| Siblings Larry and Robin Karp were a lot alike. Both graduated with honors from Boston University’s School of Management, and both had successful banking careers on Wall Street. Most importantly, both believed in the importance of higher education and giving back to society.
When Robin Karp (SMG’90) died last year, her older brother was devastated. “To turn a tragic situation into something positive,” he founded the Robin C. Karp Memorial Scholarship Fund. Awarded to a high-achieving and community-minded SMG student who plans on a career on Wall Street, the scholarship “will be my sister’s legacy,” says Karp (SMG’87). “Robin will always have her name attached to something that was reflective of what she believed.”
Formerly named the Wall Street Prize, the scholarship was originally intended to be “a contest to highlight SMG’s best and brightest students who were pursuing careers on Wall Street,” Karp explains. The idea came to him shortly before his thirty-ninth birthday, when, to demonstrate to his children, Robert and Eli (ages eight and five), that birthdays are more about giving than receiving, Karp established a $10,000 prize fund for SMG students.
Every September for the past six years, Karp, an investment banker at HSBC Securities (USA) Inc., has collaborated with SMG’s Feld Career Center to lead a seminar called Demystifying Wall Street. Helped by other SMG alums, Karp gives SMG students the inside scoop on America’s leading financial institutions along with tips on ways to make themselves marketable job candidates. The plan, Karp says, was to announce the Wall Street Fund Prize during one of those seminars. But within hours of finalizing the fund, Karp received a telephone call that his sister had died.
“I sent a flurry of e-mails [to BU],” Karp recalls, “saying that I wanted to rename the Wall Street Prize Fund after my sister, and I wanted to make it a scholarship instead.”
Robin C. Karp Scholarship recipients must be SMG students or enrolled in SMG courses. In addition to having taken a variety of accounting classes, applicants must be enrolled in upper-level liberal arts courses and have demonstrated commitment to community activities. “We want well-rounded candidates,” Karp explains, “so when you’re out to dinner with a client, you are able to eloquently discuss business and world events, culture, and history, not just sports or the weather.”
Karp hopes the first two scholarships will be awarded during the 2007–08 academic year. It has not been decided if applications will be open to all students, or if they will be accepted by nomination only. Karp and his wife, Liz Susman Karp (COM’89); his mother, Elaine; and his grandfather, Nat Klein, will contribute a lump sum of $10,000 —which HSBC Bank USA is matching — annually, and Robin Karp’s friends and family are also being encouraged to make donations.
“My sister is my inspiration,” Karp says. “She always believed that a person’s financial situation should not affect that person’s chances of success, and I want to recognize those students who share my sister’s passion for her ideals, commitment to excellence, and advocacy for those without advocates.”
During Robin Karp’s days at SMG, she had a very close group of friends, Karp says. “She was at BU to do three things: to learn, to have fun, and to help others by tutoring or lending a shoulder to lean upon. And she excelled in all three.”
After graduating summa cum laude, Robin Karp joined her older brother on Wall Street. But chronic pain soon made it nearly impossible for her to work. “She would distract herself by channeling her energies to help people who, she felt, were in worse pain than she was,” Karp recalls. “She was an advocate for those who didn’t have an advocate. It’s my hope that this scholarship will act in a similar way.”
— Vicky Waltz
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