The key to nabbing the internship? Networking. 

“It was a matter of just communicating and reaching out,” said Ortega, who was introduced to a UBS senior professional by a close mentor. “Networking is super important in finance. I can’t stress how important this is.”

Networking Advice 

Ortega spent his first year at Fordham not only in the classroom but also online, reaching out to industry experts for career advice. He set up chats over coffee and meetings over Zoom, often taking note of the “small things” that could deepen a connection. One meeting led to his internship at UBS. Another meeting, with a senior banking professional outside of UBS, led to a new mentorship, said Ortega. 

“I connected with him to learn more about his role and past experiences across his career. The meeting was over Zoom, and the conversation was flowing fairly well until I noticed that he had a New York Giants banner on his wall. This sparked a conversation because I’m a New England Patriots fan, and the idea is that we are meant to be rivals. However, as a result of that small, personal interaction that may have seemed meaningless, he has decided to coach and mentor me individually as I continue to grow as a young professional. It just goes on to show that the small details matter more than you think,” Ortega said. “Be a good listener, learn how to talk, and be OK with feeling uncomfortable while networking.”

Paving the Way for Future Generations of Hispanics

Ortega is originally from Corona, Queens. He was raised by a single mother who raised four boys on her own. His mother, a Mexican immigrant who works as a hairstylist and part-time bookkeeper, sacrificed her dream of becoming a biomedical engineer in order to support Ortega and his brothers. “Her support, love, and sacrifices fuel me to succeed in my endeavors and passions,” Ortega said. 

Her work paid off. Ortega earned admission to several schools, including Emory University and Boston College. He chose to attend Fordham and its Lincoln Center campus, where he earned the National Hispanic Recognition Scholarship and would be able to live closer to home. 

At UBS, Ortega is learning finance basics, professional etiquette, and technical skills. He is unusually young for a finance intern. His fellow interns are mostly college upperclassmen, but that doesn’t deter him. “It’s a good time to learn. The earlier you start, the better,” he said. 

Ortega’s long-term goal is to join a venture capital firm that invests only in Hispanic start-ups. He wants to change a statistic: just 2% of U.S. venture capital investments go towards Latino entrepreneurs, who made up nearly half of the net new small business growth between 2007 and 2017.  

“The venture capital community is very close-knit and exclusive to certain people,” he said. “My goal is to hack into that field and pave the way for Hispanic generations to come.”

“It’s not easy, and I’m not trying to project that I have the silver bullet,” he says, “but I share a bit about my own past and try to show them that there are some controllable things they can do to put themselves in a position to win.”

Crawley grew up on the working-class West Side of Chicago. As a young boy, he lost both of his parents, one of them violently. But his grandparents raised him, and he found extra support in the local community.

“I’ve had the good fortune of having folks who’ve believed in me and supported me,” he says, “everything from the Boys and Girls Club to my extended family to my colleagues when I first joined Morgan Stanley.”

“I had zero connectivity with [my undergraduate] school,” Crawley says. “When I went to Fordham for my MBA, it was the first time I had experienced that sense of community with an academic institution,” Crawley says. “I tapped into a powerful alumni network, and I also made a few of my very best friends.”

Networking has been central to his rise at Morgan Stanley, he says, but it’s his work as a mentor, “especially for black and brown individuals from below the poverty line,” that is “core to who I am.”

Crawley often helps junior analysts at Morgan Stanley, some of whom are fellow Fordham graduates, get their footing. He has come back to Fordham’s campus to speak at events with current students and alumni. He’s a new trustee for the national Boys and Girls Club, where he serves on the Midwest Regional Team based out of his native Chicago. And he recently joined the board of Covenant House New York, where he continues to meet with those young men.

For Crawley, who now lives in New York with his wife and twin daughters, it’s simply his responsibility.

“I have been given a platform to enable real change in people,” he says. “There is just a modicum of difference between me and the outcome of my life and these kids that I’m speaking to at Covenant House [and the Boys and Girls Club]. We are literally cut from the same tree, but people took the time to mentor and mold me.

“That’s why I want us to keep pushing forward.”