Meet the Zicklin School Prodigies Investing Over $1 Million of Baruch’s Endowment

Would you trust a bunch of college students to handle your investments? If you’re a member of the Baruch community, you probably already do. 

Meet the prodigies of the Baruch Investment Management Group (IMG), a group of Baruch students, mostly from the Zicklin School, who officially manage over a million dollars of real money that’s part of Baruch’s endowment fund.  

Alex Schukin

IMG was co-founded back in 2010 by Alex Schukin (BBA, ’13) and some friends as a way to showcase their “passion for finance” and gain experience with investing ahead of the standard junior-year internships. “We saw that opportunities for finance internships were coming earlier and requiring you to know certain things before you could even take a class that would teach them,” Alex explains.  

At first, IMG invested online using a paper trading account. But the process the group devised of researching companies, pitching and presenting stocks for potential investment, and developing and educating younger IMG members was real, modeled on the structure of Wall Street investment firms. 

Then the money became real too. After graduating in 2013, Alex was invited to join the Baruch College Fund board of trustees, and he arranged an opportunity for IMG to persuade the trustees that they should let IMG invest a piece of the endowment.  

Sold, the trustees gave IMG an initial $250,000 to launch a long-only equities portfolio. Flash forward to today, and IMG now handles $1,400,000 in “assets under management,” or AUM, of Baruch’s endowment. 

How do freshmen and sophomores who haven’t even declared a business major yet know how to invest? Let’s have senior Daniel Stark (BBA, ’25), who was IMG’s president and CEO for fall semester 2024, explain.  

“IMG holds Saturday workshops for the first seven weeks of the semester, taught by the chief development officers of the club, who are typically juniors and seniors,” Daniel says. “They cover everything from accounting, intrinsic valuation methods, capital markets, and mergers and acquisitions, to financial restructuring and leveraged buyouts. We also work on soft skills, such as helping students with interview preparation, doing resume reviews, and giving them networking tips. We also provide them with resources to guide their self-studying in preparation for recruiting.”  

Many students who try out for IMG have some exposure to finance, but some—like IMG’s current president and CEO Simran Hassan (BBA, ’26)—were unfamiliar with it. Simran describes the process: 

Simran, Ivan, Daniel (left to right)

“We hold interest meetings for students who want to learn more about IMG. If they’re interested, they submit their resumes and we look for prior initiative or leadership experience, but not necessarily within finance. I didn’t have financial experience, but I was involved in various leadership roles at my high school and that was sufficient for a first-round interview. At the first interview, we don’t ask any technical questions and instead try to gauge the candidate’s motivation and interest in finance as a whole. Towards the end of the interview, we give them some resources, like The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and investment banking guides, to prepare for the more technical questions we ask during the second interview, which is Super Day.”  

What’s Super Day? Ivan Sirotkin (BBA, ’26), IMG’s current vice president and COO, tells us more: 

“We borrowed the name from Wall Street. On Super Day, students do three half-hour interviews back to back and they have to pitch a stock. This lets us gauge their interest in the markets and see if they keep up with financial news. They don’t have to pick correctly, but they should be able to discuss the merits of the company.”

So far, so good. Once they’re at IMG, students can join one of the sectors that cover different areas of the economy, such as consumer goods and retail, energy and utilities, healthcare, and so on, as analysts. Each sector has a manager overseeing it, and there are also portfolio managers who make sure the overall distribution of investments is balanced among different sectors.  

Every group that’s in charge of a sector pitches three companies per semester that they think IMG should invest in. If they do their homework and pitch persuasively, their stock might get picked, or put on a “watch list” and picked later, depending on performance. 

Anything else? Did we mention that IMG now manages nearly a million-and-a-half dollars of AUM? Or that last year they outperformed NASDAQ and the Standard & Poor’s fund by eight percent?  

IMG leaders lightning round: 

Zicklin News: Where did you go to high school? 

• Daniel: Staten Island Tech 

• Simran: Forest Hills High, in Queens  

• Ivan: Bronx Science 

Zicklin News: Why finance? 

• Daniel: I had a strong quant background (engineering and robotics) in high school, but as I got older I wanted to pursue a more dynamic career. I started looking into the markets when interest rates were very low and there was a lot of consumer buzz. That led me to apply to business- and finance-oriented programs.  

• Simran: I wasn’t interested in finance until I started my studies at Baruch. The finance-oriented environment that surrounded me from the very start eventually prompted me to attend an IMG interest meeting, where I learned about the fast-paced and detail-oriented aspect of the finance industry. This resonated with me, so I applied to the club; ever since then, my involvement in IMG has only increased my interest in finance.  

• Ivan: I’ve had an entrepreneurial drive since I was a kid. When I was 14, I talked my way into a job at my local hockey rink, and I’ve also worked at Starbucks. Dealing with money and being around other working people gave me the mindset that finance is interesting—more so than scorekeeping or being a barista. I also have an older brother who works in finance in Europe.   

Zicklin News: What was your favorite stock you pitched at IMG?  

• Daniel: Piper Sandler. I pitched it as director of the financial institutions group during an economic downturn, because even as interest rates were going down, Piper was investing into strong growth areas. Our investment thesis played out well, and Piper Sandler was a strong addition to our portfolio.  

• Simran: Endeavor Holdings, a media company. It was my favorite pitch because it was a shift from the tech-focused companies that are most commonly pitched by IMG’s technology, media, and telecommunications team. It gave me an opportunity to learn more about an industry that I did not have much expertise in. Endeavor was one of our top three holdings for a while and was a successful investment opportunity for our portfolio.  

• Ivan: Arthur J. Gallagher, an insurance brokerage firm. We didn’t have any insurance brokerage exposure at the time and it was exciting to be able to explain the concepts given my insurance background. IMG didn’t end up investing, but it’s on our watch list.  

Zicklin News: What’s next for you?  

• Daniel: I’ll be working in mergers and acquisitions for the Bank of Montreal. 

• Simran: I have a summer internship at Deutsche Bank, where I hope to be invited back full time. Eventually I’ll probably go back to school to get an MBA.  

• Ivan: I’ll be doing a summer internship in investment banking at Wells Fargo, where I also hope to get a full-time offer. At some point I’d like to get experience in venture capital or private equity, and I can also see myself going for my MBA. 

The IMG team would also especially like to thank the members of faculty and the Baruch College Fund who continue to support the organization’s growth:  

• Marietta Bottero, who runs the Financial Leadership Program at the Starr Career Development Center  

• Laura Kotkin, assistant vice president for Baruch College Advancement  

• Stuart Shikiar (BBA, ’68), Baruch College Fund trustee  

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