When the GW Ramsey Student Investment Fund launched with $1 million in seed funding 18 years ago, it was designed to give students real-life portfolio management experience. What was not foreseen was the exceptional performance of the student-run fund, which has grown in value to $4.5 million, outperforming the S&P 500 Index.
On Sept. 30, at the inaugural GW Ramsey Scholars Investment Summit, George Washington University President Ellen M. Granberg and School of Business Dean Anuj Mehrotra joined top-performing students—past and present—who managed the fund over the past five years to discuss the investments, the students’ careers and the markets.
“Eighteen years ago, none of us knew how this would all turn out. Not only has it worked but it has worked extremely well, beating the S&P 500—something that only 20 percent of professional managers manage to do,” said Rodney Lake, director of the GW Investment Institute (GWII), the School of Business entity that teaches the fund management courses. “How do we give real experience to students while they’re on campus? Not with a paper portfolio but with real money and a real way for the school to benefit.”
In remarks opening the half-day summit, Granberg said that when alumni ask her about the rising cost of higher education, she tells them that the focus should be on the value of the education students receive.
“The question is how are we going to offer value that merits the cost,” she said. “I think [the GW Investment Institute] is the one of the best examples of the value-creation proposition I have come across in my time.”
The Ramsey Student Investment Fund, which was launched in 2005 with seed funding from W. Russell Ramsey, B.B.A. ’81, HON ’14, and his wife, Norma Ramsey, has since become one of the top 25 student-run funds in terms of assets under management, according to Lake. GWII Student Investment Funds build portfolio management directly into the curriculum. Students taking GWII courses also manage investment portfolios for the Phillips Student Investment Fund, the Real Estate Student Investment Fund and the Quant Student Investment Fund. The total value of the four funds is currently $7.5 million.
Ramsey was confident that experiential learning through GWII would prove the students' ability to compete with the S&P 500, but the extent to which they continue to outperform that benchmark “has been a positive surprise.”
“They have exceeded our expectations. I want to give the students tremendous kudos,” he said, adding that Lake’s commitment was also pivotal to the program’s success. “I’m so thankful that the leadership of the school allowed this to germinate.”
Annually since 2019, the top 10 students across all classes taught through GWII have been selected as Ramsey Scholars, an honor that comes with a $5,000 award. Both graduate and undergraduate students are eligible for the distinction. The GW Ramsey Scholars Investment Summit marked the scholars’ first official reunion. Ramsey Scholar Victoria Godunova, M.B.A. ’22, said her GWII courses gave her a clear advantage in landing a job at S&P Global in New York.
“In a final pitch [during a job interview], I recommended investing in one of the credit rating agencies,” she said. “They were impressed by how much I knew about credit ratings and how to evaluate a company. I’m sure that helped me get the job.”
Ramsey Awards are funded from a portion of the endowment payout from the GW Ramsey Student Investment Fund. To date, the Ramsey Scholars program has presented $250,000 in financial awards.
Ramsey, who studied at GW on a baseball scholarship, has built multibillion-dollar businesses in the fields of investment banking and money management. In March, he was among the first group of inductees in the new Entrepreneurial Hall of Fame at the School of Business.
The chair and CEO of Ramsey Asset Management is a deeply committed alumni. He served 15 years on the GW Board of Trustees, including two terms as its chair. In 2022, he gave the keynote address for the GW School of Business Undergraduate Commencement Celebration. He has also taken part in the George Talks Business series hosted by the School of Business.
The 18 Ramsey Scholars at the summit represented a microcosm of the financial services industry, working across accounting, government consulting, real estate and economic development, portfolio management and insurance. Several are employed with top tier firms, among them JP Morgan Chase and Co., UBS, Deloitte and Amazon. At least two plan to merge their financial knowledge with law degrees.
Josh Luberda, a 2022 Ramsey Scholar, said GWII classes not only gave him the technical skills needed for his position with Cambridge Associates, where he works as an analyst in the firm’s Arlington office, but it also provided him with the soft skills he needed for success, including the ability to collaborate and work as part of a team.
“A good portion of my job is analysis. It’s 50-50 hard skills to soft skills,” he said. “When I am talking to firms and people … I am using presentation skills and other soft skills.”
He noted that a recommendation by an alumni was instrumental in his being hired by Cambridge Associates. “The GW alumni network has been fantastic,” he said.
Ramsey Scholars are now found across the country and even outside the United States. Hatoun AlHazmi, an associate financial analyst at Saudi Aramco and a 2022 Ramsey Scholar, traveled from Saudi Arabia for the summit.
“The summit is a platform for us to continue to connect with our students and learn from one another,” Lake said.“The vast majority of the Ramsey Scholars have gone into financial services. We want to hear about the projects they’re working on, increase our connections to the industry and build our alumni network.”
Lake told summit participants that students rely on a simple set of rules, based on principles espoused by Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, to guide how they approach investment decisions, which focus on U.S. publicly listed securities with market capitalizations over $250 million. They learn about the management of publicly listed companies, how to evaluate the quality of the business and work to understand the valuation of the company and its balance sheet.
The summit, which was also open to current GWII students, included a keynote presentation by Perry Williams, president and director of research at Arlington-based international investment firm Sands Capital, who discussed his company’s global growth strategy.
