" R e f l e c t i o n o n M y E x p e r i e n c e a t C r o t o n a "

Brian Leon

2006

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. My name is Brian Leon. I am a senior at Fordham Prep and a student of the Crotona Center, which has been a second home to me over the last three years. But Crotona has also been the most awesome educational and formative experience of my short life, which I want to share with you today.

One of the first aspects of the center that I immediately find unique and appealing is that of friendship. I have developed several friendships with students and staff that go beyond typical interests, artificial hand-shakes, and phony smiles. These relationships have had many ups and downs, primarily due to my own personal shortcomings. For example, every since my grammar school years, I haven’t been much of a social person because of shyness. Crotona has changed that by helping me to see the good in others and myself.

With the rigor of AP and Honors courses at school, there should be no time left to waste. Crotona constantly made me aware of the importance of efficiency, productivity, and the necessary drive to struggle and persevere in the face of obstacles, not only for myself but especially for sake of others. For example, I remember saying to myself during my freshman year in Professional Skills Development, Crotona’s business program, “Derivatives…Differential Equations…What?” It was challenging, to say the least, and rewarding. I learned that, as should be with all things, I had to approach the matter at hand with an optimistic yet realistic attitude, supported by solid right-reason. With this, I excelled in the business program and earned an internship at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, an investment bank in Wall Street.

Before I go on, I want to take this moment to thank John Duffy, Peter Wirth, Frank Blanco, and Zinovy Losovich of KBW for giving me this opportunity to work alongside their employees as an equal. Looking at peers, I realize that the idea of a high school student waking up every morning, working 9AM-5PM for two summers in Manhattan in a part of the corporate world is extraordinary. I am grateful to have the experience of meeting such great, hard-working, and generous people. I am thankful to Crotona for making this possible by preparing me to do well and to take advantage of the internship.

At KBW, I used much math, not one of my favorite subjects, but thanks to the unique way that Crotona teaches calculus since freshman year, I was able to understand the meaning of functions to construct a financial model. I assisted with company research, gathering information from financial databases for which I had no prior training. But my familiarity with programming in Visual Basic for Crotona’s small business consulting helped me tremendously. At the end of each KBW project, I would always remember the importance of study that the Crotona staff repeated time and again and was guided in my quantitative and qualitative analysis of my internship work to present my conclusions to KBW management. I want to say that there is no way I could have attempted this work without Crotona’s business program. One way the instructor prepared us for this was by videotaping required presentations, such as our analysis of the GE-Honeywell failed merger in 2001, which we explored through a Stern MBA case study. It wasn’t easy because for most of us in the program, it was our first exposure to differential equations and pricing functions of monopolies.

Another important life skill that Crotona has imparted to me is how to prudently use my time. Although the KBW internship was challenging, especially at times when my supervisor only gave me thirty seconds on some days to let me know what I needed to do, I still had spare time. Crotona taught me to differentiate spare time from wasted time, to be efficient and productive, not lax and negligent; I spent my spare time studying note cards I had made of economic and business terminology, such as of the Real Estate Investment Trust market, and banks and thrifts. I also perused through many papers concerning the projects at hand—papers that if laid together would take up the space of my entire room. I was able to handle all the reading required because of the practice I had of reading subtle, philosophical texts in the business program.

Out of all that Crotona has taught me, I think study, as an intellectual habit, has been the most impressive. Constructing models, working with math, arriving at conclusions, communicating clearly, taking notes, and improving reading speed all fall under the umbrella of study—a preeminent virtue inculcated at Crotona and substantiated in my internship experience. This year I am taking a philosophy course at Fordham University, which would call study the means towards seeking the truth in all things. First and foremost, to see who I am as a person, endowed with talents that I must use in my response to the resounding call to leadership, to trust and be trusted, to love and be loved, to grow in virtue, and thus contribute to the good of society. This outlook on life I also apply to my faith. I have had my ups and downs, but I stand firmly in my convictions and believe I am ready to live according to them with freedom at college and for my entire life.
I look to the future with dignity and excitement. College is only a year away. I plan to pursue philosophy, in addition to business, at Notre Dame, Columbia, or U Penn. I see investment banking as a promising career I can dedicate myself to, though not at the expense of my family life or my faith, which I believe could best happen at KBW. And in all this, I will certainly try to cultivate further what Crotona has instilled in me.

I am not overly idealistic. Growing up in the South Bronx and of Hispanic heritage, I have found it difficult to stand out. I know my limitations as well as my capabilities. I plan to continue using the life tools that Crotona has given me, which strengthen my heart so that when obstacles and setbacks come – and I know they will come – I will still strive to live up to my potential as a successful professional and as a son of God. Why? Because I’m encouraged by the example my parents have given me. MOM, DAD, Thank you…You are the reason I ever joined Crotona and stuck with it. You are the reason I am graduating with good grades. You are the reason I stand here now. I want to thank you all for listening to what the Crotona Center has done for me. Please help the center even more than you have so that others like me, and those to come, like my younger brother may also enjoy life more fully. Thank you.

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