Eight of 13 Berkeley Haas Finance Fellows Target Investment Banking

By Daniel Okafor

UC Berkeley Haas selected 13 MBA students as 2026-27 Finance Fellows. Eight are pursuing investment banking. Five are dedicated IB Fellows.

The five dedicated fellows target roles tied to Bay Area offices of bulge-bracket and elite boutique banks. Two C&J White Fellows and the Evening and Weekend MBA Finance Fellow are pursuing the same route. Haas again reported the highest market share of summer associates starting their careers in investment banking in the Bay Area market.

U.S. News ranks the Haas undergraduate program No. 3, according to the school. According to Haas, every fellow receives a scholarship award and an assigned alumni mentor. The mentor may be a recent graduate or a senior executive in the fellow’s field.

Who received the 2026-27 fellowships?

• IB Fellows: Jacky Chen, Adam Ferguson, Vivian Ji, Richard Lee, and Brian Oh.
• Entrepreneurial Finance Fellows: Claire Blazewicz, Caroline Guirgis, Kayle Kane, and Olive Li.
• PE&IM Fellow: Alessandra Bianco.
• EWMBA Finance Fellow: Michael Carter.
• C&J White Fellows: Henry Chen and Joseph Kang.

Haas says fellows are chosen for their preparedness and promise in finance. The assessment includes the clarity of their path toward their career goals.

Why are eight fellows pursuing investment banking?

William Rindfuss, managing director of Strategic Programs in the Haas Finance Group, said: “Around half of our Finance Fellows this year came to Haas from outside the US.”

Rindfuss linked that mix to banks’ openness to international candidates. Those candidates often bring finance experience from other financial centers. Others come from tech and life sciences companies around the world. He described Haas as an ecosystem for them.

Haas also said many international students studying finance at Haas are pursuing investment banking.

What paths are the fellows pursuing?

According to Haas, Adam Ferguson, MBA 28, built his early career at biotech startups. He programmed and engineered laboratory robots. The machines took over work scientists once did by hand. He most recently led an automation team at a company developing protein-sequencing technology.

Ferguson, a St. Louis native with a bioengineering degree, often felt removed from the strategic and financial decisions shaping the companies where he worked. “We’d usually hear about a big deal the morning it was announced, and then learn the deal team had been working on it for months,” Ferguson said. “I wanted to be in that room.”

Ferguson now pursues a full-time MBA and a master’s in bioengineering. He is recruiting for healthcare investment banking roles. Ferguson said he can already reason about the science and technology. He came to Haas to build the finance skill set.

According to Haas, Joseph Kang spent seven years in commercial real estate investing in Korea. He was most recently an associate director at a REIT management firm. There, he analyzed tenants. His tenant portfolio included Coupang, the Korean e-commerce company. Kang visited its distribution centers regularly.

Kang’s first visits showed automated systems with sorters and conveyor belts. A year later, AI robots began moving goods across the floor. Kang also saw the company test self-driving trucks. The real estate stayed largely the same. Operations inside evolved rapidly. That contrast stayed with him.

He chose Haas over other top MBA programs that admitted him. He cited the school’s technology focus and investment banking track. He now recruits for technology investment banking as a C&J White Finance Fellow.

According to Haas, Caroline Guirgis spent nearly four years in KPMG’s ESG data advisory practice. The work took place in Chicago and New York. She worked with large financial institutions. Their tasks included measuring greenhouse gas emissions and implementing software to automate tracking. She also produced sustainability reports disclosing decarbonization goals and progress.

She later joined Workiva as a Solution Engineer on its growth team. Workiva is an enterprise SaaS company. It produces financial and sustainability reports. Guirgis translated large clients’ needs, driven by an evolving regulatory environment, into product requirements. Her role expanded beyond sustainability into broader regulatory reporting.

For the Southern California native, the dual MBA/Master of Climate Solutions degree offered a route back into climate. Guirgis said she loved her experience advising as a sustainability consultant. She then built as an operator at a climate tech company. Now she wants to fund the next generation of breakthroughs and accelerate the energy transition.

She cited California’s national standing on climate and Berkeley’s dual-degree program. She also cited what she called the school’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Her undergraduate internship at MassChallenge, a Boston startup accelerator, prompted her to apply for the Berkeley SkyDeck Venture Fellowship. Guirgis and five colleagues sourced early-stage startups. They pitched them to the investment team. That experience led her to apply for the Fall Finance Fellowship. After graduation, she hopes to join a climate-focused venture capital fund. The fund would invest in early-stage companies.

The next measurable outcome is placement. Eight fellows are recruiting into a Bay Area market where Haas says it has the highest summer-associate share, while Guirgis is aiming at a climate-focused venture capital fund.