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Student Achievements

Student Finance Team Wins Opening Stage of Global Research Challenge

The students competed against teams from 16 universities in Northern California and Nevada.

A team of Cal Poly Orfalea College of Business students won the 2021-22 Northern California Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Institute Research Challenge sponsored by the CFA Society of San Francisco. It’s the third time Cal Poly has won the competition since 2017. The team advances and next competes against 11 universities from throughout the Western U.S. in the annual global challenge.

The students competed in February against teams from 16 universities from Northern California and Nevada, including: Santa Clara University; San Jose State; University of Nevada, Reno; University of San Francisco; and UC Santa Cruz. A panel of industry professionals and CFA charter holders judged the presentations.

Cal Poly analyzed and made buy/sell/hold recommendations for PayPal Inc., a San Jose-based multinational company that provides financial transaction processing services. PayPal, a one-time subsidiary of eBay Inc., offers secure electronic payment processing services to customers worldwide.

Five finance students represented Cal Poly: team captain Alexandra Joelson, Cameron Wong, Dominic Juliano, Shingo O’Flaherty and Samuel Paik. Finance Professor Cyrus Ramezani and Cal Poly alumnus Scott B. Kirk (Business Administration, Financial Management, ’05) served as team advisors.

“This project has probably been the greatest learning experience I’ve had here at Cal Poly,” said Wong. “I believe the project provided insight to the level of commitment and dedication needed to produce this type of report. This also tested our resourcefulness when conducting research and determining inputs for our model."