Michael Kearney, Senior Business student and President of the Finance Club, introduces the "Financing Forward: Tips for Your Future Self" panel. Seated from left to right are Kevin Coccomo, Wealth Management Advisor and Managing Director at Northwestern Mutual; Lee Kyriacou, Head of the Fraud Scams and Mitigation Workgroup of the Faster Payments Council and Mayor of the City of Beacon; and Joseph Grande, Senior Account Executive at Unique – Enterprise AI for Finance.
Mount Saint Mary College’s School of Business and Finance Club presented “Financing Forward: Tips for Your Future Self,” a panel discussion designed to equip students with practical strategies for long-term financial success, on Tuesday, April 7.
The event, held in the Aquinas Hall Atrium, featured industry experts who shared insights on managing money, navigating market conditions, and the growing role of artificial intelligence in the financial sector. Michael L. Fox, Acting Dean of the School of Business and associate professor of Business Law, opened the program by highlighting the college’s commitment to providing students with professional-grade resources.
“This program is an extension of our building out of our finance offerings,” Fox explained. “As you know, we have sort of the crown jewel in the School of Business, our Maloney Investment Lab with the ticker and the Bloomberg terminals.”
The discussion was moderated by student leaders Michael Kearney of Highland Mills, N.Y., a senior Business major, and Nicholas Clarino of New Windsor, N.Y., a junior Accounting major.
The panel included Kevin Coccomo, Managing Director at Northwestern Mutual; Lee Kyriacou, Head of the Fraud and Scams Mitigation Workgroup of the Faster Payments Council and Mayor of the City of Beacon; and Mount alumnus Joseph Grande ’94, Senior Account Executive at Unique – Enterprise AI for Finance.
A major highlight of the talk was the discussion regarding Artificial Intelligence. Grande, who transitioned from equity trading at firms like Goldman Sachs to developing AI products, offered a grounded perspective on the future of the industry.
“I don’t think that any job could be automated in the next 5 to 10 years,” he explained. “But I think everyone’s job is going to change dramatically. The way I see it, it’s mostly going to affect portfolio managers, analysts, investment decision-makers in not necessarily how many people do the job, but how much information they can consume.”
He added that while the amount of time they work likely won’t go up, the volume of work they can complete in the same time will.
Addressing the importance of early financial discipline, Coccomo shared his personal approach to managing debt while in school. “I’m a big believer in working hard through college,” he noted. “There’s plenty of opportunity to go work and manage student loans.”
The panelists also discussed the intersection of finance and public service. Kyriacou described his journey from the private sector to local government: “I found my intellectual stimulation in finance and banking and numbers. And I like the finance industry because there are problems to be solved, there are analytical approaches to how to do so, and there’s actual answers. What I found was my interest in doing something in public service was served for me by doing it on the side.”