Andrew L. Kostin's Blog

The Stamford Advocate took the article about me offline (as they do with all of their articles after about a month or so.) Since many people have been requesting it I thought I'd put a copy on my blog.

Student means business at his own lecture series
By
Donna Porstner
Staff Writer
Stamford Advocate
Article Published:
Saturday, April 5, 2008

STAMFORD - Andrew Kostin starts his days
at the Academy of Information Technology & Engineering. But by midafternoon,
he's working for one of world's largest investment banks.

The high
school senior, who recently began his second internship with UBS Investment Bank
in downtown Stamford, started a lecture series to teach his peers about the
company - and what it's like to enter the rat race.

The 17-year-old
decided to bring what he was learning in the workplace back to school after
getting peppered with questions from curious classmates.

"They
would say, 'What types of servers do you use, and what's your BCM plan?' " he
said, explaining the tech-savvy teens wanted to know what business continuity
plans the firm has in place to disperse information during power outages and
other emergencies.

Kostin couldn't answer all their questions, so
he decided to bring in the experts who could. He invited UBS executives to speak
on topics ranging from balancing stock portfolios and equities to diversity in
the workplace.

He modeled the talks after a lecture series he
participated in last summer for UBS interns. About 50 students have attended
each session.

"It gives our students an idea what's going on with
the economy, what's going on in the business world, and gives them ideas for
career paths," AITE Principal Paul Gross said.

Kostin receives high
school credit for coordinating the lectures and working at UBS after school.
While several AITE students are doing independent studies, he's is the only one
to launch a lecture series, Gross said.

"This is a really special
event, where the student - with no motivation other than his idea - decided to
put this together," Gross said. "He just saw a great opportunity to give back to
his school in a very unique way, and we are very proud of
him."

Kostin, whom the principal describes as "quite smart, quite
aggressive and quite focused," is president of the school's Stock Market Club
and a student council representative for the senior class. He also serves as a
student ambassador, giving prospective students and their parents tours of the
campus.
"He's got a work ethic, and he's got a vision that's not typical of
most seniors," Gross said.

Brian Bishop, a UBS executive director,
said Kostin was the only high school intern invited to stay on during the school
year, largely because of his expertise in building internal Web
sites.

"I think it was Andrew's technical skills that led us to
keep him on for the full year," Bishop said.
AITE is an interdistrict magnet
school that integrates technology into college-preparatory classes. The school,
which had 183 students when it opened at Rippowam Middle School in 2000, has
nearly 500 pupils today. It moved into a state-of-the art, $45 million building
in September.

Like Kostin, about a third of the students come from
outside Stamford. Students must apply and are chosen by
lottery.

"Andrew is just one of the shining examples of what
students from outside of our district have brought to our district," Gross
said.

Kostin, who lives in Darien, attended Cushing Academy, a
boarding school in Ashburnham, Mass., for his freshman year, before transferring
to AITE two years ago. At the time, he was interested in a career in technology,
said his mother, Susan Kostin. Her son's interest shifted to the business world
after participating in the UBS internship and job-shadowing programs that took
him into local businesses such as Pitney Bowes and the Marriott hotel downtown,
she said.

Andrew Kostin's father was a managing partner with
PriceWaterhouseCoopers in Stamford who taught tax law at the University of
Pennsylvania's law school and Wharton School of Business. During Andrew Kostin's
sophomore year, he attended one of the last classes his father taught before he
died.
"Clearly, that was an influence," Susan Kostin said.

He
plans to study business in college, although he has not decided which school he
will attend in the fall: the University of New Haven or Fairleigh Dickinson
University in New Jersey.

Asked whether some of his lectures are
too grown-up for high school students, Kostin admitted the first presentation,
on the topic of risk, went over the heads of some teens in the audience. But he
said it has been a good learning experience to work with the guest speakers to
develop a program suitable for his age group.

"I took the feedback
I got from the students, and what I saw myself, and I said, 'Why don't you less
PowerPoint presentations and just talk about what you did in college?” he
said.

Kostin hopes that by giving his peers some insight into the
business world, they will be inspired to seek out careers in the financial
services industry.

"Through the speaker series, I am saying you can
get there in life, and this how you get there," he said.

Labels: AITE, Speaker Series, Stamford Advocate, UBS