It Started with a Seat at the Table — and Led to a Full-Time Offer

The first time Daniel Rabinovich used City Tutors, he ended up across from Paramount’s global chief financial officer — the kind of person he imagined hearing on a panel someday, not someone who would sit at his table and ask what he was interested in. For a sophomore who had just told his immigrant parents he was leaving pre-med, it was a jolt. His family’s hopes followed a clear line: stable path, recognizable title, no leaps into the unknown. Pre-med fit that. A year of biology and chemistry made it obvious it did not fit him. Economics matched the questions he cared about — markets, risk, decisions — but came with a quieter, practical problem: where do you actually go, and who do you talk to, when you don’t already live in that world? City Tutors was supposed to be a resource. It opened with a global CFO sliding into the seat next to his.

The program made sure that moment wasn’t just a good story. That Paramount event, and later PwC, put him at small tables with analysts, managers, and senior leaders who walked through what they do, how they got there, and what a student in his position could try next. He left with roles to look into, firms to follow, specific steps to test, and, crucially, professionals who gave him their contact info and answered when he reached back out.

The mentoring that followed is where that access turned into direction. Across ten mentors, each relationship moved one piece forward:

Damien Pottinger treated his questions about finance and private markets as serious, shared contacts, and showed what it looks like when someone actively goes to bat for you.

Charlotte Hamlet at Citi walked him through sales and trading and corporate banking, met with him regularly, and wrote a recommendation that turned vague ambition into something that belonged on paper.

Paul Joseph widened the frame: consulting, markets, MBAs, and how to line up choices with a plan instead of guesswork.

Greg Scanlon introduced private credit, explained where it sits in the industry, and talked about credentials like the CFA as tools he could choose, not hurdles designed to keep him out.

Katie Harshbarger at Solera Capital helped him think several moves ahead, from internships to a future MBA, and pointed him to the GRE prep approach he leans on now.

Alison Shim mapped real steps from investment banking to private equity to firms like Blackstone, making a crowded, competitive path feel navigable.

Christian DiGiacomo (then at Wharton, now at Morgan Stanley) showed up for mock interviews, case prep, and decision calls, holding him to a professional standard before the title caught up.

David Fields gave him a reading spine on markets and institutions, so the technical work sat on real-world context.

Adriana Herrera from Citi brought a senior lens, pressing him to think about responsibility, fit, and the kind of career he was actually building toward.

Shaam Kanji, in Columbia’s deferred MBA program, helps him translate his experience into applications and choices while he balances work and school.

“Everyone added something,” Daniel said. “You start to realize you don’t have to figure this out by yourself.”

By the summer after his sophomore year, that steady mix of exposure, guidance, and practice led to an offer from EY. The first role he landed there wasn’t where he wanted to stay. Instead of shrinking his goals, he went back to the people he’d met through City Tutors. Together they unpacked why it didn’t fit and what a better path could look like. The next summer he shifted into consulting at EY, finished the internship with a full-time offer, and now works there part-time while completing his degree.

Now Daniel is part of the same ecosystem that pushed him forward. He checks in on younger students, helped start a consulting group so others have a clearer line into the field, and keeps sending peers to City Tutors when they’re stuck at the same questions he once had. Some of the mentors who helped him are now meeting new mentees because he helped bring them back into the circle.

His path — from a family counting on a traditional track, to sitting with a global CFO through a public sign-up, to an EY consulting offer — is not framed as luck. It is what it looks like when a student with drive is given direct, consistent access to people and conversations that used to feel distant, and a community that stays long enough to turn that access into outcomes. City Tutors is the throughline.