MiF Grads Make a Strong Start in Finance

Karen Mosoian, MiF ’25, grew up in Russia watching American movies about Wall Street. He dreamed about one day moving to the US to work in finance.

In an undergraduate course on finance markets and institutions at Italy’s Università Bocconi, Mosoian learned about Eugene Fama, the Robert R. McCormick Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at Booth, who’s widely recognized as the father of modern finance. In 2013, he won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his groundbreaking research on efficient markets.

Fama piqued Mosoian’s interest in Booth and inspired him to apply for the school’s new finance-focused program for recent college graduates. Mosoian believed the Asness and Liew MiF Program would help him land a job on Wall Street.

The MiF Program taught him how to code and sharpened his financial data analysis skills.

“I didn’t know how transformative this experience would be,” Mosoian says. “Everything I learned was useful. I met a lot of like-minded people from all over the world, and I made great friends. You don’t make these kinds of connections every day.”

The program’s flexible curriculum made it possible for Mosoian to work on a passion project with his physician father: bringing robotic surgery to Armenia. He negotiated material costs with executives from a Chinese robot maker using tactics he learned in his Strategies and Processes of Negotiation, taught by Erika Kirgios. Thanks in part to Mosoian and his father’s work, doctors in Armenia performed their first robot-assisted prostate removal, a complex surgery for one of the most common cancers, in early 2026. He wrote about the experience for his final MiF paper in Kirgios’ class and received a high grade.

“This was the culmination of all the skills I learned from my bachelor’s studies and from Booth,” Mosoian says.

In February, Mosoian joined Bank of America’s global markets division as part of the municipal bonds team in a trading strategies role. He landed the role after a summer internship there on the same team, and he credits the MiF Program with helping him fulfill his Wall Street dreams.

Tiger Dong, MiF ’25, learned about Booth’s MiF Program while he was a senior at the College of William & Mary. He was already familiar with Booth’s reputation for excellence in finance—its faculty includes some of the most influential finance scholars in the world, including several Nobel laureates in Economic Sciences. 

“Because of the contributions Booth’s finance faculty have made to the field, I thought the MiF Program was an incredible opportunity,” Dong says. “I also really appreciated that the program is customizable—you can focus on public or private finance. There’s a lot of flexibility.”

Of the program’s three core Areas of Specialization, Dong pursued Asset Management. Professor Stefan Nagel’s Advanced Investments class gave him the opportunity to write meaningful code.

“The professors are really good at combining their own research with what you can observe in the headlines and through empirical data,” Dong says.

He had the opportunity to apply what he learned in the classroom when an MBA student recruited him to analyze data for a team competing in the John Edwardson, ’72, Social New Venture Challenge. SNVC teams are tasked with developing a business model with a social mission at its core, while demonstrating a credible path to long-term financial viability.

“It was a unique experience, and I’m grateful I left my comfort zone to take it on,” says Dong, who helped with a project on portfolio optimization.

Last year, Dong completed a summer internship with Bank of America’s mortgage and securitized products trading team in New York; in February, he started a full-time position on the same team. “Booth’s Career Services does a great job connecting students with professional opportunities and with alumni,” Dong says. “Alums are really open to helping out.”

His current work entails evaluating financial securities for Bank of America’s hedge fund and insurance clients looking to invest. “Sales and trading is a team sport,” Dong says. “Everybody’s in it together. I’m looking forward to the possibilities.”

As an undergraduate in Italy, Tommaso Calcagno, MiF ’25, knew he wanted to tackle environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues by working in finance, where he could maximize his impact. But he wasn’t quite sure how to get there.

He decided to pursue an advanced degree in finance, setting his sights on top US universities. “I wanted to do something related to sustainability and energy, but I didn’t know enough about the professional landscape to have a very clear direction,” he says.

Booth gave him that—and more. In professor Christian Leuz’s Navigating the ESG Landscape course, Calcagno gained the confidence he needed to work in the ESG space.

“It was instrumental in developing my critical thinking skills,” he says. “Looking into corporate and investment strategies to tackle sustainability challenges forced me to explore questions there aren’t clear answers for.”

Behavioral and Institutional Finance, taught by Robert W. Vishny, was another favorite. The course motivated Calcagno to become a fundamentals-driven investor, viewing the world through a realistic lens rather than succumbing to excessive optimism or pessimism.

Calcagno had a summer internship in San Francisco at CRC-IB, a boutique investment bank focused on renewable energy projects, which was later acquired by Canaccord Genuity Group.

As an analyst intern, he supported financial structuring and modeling, assisted with project due diligence, and helped manage transactions for renewable energy M&A and finance deals. “It was a great application of the finance skills I learned at Booth,” he says. Calcagno received an offer of employment soon after his internship and began working there full-time in February.

His role is multifaceted, involving financial analysis, transaction management, and negotiations for deal documentation, with the end goal of ensuring projects receive financing. “That’s the thing I like about the job,” he says. “As the world evolves, inevitably it’s the role of financial advisors to come up with new, innovative, and efficient ideas to help with clients’ challenges.”

Christian Leuz is the Charles F. Pohl Distinguished Service Professor of Accounting and Finance. Stefan Nagel is the Fama Family Distinguished Service Professor of Finance. Erika Kirgios is assistant professor of behavioral science. Robert W. Vishny is the Charles R. Walgreen Distinguished Service Professor of Finance.