For Ross School of Business junior and LEAD Scholar Devon Krawczyk, real estate investment is not just a future career. It’s a path to betterment for himself and the people around him.
“Growing up in New Jersey, it was just me and my mom,” Krawczyk says. “I always wanted to help her out and support her when I got older.” In high school, his interest in business and finance blossomed into a passion, and he joined the Future Business Leaders of America’s club at his school.
Krawczyk joined the organization BlackGen Capital shortly after arriving at the University of Michigan. Now comprised of nine collegiate chapters, BlackGen was originally founded at Cornell University in 2019, and U-M’s establishment in affiliation with Ross came in 2021. BlackGen works to provide opportunities for minority students to gain real-world financial and real estate industry experience. Starting with a 10-week fundamental education series, students gain access to the organization’s network of corporate sponsors and work directly on the organization’s capital investment fund. Past sponsors include J.P. Morgan, Citibank, and Fidelity Investments.
Krawczyk serves as co-vice president of education alongside his friend and LEAD peer Blake Dunkley. In fact, BlackGen is host to a handful of LEAD Scholars, which is a phenomenon Krawczyk chalks up to shared experiences.
“I didn’t realize there was that much crossover between LEAD and BlackGen, originally,” he says. “I knew Blake from LEAD first, and then we joined BlackGen together.” As time went on, Krawczyk met more people joining BlackGen that he first knew from LEAD activities.
“It’s great because BlackGen is more than just a finance club, in that way. I met some of my best friends through it, too.”
The activities of BlackGen’s U-M chapter revolve chiefly around weekly meetings, which cover a range of discussion points and include guest speakers, such as representatives from Detroit Venture Partners and ICONIQ Capital.
Krawczyk and Dunkley also organize Sunday new-member education meetings, which cover everything from investment banking interviews and financial statements to how world events impact financial decisions.
“We’re getting them ready for the finance world with a mix of technical and market standpoints. . . . It’s a full, pretty intensive curriculum,” Krawczyk says.
While Krawczyk is helping lead BlackGen, his future career plans are coming together as well. This past fall, he joined the Michigan Ross Real Estate Fund and pitched the decision to invest $50,000 into a property in Lubbock, Texas, which was passed by the fund’s advisory board of U-M alums in real estate. Krawczyk will be traveling to New York City this summer for an analyst internship at Ares Management, an international alternative investment management firm. He’ll also study abroad in Prague.
BlackGen remains core to his vision and helps “bridge the gap” between his schooling and real-world experience.
“Coming to school at U-M, and especially in Ross, you’re expected to know a lot already. You’re expected to have a lot of technical knowledge and understanding of the market and to know a lot of complex financial analysis ideas and terms,” Krawczyk says.
“But there are not really resources to learn these fundamentals when you first get here — or you don’t know about them if there are.
“A lot of clubs end up taking people whose family work in finance, or who otherwise have a lot of resources from the family. BlackGen closes that gap to allow people like me, people that might not have like family in those positions, and it gives them the opportunity to create that foundation.”
Gregory Lucas-Myers, ’10, is the senior associate editor of Michigan Alum.
