Business, Finance & Life: Summer Program Promotes ‘Love, Growth Mindset, and Humility’ to Future Financiers

Although economics has yet to win universal recognition as a liberal arts discipline, it currently holds the title of the University’s most popular major. According to the University’s most recent Majors Report published in April 2026, 288 students elected to pursue a degree in the subject. In 2024, aiming to support the University’s current students, investor and entrepreneur Thomas Matlack ’86 founded Business, Finance & Life (BFL), a summer program that Matlack claims develops practical knowledge and fosters the critical soft skills that receive less attention in traditional finance classes. 

Matlack based BFL’s pedagogy on three core principles. 

“One [principle] is humility,” Matlack said. “Another is unconditional love, meaning that there are no grades; we’re all just trying to get better. The third is a growth mindset, meaning we’re going to give each other a lot of feedback, positive and negative, constructive or positive, in the attempt for each of us to be the best we possibly can.”

The first BFL program took place in 2024. After it concluded, Matlack conducted a survey that asked students to compare their summer experience with the experience of taking a finance course at the University. 

“Of course, all the students said it was far more valuable [than taking a finance course at the University], but one student said, ‘No, it wasn’t as valuable; there’s so much more you could do,’” Matlack said. “This initially annoyed me because I had put my heart and soul into it. And then I thought, ‘Wow, I gotta take my own medicine here and really think about that.’ And [that student] was absolutely right. There were so many things we could have done better.”

After reflecting on the results of the survey, Matlack decided to expand BFL, which originally accepted male athletes exclusively, to all first-years and sophomores, also opening a Program Leader position to all juniors and seniors. He partnered with 10 corporate sponsors in order to connect BFL students to hands-on internship opportunities. 

According to Matlack, 25 students enrolled in BFL this past summer. The students were divided into nine sections, each of which was led by an upperclassman. The cohorts would discuss their experiences from the week and analyze assigned readings. Matlack said this format gave students opportunities to bond and collaborate. 

Former BFL Program Leader Sage Saada Saar ’26 described her experience with the organization.

“The entire summer program was over Zoom,” Saada Saar wrote in an email to The Argus. “Leadership would meet at the beginning and end of each week, the whole class would meet twice a week, and smaller groups within the class—referred to as ‘sections’ and ‘pods’—would each meet once a week.”

Sophia Hernandez ’29, who participated in BFL this past summer, described a typical day in the program, which was split between the classroom and an internship.

“The classroom side focused on this holistic intersection of business, finance, and life,” Hernandez said. “Then the second part was the internship, where we were all partnered with various search funds. I was partnered with a search fund based in Mexico City called Lanus Capital Group, and I was lucky enough to work with two amazing MPs [managing partners]. My main day to day was spent working on two main projects: creating a really extensive prospect database…and also benchmarking the three [of Lanus’] biggest competitors in the space.”

Hernandez described the internship as the highlight of the program. She found applying finance concepts in real-world scenarios and language immersion deeply rewarding. 

“My internship was completely in Spanish, and that was something that honestly taught me a lot,” Hernandez said. “I was lucky to have a boss that pushed me and supported me in that area.”

Saada Saar appreciated the community aspect of the program.

“I love the BFL community,” Saada Saar wrote. “It has left a lasting impact on me. I loved the camaraderie every time we signed on for a meeting. I loved working with my students, watching them apply themselves, cracking jokes with them, seeing how much they got out of the program.”

Partnering with a diverse array of firms exposed students to new career paths.

“I feel that anyone who’s interested in a career in business and finance at Wesleyan will generally believe that consulting and investment banking are the only [options], which frustrates me to no end,” Matlack said. “Number one, I think for most people, that’s a poor choice. And number two, it’s like two precent of what is available in terms of the whole breadth of the business world. I’ve brought in friends of mine who are CEOs and other business leaders from as diverse a group of really cool mission-driven businesses as I possibly could to say, ‘Hey, you can do any of these things. You don’t have to be a banker or a consultant.’”

Hernandez echoed Matlack’s view. 

“At the end of the day, you can’t just follow a job that makes money,” Hernandez said. “Everyone wants to work in finance. But what does that even mean? What are you sacrificing? What do you have to learn, especially coming from a liberal arts school?”

This summer, Matlack wants to attract a wider range of students to the program.

“The cohort as a whole was 40% women [last summer],” Matlack said. “As a result, we consciously made the sections look kind of random, but they weren’t. We wanted to make sure that the people in each of those groupings were as different as possible to provide the maximum amount of learning from each other. Ultimately, the students would report that [the sections] were one of the best parts because they got to know perspectives people they never would have.”

Saada Saar agreed and credited part of her section’s closeness to its diversity. She stated that several BFL students maintained their friendships and connections at the University.

“The application was open to all Wesleyan students, and my section consisted of students from all backgrounds,” Saada Saar wrote. “That was really intentional by Tom [Matlack], and it ended up creating an environment of friendships that probably wouldn’t have existed on campus without BFL.”

Matlack strives for BFL to have a lasting impact on students’ lives, crafting a core part of the program around life lessons rather than technical finance instruction. 

“I think there is so much pressure for undergraduates at this point to figure out the rest of their life,” Matlack said. “That is so unhelpful, unfair, and leads to poor choices. So for me, the number one goal is allowing students to reflect, allowing them the space to say, ‘Let me really think about who I am. What are my strengths or weaknesses? What are my passions? What could be a logical next step? What are all the different varieties of careers I could have?’”

Hernandez added that the life lessons connected to finance concepts, citing Matlack’s advice on compounding as an example.

“Tom [Matlack] instilled in me the importance of compounding: your investments, but also your reputation,” Hernandez said. “Everything you do, starting way before college, is impacting how people are seeing you, so you should choose to be like a kind person and someone who people want to work with. Every action you take is compounding towards that image of you.”

Matlack commented on the University’s current lack of business courses, as well as the meaning of the liberal arts for students interested in finance. 

“I fundamentally do believe in a liberal arts education,” Matlack said. “There are all kinds of schools where you can get an undergraduate degree in business or finance. I don’t necessarily think that that’s all that [is] useful, and it’s just not what Wesleyan is about”

Still, Matlack said he believes “liberal arts institutions need to be a lot more thoughtful about how they bridge to the real world,” especially how universities prepare students for careers within the private sector.

Matlack reasserted the uniqueness of BFL, claiming that its lessons in soft skills could not be communicated through a University course. 

“What really ultimately matters in business, and I would argue across the board, is EQ [emotional quotient],” Matlack said. “It’s about how you can lead people, recruit people, retain people, and communicate with customers. None of that really fits into the Econ department. The goal is to let [the interns] have an experience that fundamentally changes the way they view their life and their future.”

According to Saada Saar, BFL nevertheless fits well within what she calls the “ethos of Wesleyan.”

“Technical financial lessons were only one component of [BFL], and they were always framed around broader life lessons,” Saada Saar wrote. “For example, Chris Gaffney, the founder of a large private equity firm, didn’t talk to us about financial models or how he values companies. He talked about resilience, and how multiple failures were necessary on his road to success. It’s a testament to the true liberal arts spirit of understanding one discipline within the broader context of life.”

Matlack wants BFL to push back against finance bro stereotypes of students interested in business and finance by basing it in a growth mindset, emotional intelligence, and all facets of a working life.

“There certainly are people who arrive [to BFL] as finance bros, but they do not leave as finance bros,” Matlack said. “Particularly among male athletes, I would say there’s always going to be a group of people who either want to go work at Goldman Sachs or UBS, or they believe that they’re going to start the next trillion-dollar company right at 20. I would dissuade them of both those notions quickly. Building EQ and the capacity for humility, growth mindset, and unconditional love are really antithetical to the arrogance of being a finance bro.”

Hernandez found Matlack’s unique strategy convincing. 

“I think [BFL pushed back against finance bro stereotypes with] the focus of doing finance through a lens of understanding why you want to get into this industry and what it means to you, rather than saying ‘You’re gonna make a shitload of money, and also you might not have a life,’” Hernandez said. 

When asked to summarize BFL’s mission and future goals, Matlack focused on individual experience and self-discovery. 

“This is all just an opportunity to experiment, get muscle memory, figure out how to become a more refined version of ourselves and how to have a first experience in the working world,” Matlack said. “In the end, I care most deeply about it being an opportunity for mostly [first-years] who are beginning to think about the rest of their lives and careers to have the space to reflect and really think deeply about what a meaningful life might look like, whether that’s in business or something else.”

Leah Ziskin can be reached at lziskin@wesleyan.edu.