Master's in finance program helps Adam Ray find confidence, purpose in career

Adam Ray (MS-FIN '25) chose to stay at W. P. Carey after completing his bachelor's in finance to pursue the Master of Science in Finance (MS-FIN). It was an opportunity to grow skills and as a person.

The choice to continue with schooling after a bachelor's degree isn't all about advancing your career as quickly as possible. For Adam Ray (MS-FIN '25), it was an opportunity to grow skills and as a person.

"I would say the most meaningful part of my education has been how I've been able to learn how to learn, so to speak," he says. "I've learned a lot about myself and how I can process information, how I can grow. It's been meaningful not as much what I've learned, but how I've learned it."

Ray chose to stay at ASU's W. P. Carey School of Business after completing his bachelor's in finance to pursue the Master of Science in Finance (MS-FIN). As someone with a big passion for the industry, this program was a chance for Ray to strengthen his expertise in the foundations of finance and be exposed to new concepts not touched upon during his undergraduate studies.

W. P. Carey News spoke with Ray about his choice to stay for the MS-FIN program, the deeper appreciation it's given him for finance, and what motivates him.

Why W. P. Carey?

Ray had just finished his bachelor's in finance at W. P. Carey in the spring of 2024, and he was trying to decide whether he wanted to pursue further education, and if so, what kind. A relationship that had formed during his undergraduate years helped him choose his next step.

"I actually became good friends with the faculty director of my program, Anand Bhattacharya," Ray says. "He was a professor I had in my undergrad and a really awesome guy. He told me about the master's in finance program, and it just seemed like a really good fit."

He calls Bhattacharya a "really good mentor" who has helped guide him throughout his time at W. P. Carey, but this is just one of many relationships Ray has formed with faculty and classmates during his MS-FIN experience.

"I've made a lot of really cool friends in my classes," he says. "We all come from really different backgrounds. I have a friend who's a retired Marine. I have another friend I've made who's from South Africa, and she was in accounting and finance."

He adds, "It's been cool to see all of these people who are so different from me, but we all have the same interests and career goals. That's been awesome, because we've been able to work together and honestly become pretty good friends through it all."

Why finance?

Ray initially decided to study finance because of a strong passion for the subject. "I love finance," he says. "I love numbers. I'm a big numbers junkie."

That passion has been reinforced throughout the program, as the MS-FIN curriculum dives deep into topics like international finance, risk management, and the applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning in the industry.

"We had a class that was all about quantitative methods in finance, and that relied heavily on coding and Python and how machine learning works in finance," says Ray. "That definitely stands out as something really cool I've learned and something I'm actually starting to apply to my career now as a financial analyst, figuring out how to assess the predictability of data."

Ray also appreciates how the MS-FIN gave him more insight into how finance differs around the world, information useful for anyone working within today's global economy.

"It's been interesting to see how some of our examples and concepts in terms of finance go from a U.S.-based view to a more international view," he says. "Seeing how foreign economies and exchange rates affect us, seeing how a default in Argentina will affect the U.S. bond market, things like that. It's been cool to see more of that in my master's program than in my undergrad, how we've taken these financial concepts and applied them to a more global scale."

What's next?

Ray's motivation to move forward and push for success is simple, but powerful. "I want to be able to provide for my wife and daughter, and I want to be someone that people can rely on," he says.

He adds, "I like being helpful. That's defined a lot of what I do in my job right now and how I interact with family and friends. So wherever I am, whatever I'm doing, I want to be as helpful as possible and contribute in meaningful ways to whatever it is I'm doing."

Many of Ray's family members and friends have also attended ASU, so graduating twice from W. P. Carey has made him feel even more connected to this community and given him a sense of pride in himself.

"Being a Sun Devil has helped me accomplish things that I did not think were possible before coming to ASU,” he says. “I'm excited to see what the next steps are for me."