I should learn more about to better understand how it might impact me in the future. This article is very short but reveals how business leaders are now openly acknowledging that AI will lead to large-scale layoffs, which is no longer theoretical but already happening across industries. 

The article had a few key quotes that are worth mentioning that speak to this reality. The first quote was from Marianne Lake, CEO of JPMorgan’s consumer and community business who told investors that she could see JPMorgan’s “operations head count falling by 10% in the coming years as the company uses new AI tools.” Given that I am interning at JPMorgan this summer, and hope to receive a full-time offer, this quote struck home as AI could already be impacting my career and whether that offer becomes a reality. The other quote from the article that I wanted to highlight was from Anthropic CEO, Dario Amodei, who stated that “half of all entry-level jobs could disappear in one to five years,” which would result in 10% to 20% unemployment in the US.

While it is clear that companies are laying off employees to save costs as employees are typically the single largest portion of operating expenses, there are serious risks. If unemployment increases by even one percent in the United States, that would mean hundreds of thousands of people are out of a job, which would reduce consumer demand and lead to widespread crises like we saw during the start of COVID-19 (and are still recovering from). 

By reading this and other similar articles about the growth of artificial intelligence, we are allowing ourselves to better address the problem. While states do have laws pertaining to AI, most of these laws relate to child protection, deep-fake laws, and overall digital identity theft; there are very few laws related to businesses hiring and firing practices related to AI. As the article notes, US Federal Reserve Chair, Jerome Powell, has even admitted that AI “has enormous capabilities to make really significant changes in the economy and labor force,” but only time will tell how it will be regulated to reduce these effects, if at all.

I highly recommend reading this and other articles that discuss how AI will impact the job market in the future. While admittedly it is concerning, it is important to understand where we are heading. 

I hope you all have a great summer! ☀️

Best,

Jenson