“I never saw myself as limited in my academic or social opportunities because I was a woman,” says Bellissimo, who was a coxswain on the men’s crew team for four years at Bucknell. “Eventually, there came a point in my career when I wanted to create more opportunities for women to join the field, because the industry is best served by a diversity of thought and backgrounds.”
Bellissimo was the catalyst for the program’s launch at Notre Dame, where she is directing manager of the Institute for Global Investing. As a board member for Girls Who Invest, she uses her experience — which includes time as a hedge-fund manager and director of the Heilbrunn Center for Graham & Dodd Investing at Columbia University — to help shape the program’s hands-on curriculum.
“The whole experience is really based on the idea of experiential learning — bridging theory and practice,” she says. “To build a bigger pipeline for women, we not only need to educate but we also need to provide real-world working opportunities.”