From Wall Street to Bethel University
Amanda Carter attended Yale and worked on Wall Street before wandering to Minnesota and finding her home at Bethel University.
By Brooke Olstad | Royal Report
Financial analyst Amanda Carter, at 22, watched as the numbers grew closer and closer to zero. In the war room at Merrill Lynch, the analysts watched as the stocks dropped. They could do nothing to stop it.
“We just watched in fear,” Carter said, remembering sitting in that war room. “What do we tell our clients? What does this mean for the deals that are already in the pipeline? What’s going to happen tomorrow? Is it going to be another free fall?”
Not a year out of Yale, Carter witnessed the stock market plummet 35 percent within one day in October 1987.
Professor Amanda Carter began teaching in the Bethel University Business and Economics Department in February 2016. She started with managerial finance and investments, taking on more classes when finance professor Brian Holland left on sabbatical.
Before Bethel University, Carter attended Yale from 1982 to 1986. She chose Yale for its academics in business and walked on to play for the women’s squash team.
“That was my fun,” Carter said. Yale’s squash team — coached by Dale Philippi at the time — won the NCAA D1 National Championship in 1986 and Carter said that day was one of the greatest of her life. But she couldn’t make a living playing squash.
“You either need to go to Wall Street because you’re very quantitative and you just have an intuition about numbers, or you should get a Ph.D. and teach,” Carter’s undergraduate adviser Stephen A. Ross said during her time at Yale.
“Which is so funny now looking back because I’ve done both,” Carter said. “I don’t have my Ph.D., but I have taught.”
“One of those 80- to 100-hour-a-week jobs.”–Amanda Carter, Business professor
Directly out of Yale with a BA degree in economics, Carter walked into Merrill Lynch in the World Finance Center in New York as a financial analyst in investment banking.
“It’s kind of like a boot camp,” Carter said. “One of those 80- to 100-hour-a-week jobs.”
Carter started out running analyses of debt issues, new equity or mergers and acquisitions in Excel. After two years of boot camp, Carter went back to school at Wharton — the Ivy League business school at the University of Pennsylvania — where she began her journey with an emphasis in finance. Split into cohorts, Carter navigated her first year at Wharton with 60 other business students.
“I was super blessed to be there,” Carter said.
She said Wharton’s staff contained more than 225 faculty members who were leaders in their respective fields. Graduating from Wharton, Carter started in trading, which dealt with the pricing of stocks. That’s when JP Morgan found her.
“Just by luck or God’s grace or whatever you want to think it is, I got put on the derivatives desk,” Carter said. She happened to be in the right training class at Wharton when the spot opened up at JP Morgan. “It was a one in a million opportunity.”
While working at JP Morgan, Carter began another journey in life when she married Colonel Steven Carter, who happened to be part of her cohort at Wharton. Both Carter and her husband worked big jobs — her on Wall Street and him at West Point — but that did not work for her.
“People who worked in my job didn’t see their children during the week,” Carter said. “That’s fine for some people, but that’s really not what I wanted.”
Carter took a year off when her daughter was born. After her year off, Carter got into corporate education on Wall Street as well as in Santa Barbara, California. She taught, her husband worked his job and Carter’s mom looked after their kids during the day.
“It was kind of a nice time in our family,” Carter said.
Her kids had at least one parent home for most of the time despite Carter and her husband working their big jobs. After 10 years off Wall Street, Carter missed the interaction with others in the finance industry. Carter’s husband worked in Minnesota after being relocated and her family moved to be with him.
To get back into the finance industry, Carter offered her years of experience with derivatives to The Clifton Group in Minneapolis. Carter worked part-time while her kids were at school. The Clifton Group accommodated her situation with her kids because she brought expertise in derivatives.
Time passed and soon Carter’s kids started driving. With extra time on her hands, Carter started working full-time at The Clifton Group.
“I just found myself spending way too much energy and mental time and actual time on my work. I just felt that God was not pleased,” Carter said. “I just felt this displeasure from him that my priorities were too skewed towards my career.”
Carter prayed. Bethel University’s Business and Economics department happened to be hiring for a third finance position and Carter grabbed the opportunity.
“We just hit the jackpot.”–Joyce LeMay, Business chair
Business and Economics Department Chair Joyce LeMay interviewed her and Carter started teaching managerial finance and investments at Bethel in the spring semester of 2016.
“We just hit the jackpot,” LeMay said about the combination of Carter’s love of the Lord, work experience and teaching experience. LeMay described Carter as a caring, bright person that knows a lot in her area of expertise. “We are so blessed to have her with us.”
Since being at Bethel, Carter has taken on multiple managerial finance and investments classes. One of Carter’s teaching assistants, Holly Kao, said Carter is very organized and makes herself available to her teaching assistants and students.
“She is a genius and could probably be teaching at an Ivy League (school), but chose Bethel,” Kao said.
In addition to Kao’s evaluation, many managerial finance students have the same opinion of Carter.
“She truly cares about her students in and out of the classroom, and creates personal relationships with her students,” junior human resource management major Mikayla Morrow said. “She is a wonderful addition to Bethel and Bethel’s business program.”
Despite getting called by headhunters from large firms, Carter chose Bethel.
When Carter’s husband talks about the both of them retiring together at some point, Carter has a simple reply.
“Nope,” Carter said back to him. “I like my job. As long as Bethel will have me, I expect to be here.”
Students describe Professor Amanda Carter
“She was always approachable if I ever felt I needed to ask any questions,” junior human resource management major Nellie Buttweiler said.
“Professor Carter is my favorite professor that I have had at Bethel,” junior accounting and finance major Kristin Stern said. “Managerial finance is probably the toughest class I have taken at Bethel as far as workload. Easy access to both tutor help and help from Professor Carter makes the course much more doable.”
“It is clear that she has a passion for the subject [finance] and wants others to feel the same way about it,” sophomore economics and finance major Jackson Arland said.
“Professor Carter teaches with contagious enthusiasm for finance,” junior accounting and finance major Monica Haug said. “She is always willing to take the time to discuss hard topics with you or literally anything.”
“I admired her instantly,” junior finance and human resource management major Claire Christenson said. “Professor Carter is a Godly woman who should not only be admired for her success in the business world but because of her character as well.”
SOURCE: email survey of managerial finance students
