I was Born and raised in Queens NY and I come from two Peruvian parents who immigrated here to give me better opportunities. I am the first one to attend college in my family. In High School, I got interested in finance through my time reselling sneakers, merchandise, and random products such as fridges and cards. The reselling community moved on to investing in NFTs and stocks. I also moved into personal finance as well with the wave. I invested in NFTs such as NBA Topshot and Bored Apes. Overall, NFTs taught me how to start to invest and how to forecast and research markets to increase profits. I didn’t invest in any stocks because I wasn’t legally allowed to but I started to learn more about rate hikes, CPI reports, and financial statements. Also, I got even more interested in finance through my SL Green Internship where we had a workshop with the VP of Finance who taught us Real Estate valuation and underwriting. Although I understood some of the presentations it sounded very interesting and I understood the basic concepts such as valuation. Since Real Estate Acquisitions generally took a really long due to legality issues and tenants refusing to sell their property. I was deterred by the long process of Real Estate Acquisitions that spanned various years and was more focused on companies that took 3-6 months. Naturally, this drew me into M&A but specifically in Investment Banking where we serve as a sell-side/buy-side advisor to companies. In M&A for businesses, we focus on providing financial valuation (Comparable Company Analysis, Precedent Transactions Analysis, Discounted Cash Flow Analysis, and occasionally Accretion/Dilution Analysis) and identifying synergies to show why an acquisition of a company can expand, decrease costs, or increase productivity for the buyer. I also found that my previous market knowledge is heavily tied into M&A more than Real Estate because in order to make up your assumptions for a Discounted Cash Flow Analysis you need to tie in the industry performance and the future outlook of the macroeconomy to make sure your assumptions are accurate. M&A is a very client-focused industry as well and involves a lot of communication, teamwork, and leadership skills. These skills resonate with my love for mathematics and meeting new people and working with groups. I hope to leverage my skills to break into M&A and work on some of the biggest and most diverse transactions.