Over more than three decades, Seema Hingorani WG96 has made a name for herself in the world of investment management — from launching her own hedge fund to serving as chief investment officer for the multibillion-dollar New York City Retirement Systems. Today, the managing director, senior client advisor, and operating committee member at Morgan Stanley Investment Management is also a champion of cultivating talent across the industry. As part of that work, Hingorani set out several years ago to address a problem she couldn’t ignore: Too few women were getting the exposure, training, and opportunity needed to enter investment management. Drawing on her own unlikely path, Hingorani was determined to rewrite that narrative.
The result was Girls Who Invest, a barrier-breaking nonprofit that has opened doors for women pursuing investment careers over the past 10 years. At the close of the program’s milestone anniversary year, Hingorani sat down with Wharton Magazine to reflect on the journey — from the early seeds that sparked it to the Wharton classroom where it all began.
Wharton Magazine: What experiences from your career on Wall Street and in the public sector first made you realize that the investment management field needed something like Girls Who Invest?
Seema Hingorani: It started with my parents. My mom and dad came to the U.S. from India with $8 in their pockets. They were both entrepreneurs. Dad built a design engineering firm. Mom built a residential real estate brokerage business in Norwalk, Connecticut, from scratch because she wanted to make sure other immigrant families weren’t treated like us. She grew Quality Homes over 22 years, and she wore an Indian sari every day to make sure everybody knew where we were from. It only occurred to me when I was writing opening remarks for Girls Who Invest at our launch party 10 years ago that I was just doing what my mom did by providing opportunities for people who’ve been overlooked.
Early on, I was told the industry had a pipeline problem. I decided we could fix that. I wrote an op-ed that Bloomberg published and then woke up one day with a 10-page business plan. I didn’t think of myself as an entrepreneur like my parents until I started Girls Who Invest.
WM: How has the organization evolved since you first envisioned it?
SH: I took two years out of my career to build Girls Who Invest. The model — training plus internships — seems simple but is hard to execute well. This was very much about getting women jobs in our industry. To me, it wasn’t enough to just educate them. I wanted them to try things out and have this career path as an option.
We started with 10 weeks — four weeks of training on Wharton’s campus, followed by a guaranteed six-week paid internship at a leading investment firm. In a few years, it became a seven-week paid internship. We added online programs in year three, because we were getting thousands of applications and didn’t want to discourage anyone because of in-person capacity constraints. We started with 30 women in 2016. This past summer, we had more than 220 women on Wharton’s campus and another 600 women in the online program. We’re also focused now on helping alumni get their next internships and full-time jobs and building continuing education into the community.
WM: Wharton has played an integral role in the group’s programming. What makes that partnership so special, and how has it evolved as the program has grown?
SH: Going back to the beginning, Bilge Yilmaz [private equity and finance professor and an academic director of the Harris Family Alternative Investments Program at Wharton] made a big bet on me. Perry Golkin [W74 WG74 L78], who is on the board of Girls Who Invest, introduced me to Bilge, who is also on the board. Bilge wrote the curriculum, helped recruit professors, and really has built this with me from that very first classroom of 30 women. Bilge brought in Burcu Esmer, who is now the Wharton academic director of our campus Summer Intensive Program and is on our advisory board. And Dean Erika James’s arrival at Wharton has strengthened the partnership even more.
Participants in the 2025 Girls Who Invest Summer Intensive Program at Wharton, with Seema Hingorani WG96 at front center
We recently kicked off a new program on campus called the Investor Leadership Program, for alumni of Girls Who Invest who have spent a few years in industry. We welcomed the second cohort to campus this summer and talked with them about boardroom presence, negotiating raises, positioning themselves for promotions, and more. We’re already seeing amazing results.
WM: This year, the organization named its Rising Star Award after Bilge. What inspired that decision, and what does the award represent for the Girls Who Invest community?
SH: We wanted to recognize not just a moment of support, but everything Bilge’s done for Girls Who Invest and for these young women. The award now honors a woman who just went through our program who embodies the spirit Bilge has brought since the start.
WM: Altogether, thousands of young women have participated in the organization’s programs. What impact have you seen on their careers or in the broader investment industry as a result?
SH: Girls Who Invest is about — and will forever be about — the business case. Having the most diversity of thought at the investment decision-making table is good for business, and we made it easy for our industry to widen their talent opportunity set to achieve that. We have fundamentally changed how our industry recruits talent, and that will benefit everyone, from teachers, firefighters, and police officers saving for retirement to students saving for college.
Right now, of the more than $100 trillion invested professionally globally, women manage a very small percent. It’s especially meaningful for me that we’re giving women a shot to pursue a career in our industry that they wouldn’t have gotten years ago. Girls Who Invest will always be tuition free. As the daughter of Indian immigrant parents who came to the U.S. with almost nothing, I never wanted money to be a limiting factor for any young woman to participate in our programs. Many of the talented women we recognized at our 10-year anniversary gala in October said they couldn’t have gone through the program if it had not been free.
WM: You’re doing similar work at Morgan Stanley to retain talent. Can you talk about that?
SH: I call it The Rising Investors Program, or TRIP. Our focus is on investors at the firm with zero to eight years of work experience, because you tend to lose people — especially women — in that time. I created a platform so that our talent could shine, share ideas, and advance in their careers. We kicked it off four years ago, and we’ve saved many people from leaving the firm. The idea is to share this blueprint with the entire industry.
