Welcome to the University of New Haven's Pompea College of Business. My name is Leah Hartman and I Chair the Accounting, Finance, and Marketing departments. I'm here to give you a brief overview of our Finance program, which was restructured and relaunched in the fall of '22. It's relaunched and restructured by the majority of our faculty who come from industry, meaning each of us has spent more than 30 years on Wall Street. And we're here to give back to students and to the next generation joining the financial services industry.
Here before you is our Orange campus where the upper level of junior, senior, and all of our graduate programs are held, it's also houses the business incubator in the lower level. And it's a special place for students to come together, share ideas, [be] entrepreneurial, assist one another in their learning activities, and become colleagues, long-term colleagues headed out into the workforce.
What we see to be the Charger advantage, of course, is our accreditation. AACSB represents 5% or less of worldwide College of Businesses. Because we come from industry, we know what the skill sets are required. We deliver market-driven, market-desired skills immediately.
When you join the university community here at the Pompea College of Business, and join the Finance program, we are here to help you help you build those markets skills, help you with the start and foundation of your career, and then help you network and build career networking opportunities. Students by the numbers all over the world. Many are first-generation students, I am one as well as two of my colleagues. We have a nice mix of international students within the undergraduate program and also within the graduate program.
Business is global. Finance is global. Interacting with people of other cultures helps strengthen your skill set. Again, market-driven skills. Most of our instructors here as shown on the screen come from industry. Professor Kishore, the founder of Mana Kay Partners and has spent his entire business professional career in Wall Street-related activities. David Sacco was at UBS Investment Bank as a Trader, and later on the Board of Directors, Matt Shear is still active in his merger and acquisition business. And my background was also first in investment banking, and then in securities research heading research are two different bond funds.
Whatever your interest in Finance, Financial Planning, helping those retire, plan for retirement, whether it's investment banking, whether it's real estate, whether it is joining a corporation in their finance team, we have you covered and market-driven skills, I can't emphasize that enough. We're here to tell you what's practical, what you need, and to tell you the truth. And we offer you hands-on opportunities for learning, with real clients coming into the college programs, digital fluency, everything's about analytics. Our program will be rebranded in the fall of '23 as Finance and Financial Analytics. Absolutely digital fluency. I'm sure several of you know, as you shop on an iPad on your phone or your computer, the marketers fine you it's about understanding how to access information and analyze it, not just access, not just create it, but analyze it so that you are a strategic thinker, and you can problem solve. And that the software that we use is here before you certainly the marketplace demands, Excel skills, and we ask you to start studying that excel as you enter into our first-semester program.
As I mentioned before, we have live clients. We have classes that work with live clients, we have research paid research opportunities, through the Liberty Initiative, and other clients that come into the program and ask where our students we offer an Investment Club where students gather to share ideas, but also to hear from outside industry experts who come back and talk about cryptocurrencies or talk about hedge funds, or talk about how to interview with the investment services community require 15 credit hours.
Part of this newly restructured is to actually help you build those skill sets again refocusing not just on one class but on how they mesh together and how they mesh together with the business core. The opportunities for electives are quite numerous we can have you reach out to other programs if that's where your interest lies. Clearly, flexibility is what's demanded by the marketplace. And you as a student joining our team have that flexibility within the undergraduate finance program where some of our students have joined across-the-board banking, investment banking, insurance, direct investments at Fidelity or Goldman marketing, data analytics, among so many other businesses driven by market-driven skills.
We offer you an opportunity whether undergraduate or graduate to study for the Chartered Financial Analyst exam, a three-year exam that is required by most Biocide or Investment Management. Some of the student testimonials here that come out have been that we are in the classroom with you. We are the practitioners we the industry experts have come back to share our experience. We don't have Graduate Assistants teaching in the Finance program. We have those of us who have been successful and want to give back. We've helped support students become employed at JPMorgan Chase, Naysayer Woodson here who was first at FactSet, which is a competitor to Bloomberg, and then joined the Carlyle Group, as a financial analyst, and is one now at one of the top three private equity firms in the world.
And Emily Watkins, who's moving from Finance into Forensic Accounting, where she's found her passion. Certainly financial aid is available. Scholarships are available. Again, understanding for many of us who put ourselves through school and know what it's like to have to work to, and go to school, and balance all of those career focused initiatives. We really hope that you will consider visiting us We are located in West Haven just outside of New Haven and easy trip from New York City or in Boston or wherever you might be in the New England or across the United States with easy access to airport.
We certainly hope that you will ask for more information about our program. Again, my name is Leah Hartman. I can be reached at lhartman@newhaven.edu. We're excited that we offer prospective finance students and market-driven education with day one the eye on the prize, getting that job that starts a career, not a job, but a career in financial services. Thanks for spending some time with me today.