Wall Street Next Challenge
For Honors-PLUS' VeVerka

You wonder if Adam VeVerka can handle what he's gotten himself into, moving straight from business undergrad onto Wall Street.

After you talk to him for a few minutes, however, the balance of your worry may switch to whether Wall Street is fully ready for Adam.

Such is the strength of VeVerka's spirit, most clearly personified in his persistence. Wall Street, the most competitive business environment in the world, may be a long way from Cincinnati, but it's right up the alley of VeVerka, one of the success stories of the first graduating class in the College of Business Administration's Carl H. Lindner Honors-PLUS program.

Though just 23, VeVerka has already served as a personal assistant to Lindner, the Cincinnati business legend, worked at the right hand of one of Cincinnati's most promising entrepreneurs and served two stints on Wall Street co-oping for Goldman Sachs.

Now he's moving into the position of technical associate in information technology for investment banking giant Credit Suisse First Boston. VeVerka's job search offers a couple of prime examples of his persistence.

When looking for leads last winter, he came upon a list in "Money Magazine" of the Top 100 Portfolio Managers. VeVerka figured why not see what would happen if he called some of them directly. He tried about 15 of them, hitting them with his spiel: "Hi, I'm Adam VeVerka. I've had experience at Goldman Sachs. I'm a student, and I want to learn more about what you do."

VeVerka got five callbacks from the managers, including one who called him on his cell phone from a taxi in San Francisco. After talking with VeVerka, three of the managers thought enough of him to give him names of contacts in their firms' human resources office.

"It's just a matter of persistence. You keep on bugging people, but you do it by being polite and patient," VeVerka says.

In the same vein, VeVerka knew his job search in a tough Wall Street economic climate might be hurt by being in Cincinnati. So he took it upon himself to call human resource contacts he had made and tell them he was making a trip at his own expense to New York. He asked if they could at least meet with him.

VeVerka's big break had a tie-in back at the College of Business Administration (CBA). Norm Baker, the founding director of Honors-PLUS, recommended VeVerka contact Richard Thornburgh, a 1974 CBA graduate who is now vice chairman of the executive committee and chief financial officer for Credit Suisse First Boston.

"It couldn't have been a worse time in my life," Thornburgh recalled while meeting with the Honors-PLUS students in late May. "Adam sent his e-mail along, and I'm in the process of having to layoff 3,000 people."

But persistence again was VeVerka's most effective skill.

"He did sweet talk my secretary," Thornburgh laughed. "She said, 'This young man has sent you four e-mails and you're involved with his university. You have to see him.' "

Thornburgh opened doors in his organization, but it was still up to VeVerka to land his own position. As an information systems major with an integral concentration in finance and real estate, VeVerka found a good fit in a unit working for Evan Bauer, Credit Suisse First Boston's chief technology officer of global technology infrastructure.

Bauer oversees information technology, as well as advising the bank on technology-related investment banking deals. "I'll be helping him out on research, so that he remains the expert on technology," VeVerka says.

It's the kind of dream starting position VeVerka had in mind after serving as his class president at Princeton High School and then heading into the inaugural class of Honors-PLUS.

"It was an opportunity I couldn't pass up," he says. "It's definitely been all that I expected.

"The program has given me so much opportunity above what other students have had. Co-op, seminars, the fact that it felt so much more personable, it had the feel of an Ivy League school. We did a lot of casework, and going through college with a group like this, you learn how to work together really well. We grew and learned together."

Click here to read about other UC graduates.

To meet other UC people, go to the profiles archive.