A Georgetown soccer player, two football players, and a sailor walked into a bar. They all have the same walk: with demanding schedules and little time to spend on their advancing careers, these student athletes have to choose between their dedication to their sport and their post-athletic lives.
Recognizing their challenges, Henley Tippins (MSB ’26), Conor O’Neil (MSB ’26), Max McCormick (MSB ’26), and Vaughn Slatoff (MSB ’26) set out to find a solution. The four created Athletes Invest, a Georgetown financial investment club designed specifically for student athletes wanting to integrate their commitments.
The club’s mission is to take athletes’ existing discipline and teamwork-oriented character and equip them with the knowledge and investment skills necessary to succeed in the financial world.
“The idea was to start a finance club catered towards student athletes’ needs, goals, while leaning into what they’re great at,” Athletes Invest CEO and Georgetown football player Gardner Heitzmann (MSB ’27) said.
In the three years since its creation in Fall 2023, Athletes Invest now has over 60 active members and represents 16 Georgetown varsity teams. Off the Hilltop, the club has developed its connections through a board of advisors and an investment committee featuring Georgetown alumni at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
Approximately 2% of NCAA Division I athletes land professional careers in their sport, meaning that a large majority of athletes enter the traditional job market following graduation. A popular option is finance, where former college athletes constitute over 20% of the industry.
However, with less time to dedicate to job searching and connection development, student athletes are often underprepared, Heitzmann said. Finance recruiting can take anywhere from 12 to 18 months and require intensive networking to get your foot in the door.
For Athletes Invest head of operations and women’s tennis player Katie Garofolo-Ro (MSB ’27), the club gave her the opportunity to learn about different sectors of the industry and prepare for the recruiting process.
“When I was applying to the club, I knew I wanted to do finance, but I didn’t know what jobs were out there,” Garofolo-Ro said. “Athletes Invest does a great job of presenting other avenues like sales and trading, which is what I entered into.”
What makes Athletes Invest unique is that it is entirely structured around the schedules of student athletes. With long practices, intensive workouts, and frequent travel, athletes are typically unavailable for regular club meeting schedules with attendance policies.
“We might meet at absurd hours of the night on any random given day with not a lot of notice,” Heitzmann said. “Everyone prioritizes their sport more than anything else, so being empathetic toward certain things like, ‘Oh, practice ran late,’ or, ‘I can’t make this meeting,’ is super important.”
To get involved, Athletes Invest offers two education tracks: a General Education Program open to all student- athletes, which features introductory finance sessions and recruiting guidance each week, and an Internal Education Program designed to introduce more advanced financial techniques.
For the selective Internal Education Program, students can apply until Sept. 13 to be a part of the analyst class, where members participate in a semester-long program run by the head of education, squash player Ella Schoonmaker (CAS ’27).
For analysts, the Internal Program path provides a range of topics including financial modeling, how to use AI in finance, and how to present yourself to recruiters.
After an analyst has completed their education, they begin working on the core of Athletes Invest: the investment fund, where student athletes are given an opportunity to develop pitching skills, analyze real investments, and interact directly with investors.
The fund is made up of four coverage groups, including healthcare, consumer, technology, and real assets. Each group gives two stock pitches a year, which, if approved by Georgetown alumni, are bought by the investment fund.
“It is an investment fund which is catered towards making sure people have hands-on experience actually doing the work that they’ll be doing at an internship,” Heitzmann said.
Once a member joins a coverage group, they can move around to find the topic that suits them best.
Since its founding, Athletes Invest has doubled its network of alumni, featuring over 1,000 former student athletes. Through the outreach team, run by squash player Valentina Cuccolo (SFS ’27), Athletes Invest sends dozens of weekly cold emails, calls to alumni, and connects Athletes Invest’s mission to the wider Georgetown alumni network.
The alumni play a critical role in Athletes Invest through firm visits, speaker events, and an annual New York City Summit. The first summit featured just over 80 alumni and 40 students.
“This year […] we had 200 alumni come and 60 current student athletes come,” Heitzmann said.
For the student athletes, the opportunity represents a chance to see the finance world in action and network with industry leaders.
Athletes Invest also offers an internal mentorship program in which analysts are given a more personal opportunity by pairing one-on-one with an alumni mentor.
“Everyone handles that relationship sort of differently,” James Martino (MSB ’28), a Georgetown sailor and Athletes Invest analyst, said. “You can talk to them on a more personal level and ask the dumb questions.”
Student athlete alumni are especially willing to take on a mentor role.
“They understand the grit and determination it takes to balance,” Garofolo-Ro said.
Beyond the relationships with alumni, the athletes noted the significance of the relationships built within the club. Between new friendships and older student mentors, many find themselves more comfortable and well-supported than they do in other areas on campus.
“There’s a reason why I’m more involved in this club than I am in other clubs. It’s the culture of the people,” Garofolo-Ro said. “I don’t ever feel scared to ask a question […] I feel like I deserve to be there.”
