On Centre

With real portfolios and big conversations, Milton students get an early start in the world of finance.

By Kara Baskin
Illustration by Andrew Bannecker

At Milton Academy, finance isn’t a side quest tucked into a math unit. It’s a full ecosystem. Students dive into clubs spanning entrepreneurship, microfinance, economics, and investing. They debate strategies, workshop business ideas, and chat with alumni about careers they’re already mapping out. They even help manage real investment portfolios.

The result is immersive. By graduation, many students aren’t just finance-curious. They’re already operating like early-stage professionals.

Student-Led, Faculty-Supported

Before he ever sets foot on Wall Street, Gabriel Koerner-Imas ’26 has already pitched stocks, met major financial players, and helped shape discussions about how real money should be invested.

Koerner-Imas grew up in New York City and worked at an uncle’s firm before ninth grade. But his interest in financial markets crystallized thanks to a behavioral economics class at Milton, where he studied consumer psychology.

“We spent a whole class talking about how to negotiate a salary using various psychology tips and skills you can use in negotiations to swing the odds in your favor, and the science behind it,” he explains.

Now, he’s drawn to what he calls the “humanitarian” side of finance—understanding consumer trends—with hopes of running a venture capital firm someday. Outside the classroom, he coheads the Investment Club, which has surged to 40 students.

The group meets weekly, hosting high-profile alumni who give in-depth career talks. Last year, billionaire hedge-fund manager and former Blackstone CEO J. Tomilson Hill ’66 chatted with students.

Students also manage a real Morgan Stanley account, seeded by a former club member and now worth roughly $70,000.

“The kinds of opportunities we get in these clubs, like the Morgan Stanley account, are so unique to Milton. We’re able to learn about these concepts on a large, real-world scale. Obviously, when you’re investing $70,000 on a simulator, it makes you feel one way. But $70,000 of real money is a little different,” Koerner-Imas says.

A Curriculum That Goes Deep

Fellow cohead Isabella Alba ’26 came to Milton for its depth in math—and stayed for the specificity. Unlike Koerner-Imas, she’s drawn to the quantitative side of finance, and Milton offered opportunities she couldn’t find elsewhere, including a standalone mathematical economics course.

“A lot of schools have economics, but they’re all part of history departments. While that brings a lot of value, it’s not really the side of econ that you use if you’re going to get a job on Wall Street,” says Alba, who also skis and sails for Milton.

Alba accelerated early, taking statistics alongside precalculus as a sophomore, then moving into calculus with applied economics and advanced statistical methods as a junior. Combining that coursework with computer science, she built and coded an options pricing model, testing whether a four-decade-old financial theory still holds. Even in U.S. history, she’s gravitated toward financial topics, researching major market crashes.

That academic rigor gives her confidence: Managing the club’s investment account is a highlight, especially because of the autonomy she has in leading it.

“We do have some guidelines, but apart from that, we get to make 100 percent of the trades and decisions on that account,” she says.

Students pitch stocks, debate them, and vote before submitting final decisions. The process mirrors professional investing, scaled to a high school setting.

“The flexibility is super awesome. It’s one of those opportunities that other schools just don’t have. Friends who go to other independent schools are like: ‘No way,’ and I say, ‘Yeah. We’re pretty lucky,’” she says.

Real-World Exposure, Early

Faculty and staff say that this autonomy is precisely the point.

“These are amazing kids,” says Katelynn Bullock, an annual giving officer in the Advancement Office and the Investment Club advisor. “It’s a unique student who’s attracted to this club, and it’s a student who has a lot of ambition. It’s a student who is very smart, who wants to think about real-world applications, and who thinks about what they’re going to do next.”

Through alumni speakers and hands-on investing, students are exposed to the realities of the field well before college. This realism comes with pressure, but also perspective. Alba, who has been investing her own money since middle school, encourages younger students to separate emotions from decision-making.

“I think, if you start feeling the pressure due to money, that’s when you mess up. We’ve had a lot of speakers come in, and they tell us the same thing: They train you into thinking of investing more as just numbers, rather than money. Otherwise, that’s when you make rash decisions. So I’m not nervous about it,” she says.

There are also lower-stakes ways to experiment, including a twice-yearly investing game using $100,000 in theoretical cash. The prize? Bragging rights, and maybe some branded Investment Club golf balls.

Building Access and Confidence

Alba also leads a second initiative: Invest in Girls, an investment club focused on amplifying women in a male-dominated field. The club was founded at Milton by then-student Chelsea Mehra ’11 and former Trustee Dune Thorne ’94 and now has chapters in schools across the United States. With support from social sciences and economics teacher Perin Gokce, Alba plans LinkedIn workshops, company visits, and conversations with female leaders.

“This is a trusting environment for girls to talk about money, life, and priorities with their peers, with instructors who understand financial planning,” Gokce says.

Gokce, who began her career in finance as an auditor at PricewaterhouseCoopers, sees the club as both practical and empowering.

“Milton’s clubs are student-inspired and student-driven. They’re an opportunity for students to show leadership,” she says. “Milton students are curious. That’s my favorite quality. They’re thoughtful. They want to make an impact. They want to support each other. They’re creative. The fact that Isabella comes up with these ideas for every club block is, I think, such an amazing example of student leadership.”

Alba’s own path reflects that momentum. Inspired initially by the TV show Billions, she shifted from an early interest in surgery to finance, drawn by its blend of intensity, analytics, and human interaction. Now headed to MIT, she plans to study mathematical economics and AI and machine learning, hoping to become a quantitative analyst in a client-facing role.

“Milton teaches critical-thinking skills you actually need to be successful in the real world versus just drilling something and having it almost be memorized,” she says.

For Bullock, that kind of preparation matters more than ever in a financial world reshaped by artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, and political volatility, all upending global markets.

“This is stuff that I never had access to as a child, and they’re really taking advantage in a purposeful way for career readiness,” Bullock says. “These students have that passion and drive, and it’s all self-motivated. No one’s asking them to be there. They’re choosing to be there. These students show up, and they’re committed to their education.”

Kara Baskin is a journalist for The Boston Globe and a contributing editor at Boston Magazine, where she covers parenting, education, and modern family life. She also writes for institutions including Harvard University and MIT, and hosts an entrepreneurship-themed podcast for Babson College.

From classrooms to playgrounds—and beyond—Milton’s first-graders design solutions to make the world more welcoming.

By Marisa Donelan
Illustration by Karoline Schnoor

What happens when the only entrance to a children’s museum is a stairway? Or when directions around a park are color-coded? Or when a card game requires players to use two hands?

Those situations mean that not everyone can play, Milton’s Grade 1 students learned this year. So they set about finding solutions and dreaming up possibilities—using what they learned in social studies and other subjects—to make communities more inclusive and functional for all.

“This is the time when we’re planting the seed to have the students think about their role in their broader community,” says Shannon Kilduff, one of Milton’s two Grade 1 teachers. “We’re asking them to think about their stewardship of their own communities, and what they can do to make them better.”

Applying lessons from a unit about simple machines, insight gleaned from conversations with people who have physical differences, basic classroom supplies, and more than a little creativity, the students designed adaptive zipper pulls and utensils, page-turning devices for readers, and appropriate surfaces and grades for mobility ramps.

“Learning the basic principles of the simple machines and their movements helped us think about the ways that buildings and communities function, and it dovetails nicely with science,” Kilduff says. “Eventually, we’d love to have them work with Upper School students to learn more about physics and design.”

One afternoon in April, Kilduff and fellow Grade 1 teacher Caroline Sacchetti set up an experiment for the students to roll marbles on ramps with various surfaces designed to create different levels of friction. After repeatedly measuring how quickly and how far the marbles traveled down the ramps, the students concluded that a fairly smooth surface with a little bit of resistance would be the best and safest for wheelchair users.

“They’re learning to look outside their own needs, and these projects help them to think of others,” says Sacchetti. “They’re seeing that not everyone experiences the world the same way, but they’re also learning that they have the agency to make changes for a greater good.”

Considering the ways the world functions for all people, of all abilities, is part of a year-long, interdisciplinary program to develop students’ understanding of communities beyond the small circles of their families and peers. The program is tailored to the students’ developmental stage and starts at the beginning of the year to allow time for them to reflect on themselves and what makes them feel a sense of belonging in a community. Through discussions about friendship and collaborating during team-building challenges, they learn to notice and leverage the strengths they bring to the table.

By midyear, the curriculum shifts to looking at the larger Milton community. Using the collaborative skills the students honed in the fall, they build and run a Lower School post office as part of a letter-writing unit. Through customer service, the students learn to listen and respond to the needs of others and find stewardship in helping their community.

Nearly all children develop some sense of connection to others very early—babies and toddlers may smile when a parent smiles at them, or a child may try to soothe another who is upset. As preschoolers, they begin to understand their belonging to their families, and by the end of first grade they start to develop a sense of community and identity. They recognize the different roles people play in a society and begin to see how actions and structures affect people.

Eventually, through academic classes and cocurricular offerings, the students learn about how they fit into a school community; how housing, public resources, and businesses serve (or fail to serve) their populations; their own impact on the environment; and the different cultures that make up a global society.

“They’re still very much in their bubbles, but they start to look outside of them,” Kilduff says of the shift that happens over the course of first grade. “They’re still trying to make connections between their experiences and other people’s experiences—they think a lot about fairness and what’s fair to them—but they’re starting to acknowledge that they belong to a larger community.”

In early February, the students had a visit from the Bionic Project, a Cambridge-based nonprofit that works with schools to dismantle disability bias and support inclusive communities. The program introduced Milton students to the adaptive tools that disabled athletes use and showed the impact of technological advancements in the lives of people with disabilities. Most importantly, students learned that given the right settings, all kids can play and learn together.

Connecting accessibility concepts to the students’ interests, like sports and games, has kept the students engaged and incredibly creative with their ideas for adaptive innovations, Sacchetti says. In their prototypes for tools to help people with limited hand mobility, for example, several students designed devices very similar to ones that are already in use.

“They relate to these subjects because they play soccer, they play Uno,” she says. “It makes them think about sharing what they love to do, and on their own they’ve come up with ideas that have real-world applications.”

Lessons also take students out of the classroom. In one unit, they explored school spaces to identify barriers. Looking at stairwells, furniture placement, and the location of everyday tools, they found potential barriers and then developed plans to make these spaces more accessible to all.

Examining everyday playground structures, the students used what they had learned about simple machines, friction, and universal design to reconceptualize and adapt the apparatus to meet the physical needs of students with varying abilities.

“They’ve started to notice and point out things that are barriers to accessibility,” Kilduff says. “They are putting themselves into that new perspective and thinking about how businesses and spaces work for people. It’s becoming part of their thought process: ‘What needs to change or improve so that everyone can participate?’”

Later in the spring, the class visited the Universal Playground in Waltham, Massachusetts, a popular, 120-acre public park that opened in 2025. The playground was designed with structures and surfaces that allow kids who use wheelchairs or other assistive devices to use every attraction—from swings and splash pads to mini golf—along with their non-disabled peers.

As they reflected on their visit to the Universal Playground, Kilduff asked the class why they thought “universal” was in its name.

“So kids with disabilities can play!” one student answered. Another added: “So everyone can play together.”