Manasa Savanur ’23 imparted her expertise with students during the fall 2024 “ Investment Strategies for Beginners ” webinar—which was a meaningful way for Savanur to give back to her alma mater.
“I’m grateful for the opportunity to share my journey and insights, hoping to inspire others, especially those facing challenges similar to what I experienced as a new investor,” she says. “During the webinar, I touched on foundational topics—building financial literacy, setting realistic investment goals, understanding risk tolerance, and the importance of patience and consistency.”
Savanur earned a Master of Finance at the A. Gary Anderson Graduate School of Management and is currently a senior risk analytics consultant in home lending at Wells Fargo.
“I work between the engineering teams and business teams to ensure business requirements are effectively translated into development priorities and are delivered on a timely basis. I also design and conduct testing to ensure our data and risk models are accurate and reliable,” says Savanur. “It’s unique, and my role is different from others because working in fixed income and financial services industry requires exceptional understanding of technical concepts of the product you are working with, like value-at-risk and pre-payment models along with practical skills in Python, SQL, and Power BI.”
“The most challenging aspect of my work is acquiring industry knowledge and keeping up to date in a dynamic environment, particularly with the rapid pace of technological advancements.”
With this kind of day-to-day responsibility, Savanur is well-suited to share hard-earned knowledge from the front lines. This includes the TEDx WUSTL (Washington University in St. Louis) talk she gave in 2024 about the “sunk cost fallacy which is a finance/economics concept that is a cognitive bias. I explained how it also applies to our lives and how recognizing the bias helps with better decision making,” she says.
When she was studying at UCR, she also took advantage of similar learning experiences, and she found the Hylander Financial Group (HFG, a student club open to students of all disciplines and levels of financial expertise) beneficial in fine-tuning her finance skills. “HFG is a great place
to gain practical exposure to investing. It’s interesting to share and discuss finance with fellow
grads, undergrads, and faculty at the same time,” says Savanur.
“Professor Jean Helwege has been a remarkable guiding light for me. What I appreciated the most is that she provided clarity and a realistic view of the economy.”
Savanur chose a graduate degree in finance at UCR because “the school has several active clubs that foster learning and networking even outside the classroom,” she says, and during her time at AGSM, she and fellow team members of the Hylander Student Investment Fund (managed by students with real money) won first place for Best Equity Report at the Chartered Financial Analyst Institute Research Challenge in Orange County with their presentation of a valuation of investment bank Houlihan Lokey. On a lighter note, she adds that she also loved working part time as a yoga instructor at the UCR Student Recreation Center.
As for her career expansion, Savanur says: “I look forward to working at the cusp of finance and technology, leveraging machine learning and Gen AI in the payments, risk, and fintech industries.”
Fortunately, Savanur’s parallel passion for her career and alma mater are paying dividends—both within her professional journey and for the students she mentors.