This week I have learned so much about myself as a person and what I
would like to pursue in the business world in the future and this is all thanks
to what Cornerstone has taught me throughout the week. We began the day on
Monday (and each day), at 9am sharp. Me and Uyen, one of the other externs,
arrived at the office and met the two other externs there for the week, Joey
and Nate. We then saw Tom Scalici, the Chief Executive Officer of Cornerstone
and he spoke to us about what he does within the company as well as what will
be expected for the week. We learned that Cornerstone is a private company
which manages assets for wealthy individuals and organizations, as well as
works with retirement accounts for their clients, etc. They truly put the
client first and stress total transparency between the client and cornerstone
when managing their funds, a trait I believe is very important and impressive. From
there we spoke to four other employees that day, including Parag Joshi, the
accountant who gave us an accounting problem to solve which really allowed me
to jump right in to his position and what he does, since I have yet to take an
accounting class and had little experience with the subject. We had a full day
from nine to five, and I must admit by the end of the day I was exhausted and
wondering how people in the real world work these full days! Tuesday we met
with five other employees. Brian Bobeck, a Senior Consultant spoke to us about
the importance of insurance (particularly life), and played out some comical
scenarios between the externs and I to portray different situations that life
insurance would be helpful. I definitely found this presentation interesting
because I never really thought about all of the different ways life insurance
can be crucial to an individual—and it is something we barely discuss while we
are in school which amazed me. My favorite presentation of the day; however,
was Ryan Wood’s, one of the Investment Analysts. He gave us a little project to
do which basically outlined the importance of looking at multiple variables
when choosing a money manager. I never thought I would be interested in this
type of analytical work, but after Ryan spoke I realized that I really enjoyed interpreting
the numbers and coming up with a conclusion. I obviously need to take a formal
finance class and learn more about this type of field, but it definitely opened
my mind up to what I would be interested in in the future. As the week went on,
we met with many other interesting individuals. One that made a pretty large
impact on my in particular was Mike Straubel, a Consultant who gave us some
great advice on job interviews and how to deal with the transition from college
to the real world. I found him very relatable to talk to (he was a Gettysburg
Grad!), and his career path in the past was very interesting to hear as well,
since he traveled internationally for work and is now at a smaller company and
enjoyed both working for a large and a small organization. 
Overall, I met some great people this week who taught us a lot about
what Cornerstone stands for as well as what advice they would give us for the
future. The overarching theme that many employees were preaching throughout the
week was that Cornerstone was truly a family, and I definitely saw that as I
watched the employees interact, whether they were joking around (we had an
extern “competition” at the end of the week involving a tiny basketball hoop
game ;)) or helping each other out with different projects and taking on tasks
within many different sectors of the organization. Cornerstone employees
definitely wear “different hats,” since they are a small company, and once you
are in a position Tom and Skip (the President of Cornerstone) encourage their employees
to continue their education and move around within the company. I think that is
definitely a huge benefit working in a small company such as this. Moving
forward, I plan on looking into taking some more in depth Finance courses at
Gettysburg to see if I am interested in working as a financial analyst in the
future.
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