From Hackathon to Higher Ed: The BlackRock for Universities Story

It started with a Hackathon

In 2019, Sam noticed that university students across Georgia had inconsistent resources for managing their SMIFs. Some used the Bloomberg Terminal; others were working in Excel. SMIF managers were also mainly focused on individual stocks, rather than on portfolio construction.

• “My parents are schoolteachers in Atlanta, where I grew up, and spent a lot of time instilling in me the importance of continuous learning,” says Sam. “I’m naturally drawn to financial education, and being in U.S. Wealth Advisory, my team and I used the Blackrock Advisors Center every day to educate and help advisors build better portfolios.”

He realized there was an opportunity to bring Aladdin and its 360 Evaluator Tool to SMIF managers at local universities.

And so, he pitched the idea for BLK4U at an Atlanta office meeting for BlackRock’s 2020 Hackathon – an annual firmwide competition open to employees across all business functions and regions.

Atlanta proved to be the perfect place for launching it. The office houses a full ecosystem of different teams and business functions – enabling a true One BlackRock effort. And since the office is always looking to hire local talent, partnering with universities in the area was a natural fit.

“BlackRock is very focused on the intentionality of the Atlanta office and on bringing us together frequently to collaborate,” Sam says. “They created an environment where I could share an idea and have people actually follow through on their commitment to helping.”

Building BLK4U

Those committed to helping included not only local peers but also firm leaders like Marc Balizer, who leads the Aladdin Team in Atlanta, and served as the Managing Director Sponsor of the project.

• “Marc was hugely influential in getting this off the ground,” Sam recalls. “He’s been an incredible mentor throughout this entire process and found the right people within Aladdin to sponsor it, provide resources and volunteer hours toward it.”

The result: A four-week course offered in the fall and spring semesters, with each weekly class taught by a different BlackRock employee. “The goal of these classes is to give students the foundational understanding of portfolio construction, and to help them do that using Aladdin as a language of risk.”

Each class focuses on a key topic surrounding building and evolving portfolios using tech. For the duration of the year, participating students get access to the Aladdin 360 Evaluator Tool, which they learn to use and put at the center of their portfolio construction process.

• “The final class of the course is about understanding your audience and telling the story of your portfolio,” explains Sam. “We ultimately bring the numbers to life.”

Sam opens each class with questions for the teacher – What has been your path through the industry? What lessons have you learned? – and closes each with a Q&A session. “Students are able to ask detailed questions about finance and investing, but also about life and career, which is pretty cool.”

Expanding the BLK4U footprint

Following the launch, it became time to bring SMIFs to HBCUs so they, too, could participate in BLK4U.

When Emiere Scaife, an Associate in Technology Risk Management, joined BlackRock in 2021, he learned about BLK4U and was eager to engage with the HBCU talent he quickly realized didn’t have the necessary SMIF to participate.

So Emiere set out to change that — but it was no simple feat. “It was my responsibility to provide the template and guidance for how to build and establish a SMIF,” he explains. “But the groundwork had to be driven by the leadership and collaboration of the students involved. The faculty advisor and I act as oversight, but the students must believe they are owning and leading this effort on behalf of their universities.”

Emiere was eventually able to partner with four different HBCUs to launch their first SMIF. He even created a prerequisite BLK4U course to help bring them up to speed on the basics of managing SMIFs.

Today, students across Morehouse College, Spelman College, Winston-Salem State University and Hampton University are officially participating in the BLK4U program.

BLK 4 the future

Cameron Falk first joined BlackRock as a summer intern in 2020, but it wasn’t his first interaction with the firm.

• Now an Associate on the Transition Management team, he was a member of the University of Georgia’s (UGA) Terry College of Business SMIF. (UGA was one of the schools to pilot the BLK4U program.)

The program’s live demos and faculty Q&A sessions helped Cameron and his peers feel consistently engaged with the training. But his favorite part? “That would have to be the guest speakers,” recalls Cameron. “We were able to hear from a wide variety of senior leaders across the firm from both the technology and investment sides of the business. These speakers provided great advice about entering the workforce and making the most out of our first few years in our full-time roles.”

Being trained on using Aladdin before he started his full-time role was a game-changer for Cameron’s learning trajectory at BlackRock. “I was able to gain a much deeper level of exposure to the various tools Aladdin has to offer and when I returned full-time, I was able to hit the ground running with a concrete understanding of how the tools worked and how I could leverage them. It helped fast-track my first six months on the job. And no matter what path someone chooses after graduation, having the skillset from the program can help set them apart from their peers.”

It helped fast-track my first six months on the job. And no matter what path someone chooses after graduation, having the skillset from the program can help set them apart from their peers.

Cameron also notes that the program left him with a strong sense of respect for the firm. “The time and investment put into providing this program to college students is unprecedented and unbelievably impactful. Everyone participating in the program was grateful that BlackRock would devote the resources to conduct something like this. It left me with an even deeper level of assurance that I had made the right choice in choosing BlackRock to start my career.”

Just the beginning…

In just a few short years, BLK4U has gone from a Hackathon spark to an established program at 45 schools across the U.S. and Europe. “We’ve learned to scale systems and processes; and we’re looking to expand even more,” says Sam.

“Students managing SMIFs are the next generation of investment professionals. So our ability to teach and empower them is going to make them better investors on behalf of their clients and beneficiaries – today and in the future. And with BLK4U, we’re able to educate them not just about finance and investing, but also about who we are as BlackRock… I think we’re just getting started.”