From trading floor to boardroom: How a Master’s in Finance can prepare you for global leadership

The world of finance is rapidly evolving amid widspread adoption of emerging technologies such as AI and shifts in regulatory and geopolitical landscapes. Within the highly globalized sector—which accounts for up to 25% of the world’s economy—there is increasing demand for leaders capable of navigating uncertainy and fast-paced international markets. 

As more employers look for new skills when hiring, studying a Master’s in Finance is one way ambitious finance professionals can develop advanced financial knowledge and gain the experience needed to differentiate themselves. 

To find out how impactful this can be in preparing students to become future global finance leaders, we spoke with alumni and professors from Bentley University, home to the Master of Science in Finance (MSF) which is ranked as the top program of its kind in the US by the Financial Times.  

Learning finance from industry experts 

As economic shifts and technological change continue to reshape the financial industry, working in the sector has become increasingly complex. The scale of this transformation is reflected in the AICPA and CIMA’s Future-Ready Finance Report, which found that 88% of finance and accounting professionals now recognize AI as the most transformative trend in the industry. 

In response, students must develop the broad financial knowledge required to succeed in an evolving profession. This depth of expertise is ingrained within the Bentley MSF faculty, which brings together PhD research-focused academics and experienced industry practitioners.

For senior lecturer Steven Wasserman (pictured right), who prior to joining Bentley full-time, spent 37 years in the finance industry across a range of roles in both the public and private sectors, his professional background plays a central role in class. 

“I take my actual experience and apply it to my teaching,” he says. “When I taught financial modelling, I took elements from the forecasting models I was building for companies in my role as a fractional CFO, and brought them directly into the classroom,” he adds. 

Through this powerful combination of industry insight and academic expertise, students receive classroom instruction that closely mirrors real-world finance. This makes the transition into industry easier, says Rucha Deshpande, an MSF alum and current financial analyst at BlackRock. 

“The faculty’s strong emphasis on practical, hands-on assignments prepared me well for real-world challenges and directly helped me perform effectively once I started working as a financial analyst,” she says. 

Gaining trading floor experience  

With global events such as geopolitical changes and economic crises driving constant disruption, graduates must be equipped with hands-on experience to be prepared to adapt to the high-pressure, fast-changing nature of the finance industry. 

At Bentley University, the MSF program places strong emphasis on experiential learning to ensure students graduate with a robust technical toolkit. One key element of this is the Trading Room, located in the school’s Hughey Center for Financial Services. Powered by Bloomberg, the Trading Room features advanced analytics tools and live market data. Designed to mirror the intensity of a professional trading floor, it gives students the opportunity to build practical skills that directly support their career ambitions. 

“Students are doing things in the trading room that they will do if they go into investment management or investment banking,” says Steven. 

For Rucha (pictured right), the experience was transformative. She was able to work part-time as a trading room analyst, deepening her own expertise while teaching peers. 

“I tutored students through mini classes on how to navigate software applications and databases, including Bloomberg,” she explains. 

The Bentley Investment Group (BIG) provides another avenue for early industry exposure. This student-managed fund allows participants to make real investment decisions with real capital. Founded in 1977 with an initial allocation of $250,000 from the Board of Trustees, BIG now manages approximately $2.5 million across six industries, including technology, real estate, and energy, as of 2026.  

“Students are totally responsible for that growth and for managing it,” says Steven. 

Developing finance industry skills  

 As AI and other emerging technologies continue to shape the future of finance, communication, ethics, teamwork, and critical thinking are becoming just as crucial as technical abilities. This is reflected in the Future-Ready Finance Report, which found large gaps among finance professionals in key soft-skill areas in 2025. 

Throughout the Bentley MSF program, students gain numerous opportunities to develop essential soft skills alongside their technical training. 

For example, within global environments where finance employees often operate in teams across borders and time zones, the Bentley curriculum places strong emphasis on group-based coursework to prepare students for this reality and teach them how to collaborate effectively under pressure. 

For Rucha, these group activities provided valuable opportunities to sharpen her verbal and interpersonal skills, particularly communicating complex ideas concisely, an essential capability when working with large and complicated datasets. 

“Group projects strengthened my ability to communicate technical insights clearly—an often underrated yet critical skill in the finance industry,” she says. 

Bentley MSF students also build communication and leadership skills through presentation-based assessments and exercises that incorporate cold-calling. These activities help develop public speaking, active listening, and critical thinking skills, all of which are vital for effective leadership. 

“You need to know how to get answers and use the tools available, but just as importantly, you need to know how to communicate them,” says Steven. 

“I use cold calling a lot to help students feel confident contributing,” he adds. 

Translating the MSF experience into career outcomes 

For many business school students, the primary goal is to accelerate their careers. At Bentley, the MSF curriculum is designed with this outcome in mind, allowing students to tailor their degrees to their professional ambitions. The program offers four future-oriented specializations: traditional finance, financial analytics, fintech, and financial planning & wealth management.

With these pathways available, students are encouraged to explore different areas of finance, experiment with their interests, and ultimately clarify the direction they want their careers to take. This approach helps students land roles across industries, with top employers such as Apple, EY, Citigroup, National Grid, and Fidelity among the recruiters of the most recent class. 

“Part of the way we teach is by giving students enough exposure to figure out where they want to go,” says Steven. 

For Rucha, the STEM-designated Financial Analytics track helped position her to jump into a role with BlackRock. Modules such as Investments, Financial Modeling, Computational Finance, Python for Finance, and Managing with Analytics were vital, she says.  

“The program played a critical role in helping me transition into a data-driven finance role.”