Sam Axel

Hometown: New York, NY
Class Year: 2020
Major: Finance and Accounting 
Minor: Real Estate 

Summer 2019 Internship: Summer Analyst, JPMorgan Chase & Co

“This summer I worked as a summer analyst in consumer banking at JPMorgan Chase & Co in the New York City Headquarters. Within consumer banking, I covered financial planning and analysis as well as the Chase credit card business, auto lending, and home lending. The internship was designed to give the analysts overall exposure into how JPMorgan operates as a business across all lines of businesses. The internship is also a feeder into a two-year rotation program in which analysts spend time in the investment bank, asset and wealth management, and the commercial bank. Analysts participated in numerous speaker series, including hearing from Jamie Dimon, the company’s CEO.”  

Spring 2019 Internship: Real Estate Development Intern, Jones Lang LaSalle

“During the spring semester, I studied abroad in London and interned at Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL), a leading real estate services firm. Within JLL, I worked on the real estate development team assisting landowners and developers to recognize and quantify development potential, negotiating development agreements, including financing, and undertaking some sales of development sites. I also led a project near Cambridge regarding shared value and developer infrastructure payments from start to finish including performing comparable analysis on residual land value. Lastly, I designed multiple Excel models and used ARGUS to show cash flows for different team projects such as a multi-tower phased office vs. residential development over Reading Station.”

Value derived from internship experiences:

“Through my two junior year internships, I was able to build skills in my finance and accounting majors and my real estate minor. At JPMorgan I enhanced my Excel skills and grew very comfortable presenting in front of senior leaders including managing directors. I also built stronger communication skills since often times I engaged in virtual meetings with employees spread throughout the world. JPMorgan encouraged networking and I was able to have dozens of coffee chats with full time employees across several lines of business. 

Being an American working in London at Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) was an awesome experience. My manager started at the firm before the JLW and LaSalle Partners merger. He had a breadth of knowledge in the real estate development field and was really ‘hands-on’ in teaching me the business. I often attended site visits and was encouraged to ask lots of questions. I learned how to model development projects using both Excel and ARGUS, do comparable analysis using CoStar, and even taught my manager how to use his Outlook calendar. I worked on high value deals often exceeding £1 billion with firms such as ARES and Blackstone, including an urban expansion—tripling the population of a town. Through these high pressure projects, I now understand what it means to have large impact in the financial landscape. The biggest life takeaway from this experience was learning and adapting to a new culture as the work environment in London is far different from the United States.”

Sam’s career goals:

“I aspire to be a commercial real estate developer specializing in urban office and residential buildings as well as restaurants and hospitality properties. Over time I also hope to gain equity in professional sports franchises. Most importantly, I want to make a large positive impact in my community.”