Author: Martha Carol
The directors of Occidental’s student-run investment portfolio, the Blyth Fund, expect to receive predominately male applicants for the 2010-2011 director positions. The Blyth Fund is currently comprised of a majority of white, male economics majors, despite the pursuit of diversity in its selection of directors.
The Blyth Fund is a portion of Occidental’s endowment, set aside to be managed by a group of 14 student directors -the title that each member receives upon being accepted in the fund. Currently, out of the 14 directors, only two are women. The group has a significantly higher percentage of men within the group compared to the 43.2 percent of men that comprise Occidental’s greater population.
The Blyth Fund directors claim to hold diversity as a key asset to their functionality and success as part of a student-run portfolio. According to the Blyth Fund Web site, the faculty advisors select members with “intelligent minds of varying academic and cultural backgrounds to create the most versatile and well-balanced group of investors possible.”
However, despite the directors’ aspirations for diversity, the current ratio of women to men is a recent low, said Economics Professor Woody Studenmund, who acted as advisor to the Blyth Fund for the first 32 years of its existence.
“The number of women in the Blyth Fund goes up and down. Sometimes we’ve had almost 50-50, other times it’s lower,” said Studenmund. “If there are not enough women on the fund, it’s not because of a problem with selection. It’s probably a problem with advertisement or with recruiting because the selection process itself, in my opinion, has been fair. In fact, if you look at it the two faculty advisors, both are female so its hard to believe they would have a bias against females.”
This year’s faculty advisors to the Blyth Fund are Assistant Professor of Economics Lesley Chiou and Associate Professor of Economics Sita Slavov.
According to president of the Blyth Fund Richard Highsmith (senior), the low number of women within the Blyth Fund can be traced back to a low number of women within the applicant pool.
“Over the past two years, the ratio of men to women that apply to be directors on the fund has been around 10 to one,” Highsmith said.
Treasurer of the group Richard Infantino (sophomore) speculates that the low percentage of women working in the fund is a reflection of greater disparity within the majors of Occidental.
“The demographics of the fund represent the [male-dominated] demographics of economics majors,” said Infantino.
Associate Director of Intercultural Affairs and staff member of the Center for Gender Equity Naddia Palacios pointed to the financial nature of the club as the cause for the unequal ratio of women to men. “The small number of women in the Blyth Fund doesn’t surprise me . . . I remember when I was at USC all of the volunteer jobs or leadership positions were predominantly filled by women and the jobs that paid a lot or had some sort of monetary recognition were filled by men,” she said.
The Blyth Fund is closely tied to the economics department, which has been proactive in promoting a place for women within its own ranks, said Studenmund. While currently 37.6 percent of economics majors are female, five out of eight tenure-track faculty members within the economics department are women.
“In terms of role models, in terms of encouraging women to participate in our major, and since the majority of the [economics] faculty are female, you know that we are trying hard that we are setting a good example,” Studenmund said. “The people we have are superb and we think that they should be attracting females. So I think we are doing above average job in terms of national rankings.”
The imbalance of gender representation within both the Blyth Fund and the economics department is a reflection of a gender trend in the national and international financial sectors. According to a recent study by Catalyst, a non-profit organization promoting opportunities for women in business, women represent a small minority of upper level administrative positions within financial businesses. The study concluded that 13.5 percent of Fortune 500 executive officer positions were held by women and that 15.2 percent of Fortune 500 corporate board seats were held by women in 2009.
In an attempt to balance the proportion of men-to-women within the fund, the current directors plan to emphasize the importance of diversity.
However, The Fund expects to attract mostly economics majors. Currently all but one of the Blyth Fund’s directors have declared economics as a major.
“Through this recruiting process we are doing now, we are really trying to target the non-traditional student groups that hopefully can bring some different perspectives to the club . . . It’s definitely a goal of the fund to increase the diversity -not only adding more females to the fund, but also more non-economics majors,” Infantino said.
The faculty advisors manage the selection process for new directors to replace any graduating seniors and other departing directors every spring. However, senior directors also play a large role in deciding which applicants will go on to become directors in the fall.
“The president often asks, after looking at the candidates, how come there are not any [directors from an underrepresented subset of people]. And it has happened in the past that we’ve had to go back and look at the members of the Blyth Fund to make sure that we’ve done a proper job of considering all applications.” Studenmund said.
Lead by President Highsmith and Vice President Alex Salter (junior), the fund currently holds $118,000 in a variety of assets from Google, to General Mills, to Chevron. In previous years, the fund has focused mainly on investing in stocks. However, the recent economic recession has led the group to seek a greater variance in investments, said Infantino.
The Blyth Fund was initially started in 1977 after Richard Link, a previously anonymous donor, gave Occidental an $80,000 donation with the purpose, as stated on the Blyth Fund’s Web site, to “give students hands-on experience in investment management and to broaden interest in finance among the most promising of students.” The Fund has been maintained by students continuously since 1977, even as similar funds in other schools have gone bankrupt.
“Real investment firms diversify with bonds. We’ve laid the groundwork so we can start doing that, which I think will keep us more grounded. Diversity hedges against risk. Bonds are a relatively safe investment and it will be good for us to be anchored with some safer investments,” Infantino said.
As markets hit all-time lows during the recession, the total assets of the Blyth Fund dropped to roughly $88,000 when the Dow was around 6000. The fund has recovered by about 35 percent since last March to the current figure.
Each meeting, held twice a week, is organized to fulfill the fund’s two main goals of asset preservation and education. The meetings open with “Market News,” where the directors discuss any stories they have heard or seen in the news that could potentially affect their assets or the economy as a whole.
The educational section of the meetings is referred to as “Blyth University,” during which one director will present a topic concerning investing and teach his or her fellow directors about navigating the economy. The role of Blyth University “teacher” rotates every week amongst the directors.
The third portion of the Fund meeting is devoted to a presentation of a stock snapshot of a potential investment or a re-evaluation of current stock.
Blyth Fund directors opened several of their bi-weekly meetings within the past few weeks for potential applicants to attend and advertised the meetings in the Oxy Digest. Although the directors have not reached the level of diversity of which they aspire, those who are involved in the Blyth Fund see it as a great opportunity.
“The cool thing
about it, especially compared to the liberal arts economics side of the education here at Occidental, is that the Blyth Fund gives you really hands-on financial, technical experience that you wouldn’t necessarily get inside of the classroom,” Alexander Lim (senior), a Blyth Fund director said.
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