Photo by Bruce Gilbert
Different things get different people excited. For senior Carl Majette, it’s the thrill of the takeover that gets him going.
A finance major and Bronx native, Majette was extremely interested in focusing on mergers and acquisitions while at Fordham. That interest culminated just weeks before graduation, when Majette and a team of fellow Fordham students participated in an inter-university competition held annually in Philadelphia.
At the Penn Challenge, his Fordham team pitched a leveraged buyout of its own fictional company to a group of high-level executives from major financial firms across the nation, and made the final round.
But that wasn’t the biggest thrill he experienced in the past few months. After graduation, Majette will get his first taste of the actual business world when he joins Goldman, Sachs and Co. as an investment banker.
His interest in finance began several years ago, when he started following the stock market as a hobby.
“If I wasn’t working in finance, I’d still be following it,” he said. “I’m really fortunate to have the job that I have—to be working in the field I enjoy.”
A graduate of Fordham Preparatory School, he was familiar with the University years before he became a student. In his senior year at Fordham Prep, he took several classes at Fordham and grew more familiar with its strong academic credentials.
“I knew the school had a very reputable business program and it was pretty close to home,” Majette said. That, along with the flexibility offered by the University, which allowed him to intern in addition to his studies, made Fordham the right place for him.
While on campus, Majette served as president of the Finance Society, though the focus of the organization was more than just finance. It also worked to give back to the University community.
After competing in the Penn Challenge, Majette and others rushed back to campus to march as a group in the annual Relay for Life fund-raiser for the American Cancer Society. Ethical behavior was a major aspect of his Fordham education, he said.
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We have so many people in the Finance Society, I thought it would be best to leverage our numbers for the fund-raiser,” he said. “It’s not just, ‘Hey let’s get this job or make this money.’ We try to give back to the community outside of the club. There’s a strong ethic behind it, to make sure that no matter what you do in business and in your personal life, you always keep others in mind.”
That ideal was imparted to Majette by University faculty, whom he found to be outstanding instructors in the classroom and role models outside of it. From his professors, Majette learned how to create meaningful relationships with colleagues, a skill he will bring with him to Goldman Sachs.
“The deans we have are amazing,” Majette said. “I’m comfortable going up to them to talk to them just like I would any of my friends. You don’t see that at a lot of schools.”
