Hi everyone, my name is Ben He and I will be a fourth year Finance and Real Estate student.

STEP Signature Project: I was an investment banking summer analyst at Stifel in their St. Louis headquarters. I was a part of the real estate group. It was a very lean team, so I was able to do a lot of work that a first year analyst would be doing which allowed me to learn so much.

After completing my STEP project, I have been able to reflect on my time. This project was much different than anything I have ever done because I was working around 60-70 hours a week. I definitely learned a lot about myself because I was able to find the motivation to get to work every day at 8:30AM and would leave the office at around midnight some nights. I have been able to grow so much from this internship.

There are many interactions and experiences that I have had which have allowed me to grow exponentially. Some of my favorite parts of the summer were sitting in on calls with CFOs of huge companies. It was very interesting to hear their thought processes when thinking through deals. Hearing the senior bankers talk with these c-suite executives was an awesome experience. The junior bankers were awesome and extremely willing to help teach me. The senior guys were also very nice, so the team definitely made the difference for me.

I have never done this much work in excel or powerpoint before, so it was really nice to be able to improve my skills there. I did so many different types of assignments and everyday I would be learning something new. I think I received hundreds of emails everyday for all of our projects.

My internship was such a great learning experience and allowed me to grow so much. Being able to work on Wall Street was one of my dreams as a kid. I worked extremely hard to be able to get this internship and have continued to work hard throughout my time at Stifel.

This transformation to my life is so valuable because I am able to take the skills I have learned and apply it back at school and in future careers. The amount of technical growth I have had from when I first started is unbelievable. Although I did have to work multiple 16 hour work days, it has allowed me to learn even more. Real estate and finance are very interesting to me, so being able to do a role specifically in real estate and finance was the perfect fit for me.