Name: Tripti P. Thakur
Major at Baruch College: Finance and Investments 
Company: MyPoints.com
Title: Vice President, Finance
Graduation Year(s): 1999
School within Baruch College:  Zicklin School of Business


 

Please briefly describe your current profession in-detail including your responsibilities and tasks. I head the FP&A role at my company. I have full P&L ownership, define and determine metrics, have business intelligence responsibilities, run all due diligence / M&A projects, provide all information for financial reporting and have a leadership / strategic advisory role with a direct report into the President.   
Please briefly describe your career path to-date, including the reasons behind job changes you made since graduating from Baruch College.
After graduating, I was a participant in the two-year financial leadership program at AT&T as an Associate Manager. I was promoted to Manager, where I learned a lot about financial modeling and running business cases. I was the lead analyst in modeling out the AT&T Wireless opportunity. I was at AT&T for over five years and when I left I was the CFO of 1-800-CALL-ATT. After AT&T, I went to graduate school and attended New York University. I then began working on Wall Street as a sell-side equity analyst at a firm that covered small cap stocks. My sector of coverage was Financials, and I specifically looked at online brokerages. In 2008, I moved out to San Francisco for my now-husband, and moved back into FP&A. I have been at my current company, ever since.  
How did your experiences at Baruch College (e.g., academic studies, extra-curricular activities, student groups) prepare you for your career? My experiences at Baruch are such a large driver of my career progression. It was at Baruch that I felt my first flurry of excitement when I figured out the NPV of a project, where my Marketing professor recommended that I become a tutor, where I found an internship at Merrill Lynch and where the fantastic OCR efforts helped me secure multiple interviews and, subsequently, offers at AT&T and Lehman. I am certain that the opportunities that I have been given, would not be possible without the remarkable professors and resources at Baruch.
What job resources (e.g., internships, work-study jobs, summer and/or other work opportunities, etc.) have influenced your career choice(s)? While at Baruch, I had a summer internship at Merrill Lynch. I found a few mentors that gave me the opportunity to run asset allocation models and gain deeper knowledge of Excel and company-specific systems. These same mentors wrote me letters of recommendation and I was able to help my friend – a fellow class of ’99 Baruch classmate – land a role there after graduation.
Today, what advice would you give to an undergraduate or graduate Baruch student interested in your field? Do not underestimate the value of your internships. They provide invaluable access to contacts, early job skills and can help you to determine where you want to start your career.
How can an interested person contact you?