As the end of the Spring 2020 semester approaches, Honors College senior Amol Lotia reflects on the past four years he spent at Rutgers University.
Lotia enrolled in the School of Engineering during his first year, aiming to expand his analytical skillset and apply his problem-solving abilities. However, he also knew he was interested in business, having already tried his hand at entrepreneurship as a high school student. Driven by both of his passions, Lotia began his pursuit of a dual degree in economics and industrial and systems engineering.
During his sophomore year, Lotia was selected for the prestigious Road to Wall Street Program, where he had the opportunity to take a 3-credit financial modeling course, partner with a mentor in the industry, and network with Wall Street professionals. Participating in the program not only helped shape his interest in a finance-related career, but also played a key role in allowing him to secure an internship at global investment bank Credit Suisse.
Lotia continued to be involved with Road to Wall Street and is now assistant director of the program, taking on responsibilities such as helping current sophomore students with mock interviews and facilitating networking and recruitment for front-office Wall Street positions.
Seeing his mentees starting to receive internship offers of their own, he says, “This past year has been incredibly rewarding for me. It’s been really exciting to give back to a program that helped me so much through my own professional journey.”
Lotia holds a number of leadership positions. He is also a member of the Honors College Alumni Society Senior Board of Directors, helping to enhance the senior year experience and assist others in his class year in transitioning from undergraduate students to alumni.
“I see it as a way to keep the Rutgers Honors College community together, not just during the four years of undergrad, but beyond,” he explains. “I made some of my best friends and connections through the Honors College. I’m grateful for the experience and am looking forward to staying in touch with this great community of people.”
He also managed to incorporate the HC motto of “Curiosity. Knowledge. Purpose.” into his busy schedule.
“At first, I didn’t really understand the application of those three words,” Lotia acknowledges. “I thought it was a catchy phrase that they said during our introductory remarks. I really didn’t think much of it beyond that. But looking back at my college career, those three things are core values to everything that I do on a day to day basis.”
He uses his senior design project as an example. Originally tasked with creating an innovative solution to a problem of their choice, Lotia and his team felt that the prompt was too open-ended; they wanted to have a more tangible purpose. After reaching out to various companies, the team found a project—optimizing the packaging process to reduce cardboard waste for Louis Vuitton. Following extensive research and development, they presented their end product to the company. LV is currently planning to beta-test their solution in their distribution center that services 70% of their unit volume in all of the United States.
For Lotia, the constant emphasis on interdisciplinary education at the HC and the availability of professional development events were invaluable in shaping his direction through college. Initially, despite knowing that he wanted to study business and engineering, he was unsure where this would lead him in the future, but he was able to gain some insight from networking sessions with alumni, recruiters, and other professionals.
“A lot of people don’t necessarily just go straight into a manufacturing job or a typical industry job. In engineering, you can apply that analytical background to a lot of different careers,” Lotia says.
Fortunately, he has since had the opportunity to see how his engineering background can come into play in a career in finance: “When I was analyzing businesses Credit Suisse was running deals for, I had to do a lot of in-depth research. I was staffed on a deal for a company in the industrials space that had a lot of manufacturing processes that were highly technical and very core to their business model. Surprisingly, I was able to read through that material and truly understand the manufacturing process….That’s just one example of how this interdisciplinary education has helped me.”
After graduation, Lotia will be working full time at Credit Suisse within the Financial Sponsors Group. Though a career in investment banking can be very demanding, he looks forward to staying engaged with the Rutgers community, friends, and other alumni. Down the road, he hopes to work for a private equity firm making investments in businesses for which he can use his industrial engineering background to assess opportunities from both a finance lens and an operational lens.
“Because I am able to see not just from a business perspective...but also from the operational side, I understand how these two things link together in a way that I wouldn’t have if my education was only focused on engineering or only on finance and business. Going forward, that perspective is something I hope to leverage effectively and will certainly provide value for the rest of my career.”