Today we’d like to introduce you to Aaruush Kulkarni.
Aaruush, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
My name is Aaruush Kulkarni, and I am currently a senior at Plano West Senior High School. I founded Stonehaven Capital Management in my junior year of high school. The idea for Stonehaven came from a conversation I had with my friends at a convention. As students aspiring to pursue a career in finance, though we found an abundance of materials, resources, and opportunities to learn about the field, there was a significant lack in opportunities for high schoolers to gain practical experience. Thus, we founded Stonehaven to serve as a platform for students like us to gain real-world experience at the high school level.
Now, Stonehaven provides a wide arrange of opportunities for learning and experience at all skill levels.
Our learning starts at the ground level, where we host virtual workshops for students across the world, teaching basics in personal finance, investing, and economics. Through this, we have impacted over 600 students globally.
For more intermediate students, we provide real-world financial experience through our internship program. This program gives students interested in financial analysis and data science a platform to develop their skillset and knowledge through real-world applications. This selective program has given around 100 students genuine financial experience before they’ve even graduated high school. (Check out one of our data science projects here: https://tinyurl.com/shcmecofolio)
For our top, most advanced students, we provide the opportunity to manage and invest actual funds, an experience that, at the high school level, is relatively unheard of.
Finally, we also offer an “incubator” program that provides the opportunity for passionate, driven individuals (of all ages) to start their own nonprofits. We specifically help them go from an idea to a legally operating NPO. Through this, our incubated organizations have accumulated 1,000 hours in volunteer work.
Check out our website here! https://www.stonehavencm.com
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The road to building our organization was not smooth. We consistently faced problems, obstacles, and other challenges that our team had to overcome to achieve our goals. For example, one significant issue we faced was reaching out to and finding ideal candidates for our financial research and data science programs. We had to sift through a huge applicant pool to identify just a few strong candidates. Another struggle we faced was figuring out how to effectively organize and manage our students. We solved this by delegating certain groups of students to report to “Junior Partners,” who would then report to “Senior Partners.”
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am still a student! Though I aim to pursue finance in the future, I know that there is still a long path for me to grow and learn.
Risk-taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
In my opinion, risks are a natural and important part of life. Without risks, life wouldn’t be as interesting nor as rewarding. Though being risk-averse is not a bad thing necessarily, you must be prepared to take risks at some points, whether it’s choosing what field to pursue, what opportunities to pursue, and what activities to spend time on.
Contact Info:
- Website: stonehavencm.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stonehavencm/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/stonehaven-cap-mgmt/
