A few weeks shy of graduating with a BA in Finance from the Eli Broad College of Business, Brady Kraft can lay out what’s next for him with a level of confidence and excitement that every soon-to-be college grad aspires to.
He’s moving to New York City for a full-time job at Moelis & Company, an elite Manhattan-based boutique investment banking firm. He’s going to start building his wealth and enjoying the experience of pursuing hobbies, friendships, and adventures as a twentysomething young professional in an incredibly cool city.
And he’s taking every experience he had as a student in the Broad College’s Financial Markets Institute (FMI) with him.
A group project
Twenty years before Brady, there was Tom Cosper.
Today, Tom (’07, Finance, FMI) is the Founder and Managing Partner of Avanto Partners LP, a Dallas-based investment firm, and a dedicated supporter of the Financial Markets Institute.
But back then, Tom was a student in the Eli Broad College of Business, pursuing an interest he’d had since he was a child, when he would join his mom at the kitchen table, flipping through copies of Value Line investment research books while his mom managed the family’s stock portfolio.
With his senior year on the horizon and the realization that recruiters from Wall Street firms were way more likely to look at students from Harvard or Columbia or UPenn than Michigan State, Tom and his classmates in the Student Investment Association started dreaming up ways to get a foot in the door in the industry.
“We decided we’d have a much easier time getting jobs on Wall Street if we created a group,” Tom says. “So we compiled our resumes in a book, and we reached out to alumni, and we were off to New York to visit investment banks.
“At the time, we called the group the Analyst Program, and when the majority of us got the internships and job offers we were aiming for, we wondered what would happen to this program we’d built. Would it be gone when we graduated?
“So we decided to pitch it to the college. And we’re standing in a room filled with faculty members, waiting for someone to say something…and finally, Helen Dashney raised her hand and built what became the FMI.”
When Tom graduated, with his foot firmly in the door at Bear, Stearns & Co., there was never any question of whether he’d help keep that door open for future MSU grads. Of course he would. And those future grads would have something he didn’t: the FMI, formally established in 2006, and the growing network of alumni it would produce over the next two decades.
A never-ending network
The Financial Markets Institute is tailor-made for students like Brady Kraft, who, even as an entrepreneurial high schooler, was already thinking about how he could strengthen his work ethic and use his EQ (Emotional Quotient) skills to grow his businesses.
Students enter the FMI through a competitive application process early in their second year, and while a passion for finance or accounting is a bit of a prerequisite, the program turns passion into rocket fuel for a future career in investment banking, private equity, sales and trading, research, or asset management.
They have every resource at their fingertips: mentorships, dedicated advising, courses and workshops to sharpen their academic and practical skills as well as their “soft skills” like networking, interviewing, and the all-important EQ. At the same time, they manage their regular coursework, make the grades, build their networks, and hone their interests by getting involved, giving back, and pursuing as many hands-on learning experiences as they can.
And then, when they earn their degrees and their dream jobs, they, too, become another member of the network of Spartans helping Spartans make their way in an industry that was once pretty hard for an MSU grad to crack.
That’s what is so special about the Financial Markets Institute. Every graduating class makes the program better and stronger than before.
Rising to the challenge
It is in that spirit that the Cosper Scholarship Challenge came to be.
It started as a gift from the Cosper family (both of Tom’s parents—dad David, ’78, Financial Administration, and mom Pamela, ’78, Economics—are alums) to support students in the Broad College. But the scholarship and its impact have evolved over the years, as the fund grew (the endowment currently generates more than $35,000 per year) and as Tom continued to watch class after class of FMI students run full-tilt towards their dream careers.
“When you look at the top students who have graduated from the FMI over the last decade-plus, you start to notice a pattern,” Tom says. “They’ve obviously got great GPAs, and they’re super-smart and hardworking. But they’re also great leaders who have a genuine care for their peers and a pay-it-forward mentality.”
So the challenge, at its core, was to take those behaviors and extend them more broadly across the FMI community – encouraging more students to adopt them intentionally. That means living their student experience with deep purpose, building a better community around them, serving their peers with intention, and overcoming challenges that shape who they become, all while holding true to the program’s core values of excellence, grit, leadership, and creativity. While rooted in the FMI, the challenge is designed to model a mindset that can extend across the broader Spartan community.
“The generosity of the Cosper Family and the transformative power of their scholarship cannot be overstated,” says Dave Hawthorne, director of the Financial Markets Institute. “This challenge inspires years of exceptional academic achievement, resilience, leadership, and service to the Spartan community long before the scholarship is even awarded.”
Members of the FMI’s 2026 graduating class would be the first to be eligible for the scholarship in this new structure. Brady, included. Challenge accepted.
Soaking it in
Brady’s MSU story—his experience building, serving, and overcoming in pursuit of the Cosper Scholarship—could be summed up by his academic and extracurricular experiences: president of the FMI, previous vice president of the MSU Student Investment Association and the investment committee for MSU’s first student-managed investment fund … the list goes on, and shows that he made the most of his four years in East Lansing.
But it could also be summed up by a much simpler experience.
“My mom is a teacher,” Brady says. “And I remember that she would always have notes from her students hanging on the fridge: ‘Thank you for the year we had together. Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.’
“And I always wondered how I could be that kind of person, that kind of mentor to others. Long before I became interested in a career in finance, but even after I knew what career I wanted, I knew I was going to show up for it with the mentality of ‘what can I do for you? What can I bring to this place to make it better?’”
This mentality helped Brady win the Cosper Scholarship Challenge.
“The winners were announced over winter break. I was in Florida when I got the email. I threw my phone in the air in excitement.”
Passing it on
What’s truly unique about this scholarship is that it is awarded during the students’ final semester, just months before graduation. The winner receives $15,000, and two additional finalists receive awards of $10,000 each. They can use the funds in whatever way they choose: to start chipping away at student loans, to fund a move to a new city, to invest or put in savings.
Brady is going to do all of these things, and he could not be happier, or more grateful, to be starting his next chapter this way.
Mostly, though, he’s excited for the day that he can do for future Spartans in finance what Tom Cosper and the other two decades’ worth of FMI grads have done for him.
“One of the reasons I wanted to come to Michigan State, and one thing that I’ve loved the most about the FMI, was that teamwork perspective. The mentality that there’s space for all of us,” Brady says.
“I’m going to take that into the industry with me. In an ideal world, 20 years from now, I’m still in a job I love, providing for myself and my family, but also giving back to the place I came from. The FMI is something super-special that’s going to stay in my heart, and I’m hoping to remain involved.”
Photos by Zach Hall, Eli Broad College of Business Marketing & Communications