Karen Dsouza

What do you hope to gain professionally from the Wharton MBA? (500 words) 500 words June 2020 Today, completing three years at BofA. I stayed in late, reflecting upon my journey. At nineteen, Dad, having survived a heart attack, finally educated me about the family’s assets. I realized that the standard learning curve circumvents investment education and since, have aspired to fill this gap. At BofA, working in a tight-knit team, we capitalized on our collective strengths and doubled our top-line in three years. Alongside, I earned my CFA Charter, partnering with two associates to launch an INR 1M investment firm. My long-term vision is to empower 440M Indian millennials achieve their financial milestones – a demographic that contributes 70% to national household income, but invests less than 10% of it. To fulfill my vision, a formal education in portfolio management, tech innovation and entrepreneurship, through Wharton’s transformative leadership training is tailor made for me. June 2026 Three years since I joined BlackRock as an analyst in the Client Portfolio Solutions team. Working with Aladdin Enterprise, the best-in-class, operating system for investment management, helped me apprehend how risk analysis technology can be deployed to disrupt a mature industry. Prof. Gibbon’s Financial Derivatives framework gave me a head start, enabling my selection as a fellow for Wharton’s $2M student-run fund. Wharton’s Learning Teams model helps me navigate Blackrock’s team dynamics, training me for persuasive leadership. By heeding to Cassandra Wolcott’s (’18) advice to sign-up for the Andes Mountaineering expedition, I enhanced my pace-setting leadership style with finer nuances of empathy and co-dependence. June 2030 Last year I launched Aamdani, a millennial-focused robo-advisory that curates personalized investment strategies and encourages micro-investing. We leverage technology to overcome India’s most pressing challenges in this industry - informational asymmetry and cumbersome documentation. We aim to democratize finance by making it affordable and intuitive. I am reminded of my days as co-chair of Common Cents Club, when I built a lifestyle-budgeting tool that helped Philadelphia locals take ownership of their finances - an idea championed by the club’s founder Swati Patel (’18). The experience helped me create strategic scaling solutions for Aamdani. Winning the Innovation Fund Award further enabled me to build proof-of-concept and meet my future business partner. Long before admittance, UPenn’s Coursera course ‘Design : Creation of Artifacts’ introduced me to Prof. Ulrich. Subsequently, I moved to San Francisco for a semester and positioned myself under his tutelage, learning to marry west coast’s pragmatism to east coast’s romanticism. Through Product Design, gaining expertise in innovation pipeline management and customer need identification helped chart Aamdani’s future growth trajectory. Organizing Entrepreneurship Conference 2022, I invited David Klein (’12), founder of CommonBond. His mastery of blockchain technology for online security helped me address distrust of online financial services. Participation in Innovation, equipped me tackle inter-disciplinary problems, strengthened my customer acquisition strategy; poised to make Aamdani a household name. Seven years ago, Wharton’s Stevens Center is where my fledgling idea took shape. Today, as I return as a FinTech collaborator, life has come full circle. I couldn’t be prouder of my thriving Wharton community!