Paulius Urbonas

I enjoy my current role because it allows me to develop a wide array of hard and soft skills, work with talented people, and face clients on a regular basis. As Corporate Finance Analyst at a consulting and investment banking boutique, I am staffed on mergers and acquisitions and capital raising projects for telecoms, media, and digital clients in the Gulf and Southeast Asia. My day-to-day job includes creating client presentations, information memoranda, preparing business plans, creating valuation models, and providing general support for the projects.

NYU Abu Dhabi helped me to adjust easily to my company's international environment. Not only the liberal arts experience (especially the tough coursework and demanding faculty members of NYU Abu Dhabi), but also an opportunity to spend two semesters in New York helped me to prepare for my first job.

My extracurricular endeavors, including the economics and finance student group, the basketball team, and three summer internships, were also instrumental in landing the job. They helped me to stay engaged with current events and gain important out-of-classroom knowledge. Participating in student groups (both at NYUAD and Stern) helped me to discuss and critically analyze concepts in business, finance and other disciplines. This was especially helpful in the interview process as employers were interested in hearing what sort of background knowledge and opinions I had about their firms and the challenges facing them and their industries.