Investing in the future
by Jennifer R. Lloyd (M.B.A. ’ 16)
Should you trust a college kid to handle your money? If that student is enrolled in the Student Managed Portfolio course at St. Mary’s University, the resounding answer is yes. Each semester, students apply to participate in this Finance course, which has been offered by the Greehey School of Business in one form or another for more than a decade.
Since 2019, the portfolio’s market value has grown from $2 million to nearly $5.5 million through the careful stewardship of students and their faculty adviser, Associate Dean Violeta Díaz, Ph.D.
Richard J. Rodriguez (B.B.A. ’26), of Sinton, said he came into the course in Fall 2025 “completely new to the concept of stock evaluation.”
“It’s just amazing that we have that opportunity here to act as portfolio managers and pull real-world data and apply it to a fund,” he said. “Some courses use a stock game to teach students. This is not a game. This is real money.”
The portfolio’s performance has kept pace with the S&P 500, and its investment strategy reflects Catholic values and considers environmental, social and governance ratings, which help ensure the quality of companies, said Díaz, also the Emil C. E. Jurica Professor of Finance.
Like Rodriguez, students can take the course for two semesters. In the introductory semester, students make investment recommendations in small groups to decrease the intimidation of managing serious dollars while learning to use the Bloomberg Terminals to analyze market data. In the advanced course, students make investment recommendations individually and mentor the introductory students.
“This is an excellent class because you learn very differently from the usual way, from a textbook or from lectures,” Díaz said, “I don’t need students to know everything about finance. Even if they’ve never invested in stocks, that’s fine, as long as they have discipline and want to learn.”
Alumni who took the course from Díaz or her predecessor attested to its impact on careers. For instance, Nate Bonsignore (B.B.A. ’18) now works at a private credit firm based in New York. As a sophomore, he was drawn to the seniors working diligently at the Bloomberg Terminals and began the class in 2017.
“It was really the first time I had put money to work in the stock market,” he said.
Later, Bonsignore found the investment guidelines helped him work with a variety of financial clients, “specifically faith-based ones, who have social exclusions,” he said.
A childhood friend of Bonsignore’s, John Diaz (B.B.A. ’18) took the portfolio course as well, crediting it with helping him learn how to think critically. Son of former University Trustee Joseph Diaz, M.D. (B.A. ’79), John Diaz joined many relatives who attended St. Mary’s. He started his career in New York and Boston before founding Stone Mountain Ventures, LLC in Dallas, a firm focused on early-stage health care investing.
“The course allowed me to see the immediate results of the decisions you make in business,” he said. “A lot of times, you learn stuff that’s theory through books or exams. But in the student-managed portfolio class, you know pretty quickly whether you are doing well or not. Early on, it allowed me to have that feedback loop and opened my eyes to the positive and negative consequences of the decisions I make.”
Professor Violeta Díaz aims to positively influence those interested in financial professions, especially women. Two of her former students based in New York — Azucena Rangel Olvera (B.B.A. ’23), a fixed income portfolio management analyst at BlackRock, and Mikayla Durham (B.B.A. ’21), a data and tech product manager at Bloomberg — shared the deep impact the course had on their careers.
Rangel Olvera, originally from Mexico, had stellar internships but still found the New York job market highly competitive. The course made the difference by solidifying her knowledge of finance and providing specific examples, such as a valuation she had just completed of Shell USA, Inc., which she used in an interview with an energy analyst, helping her land the role. Her knowledge of the Bloomberg Terminal, which she uses “every minute of the day,” helped too.
The same can be said of Durham, originally from Plano, who found that using the terminal and sharing research-based arguments were key to her future work at Bloomberg. Beyond skills, the connection Rangel Olvera and Durham felt with Professor Díaz helped solidify their career decisions. Durham remembered calling her professor when she was trying to decide whether to leave Texas and follow her vocation to New York.
“Having a strong female mentor drastically changed what I have done with my career,” Durham said. “Professor Díaz does a fantastic job of really pushing people to their full potential.”
