By Whitaker Anderson, Brunswick School
Last Tuesday 40+ Greenwich area high school students from public and private schools gathered at Greenwich Town Hall for a finance and AI workshop.
The student-organized event introduced high schoolers to financial literacy and the expanding capability of artificial intelligence in finance.
The workshop was the second event hosted by the Greenwich Finance Series, a financial literacy initiative founded by Brunswick School student Jack Wendell in collaboration with the First Selectman’s Youth Commission.
The series was created to give students a basic understanding of personal finance and investing.
Schools represented included Greenwich High School, Brunswick School, Greenwich Academy, Greenwich Country Day School, Sacred Heart, Stamford High School, King School, Westhill High School, and Windrose.
“I feel like the event fulfilled our goals of teaching students personal finance and the promising benefits which Artificial intelligence has on the field,” Wendell said. “I’m looking forward to planning the future of the series to see where else we can have impact!”
Presenters speak to students during the Finance & AI Workshop at Greenwich Town Hall. Photo: Whitaker Anderson
The evening was divided into two parts.
First, students heard from finance professionals about core principles of financial literacy, including income, taxes, budgeting, assets and liabilities, and the fundamentals of investing.
Speakers included Jon Wendell, founder of Nassau Point Investors, a small-cap private equity firm and a graduate of Harvard Business School; Mack Portnoy, a Vice President at J.P. Morgan Private Bank; and Saphora Afkhami, an analyst at J.P. Morgan Private Bank.
Presenters speak to students during the Finance & AI Workshop at Greenwich Town Hall. Photo: Whitaker Anderson
Presenters speak to students during the Finance & AI Workshop at Greenwich Town Hall. Photo: Whitaker Anderson
Jackson Lieberman walking through the AI stock prediction agent. Photo: Whitaker Anderson
Event founder Jack Wendell helps students build their AI agent. Photo: Whitaker Anderson
Presenters speak to students during the Finance & AI Workshop at Greenwich Town Hall. Photo: Whitaker Anderson. Photo: Whitaker Anderson
The second section of the event focused on artificial intelligence and its growing influence on the financial sector. After an introduction to how AI is transforming modern finance, students were able to explore, hands-on, how an AI stock prediction Agent works. The agent, created by the section’s co-organizer Jackson Lieberman, is designed to analyze data and forecast whether a stock’s price may rise or fall.
Lieberman, a junior at GCDS, led a discussion about what agents are and how they are being used in financial markets today. Students were then led through a hands-on exercise: building their own stock-prediction agent and walking through the code used to make it. As Lieberman walked through the code and natural language processing, Wendell worked one-on-one with students, helping work through any issues in building the model.
The event had a great turnout, showing the growing interest of young teens in financial literacy in the Greenwich Area. With more events coming in the future, the series aims to give students practical knowledge they can actually use to manage expenses and invest for retirement, while also exposing them to the kinds of ideas that are starting to shape the future of finance.