Jing Ren, COL ’26, Malden, MA
As a first-generation, low-income student, I never imagined I’d find myself working at a credit hedge fund. This summer, I spent eight weeks at Silver Point Capital, my first foray into the corporate world. Silver Point, founded by Edward Mulé and Robert O’Shea, and I was thrilled to receive a free copy of “The Credit Investor’s Handbook: Leveraged Loans, High Yield Bonds, and Distressed Debt” by one of its partners, Michael Gatto. Reflecting on this experience, I am immensely grateful for the opportunity and the growth it brought me. Over the summer, I grew significantly, both professionally and personally, acquiring valuable hard skills and developing the soft skills necessary to thrive in a corporate environment.
Being the only intern was both exciting and intimidating. Surrounded by older, more experienced colleagues, I often felt the pressure to prove myself, especially given my non-data science background. However, every day, I was encouraged to step out of my comfort zone, initiate conversations, and introduce myself. A major takeaway from this experience is learning to be comfortable with the uncomfortable.
The hands-on and flexible nature of the internship was something I truly appreciated. I worked on various projects involving SQL, Power BI, and Alteryx. Most of my time was spent building a workflow in Alteryx to automate a recurring report that typically took 15 minutes to process manually. I successfully reduced the processing time to just three seconds. This report, sent to committees weekly to show benchmark returns, highlighted the potential for automation in the finance industry. I am proud that my work will continue to benefit the team even after I leave.
The internship at Silver Point is what you make of it. I had the freedom to shape my experience, learn specific skills, and connect with key people by voicing my interests. The small teams and flat hierarchy allowed me to have meaningful coffee chats with the CFOs, an opportunity I found incredibly enriching. My eight weeks at Silver Point were incredibly rewarding. Interacting with people from diverse backgrounds and bulge bracket banks provided fresh perspectives and taught me that titles and big names are not the keys to career success. This experience has deepened my interest in automation within finance. I am deeply grateful for this opportunity and excited about what the future holds.
This is part of a series of posts by recipients of the 2024 Career Services Summer Funding Grant. We’ve asked funding recipients to reflect on their summer experiences and talk about the industries in which they spent their summer. You can read the entire series here
