The Booth Experience connected with Michael Wright (MBA ’20), one of the two Private Equity Conference Co-Chairs, to hear about his experiences planning and running the conference.
TBE: This conference is a tremendous undertaking and one of the largest events that any student group hosts. What was the overall planning process like?
MW: Planning the conference was a tremendous leadership
experience. It was both lengthy (nearly a year of planning) and involved
(averaging 25-30 hours per week during the peak period in the weeks leading up
to the event). We managed 15 first-year volunteers and coordinated with
countless other constituents (speakers, panelists, moderators, sponsors, venue
personnel, Polsky staff, attendees, and others).
Last week, I heard from some of the heavy hitters in PE on just
that question at Booth’s 19th Annual Private Equity Conference. Hosted
by the Private Equity Group (PEG) and the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship
and Innovation, Booth welcomed more than 400 industry professionals to the event,
including many alums in private equity. Taking place in downtown Chicago’s
Magnificent Mile, the conference, titled “Investment Thesis Evolution: Growth
to Buyout,” aimed to explore how firms are specializing and segmenting
themselves to differentiate within an increasingly competitive industry.
Upon my acceptance to Booth in 2018, I received an outpouring of support from the Booth community. Both my email and snail mail were filled with notes, invitations and information about my new home for two years. One invitation was to the 2018 Dusable Conference. The DuSable Conference is the flagship event for Booth’s African American MBA Association. It aims to serve as the nexus for activity in Chicago’s Black Business Economy by delivering content to encourage collaboration between AAMBAA Students and Alumni, Chicago Black Business Owners, Chicago Black Professionals, and the broader University of Chicago Black constituency. While I was not able to attend the conference that year, I put it on my list of must-dos for my time at Booth.
If you were at Reggie’s Rock Club on the 7th of February, you would definitely think the latter. That night, half a dozen or so bands made up solely of Booth students took the stage and rocked out to a crowd of hundreds. The only way you’d know it was Booth was from some of the bands’ names such as Frosty and the Beverages, Algorithm, and The Invisible Hand.
Two years ago, I was anxiously awaiting business school acceptances. Not for me, but for my boyfriend Andrew. In the months leading up to the decisions, I had distracted myself with proofreading his essays, helping him with practice interviews, and researching different business schools and the cities they were in. When Andrew got his acceptance at Booth, it finally hit me that we would be leaving San Francisco. And not just San Francisco, but all my friends and family were in California, where I was born and had lived my whole life. We were about to move halfway across the country to a city with real winter, where I basically knew no one, and had no job lined up. Though all of that was truly daunting, I couldn’t help but be excited for the adventure.
