Business, Consulting & Finance

Investors like Steven Schwarzman, the co-founder of Blackstone (the world’s largest alternative asset manager), exemplify how a liberal arts education can be a robust foundation for a successful finance and management consulting career. Schwarzman, an interdisciplinary major, leveraged his broad educational background to become on cure of the most successful business leaders in the world.
Many other preeminent financiers came out of the doaors of liberal arts colleges or with liberal arts degrees. Among many examples, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, David Solomon, studied History and Politics at Hamilton College; Abigail Johnson, the CEO of Fidelity Investments, studied Art History at Hobart and William Smith Colleges; James Gorman, the CEO of Morgan Stanley, studied Arts and Law at the University of Melbourne; and George Soros, one of the most successful hedge fund managers in history, studied Philosophy at LSE.

The Harvard-published business classic, “Blue Ocean Strategy,” by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, emphasizes the difference between “Red Oceans” and “Blue Oceans.” Red Oceans represent highly competitive markets where everyone fights for the same opportunities, leading to saturated and bloody competition. In contrast, Blue Oceans are untapped markets (or career opportunities in our case) with little competition, where innovation and fresh perspectives thrive. In simple terms, it may be much harder to differentiate oneself as a regular Finance or Business major, given the number of students coming out of undergraduate business schools today. There are little “Blue Oceans” left for those who follow the same path as most others in the industry. In contrast, liberal arts graduates often bring a unique, interdisciplinary approach that allows them to think outside the box and find these Blue Oceans in finance and management consulting. Their diverse skill set enables them to identify new opportunities and innovative solutions, setting them apart in an industry dominated by traditional business backgrounds.

There is more information in the markets today than any time before. Any investor have access to almost any public financial metric and can access almost any data source in no time. Everyone can get live updates on the markets, almost any technical knowledge is available online, and the AI is takin on much of the manual work toady. The question is, what else may be needed for successful careers? Looks like, even in the age of AI, every businessperson works with other people, and having a chance to be effective and precise in one’s communication abilities is crucial in the world with massive amounts of information. Warren Buffet, arguably the world’s most successful investor, said that taking a course on public speaking and communication from Dale Carnegie, was one of the best decisions in his life. Here at Soka, no such course is needed: the resources are available at hand and every student has an opportunity to practice one’s skills in small class setting.