Penn students travel to Nebraska to meet Warren Buffett

It was a trip that would turn many money-minded students green with envy. On March 19, seven members of the Penn chapter of Smart Woman Securities travelled as part of SWS’s annual program to Omaha, Neb., to meet Warren Buffett.

SWS is a national organization whose goal is to provide investment education through a mandatory 10-week seminar series and investment project. Students also have the opportunity to participate in mentoring programs and to meet with successful investors.

The Penn chapter of SWS was founded this past fall and is currently composed of students across all undergraduate schools. The Buffett trip is only open to SWS members, so this is the first year that Penn students have been eligible. To apply, SWS members had to submit a resume and respond to short answer questions.

“It was a very selective process,” Wharton junior and CEO of Penn SWS Samina Hydery said. “We were very excited to be able to send these seven members.”

Of the seven students, two were sophomores, three were juniors and two were seniors.

The SWS trip participants from all schools participated in site visits of companies invested in by Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway, as well as other Omaha-headquartered firms. The students also had the opportunity to meet Berkshire Hathaway executives and leaders of affiliated companies like Gallup.

“A common theme through many of the professionals at the companies we visited was that how you do something is just as important as what you do,” Wharton sophomore Emily Chandel said. “Not focusing on the end but focusing on the journey along the way.”

The trip also featured a two-hour question and answer session with Buffett. Chandel was one of the few students who had the opportunity to ask Buffett a question.

Drawing from a well-known quote of Buffett’s in which he said, “I want to give my kids just enough so that they would feel that they could do anything, but not so much that they would feel like doing nothing,” Chandel asked Buffett to “share insights on raising humble, modern children and how to protect that mindset from any influence that comes from an affluent household.”

Chandel said Buffett told the audience that raising kids is the most important job one will ever have. She added that Buffett was “very happy and excited to talk about issues regarding strength of character and family.”

“I think he was trying to convey that there are more metrics of success than just financial and investing,” Chandel said.

After the question and answer session, the students joined Buffett for dinner at his favorite Omaha steakhouse, Gorat’s. “It was Buffett-style,” Hydery said. “It wasn’t too extravagant and had a relaxed atmosphere.”

During the three-hour meal, the roughly fifty girls in attendance rotated in sitting at Buffett’s table and were able to experience first-hand the personal side of one of the richest men in the world.

“That was the best part of the trip, talking to him personally,” Wharton sophomore Aastha Jain said. “He is such a humble person. His personality was so great. It was just so inspiring to listen to him speaking and giving us wonderful advice.”

“He was very open and very comfortable to talk about anything we wanted to discuss and had a great sense of humor,” Chandel, who sat directly beside Buffett during dinner, added. “We were elbow-bumping distance, which is insane.”

Jain added that she found it interesting to hear Buffett — who himself attributed part of his success to being a white male in America — share his perspective on women in finance.

“[Buffett] was motivating us, encouraging us,” she said. “It’s nice to have a man’s perspective and to see how they are promoting it as well."

A previous version of this article said that the SWS attendees ate dinner at Piccolo Pete's, but they actually ate at a restaurant called Gorat's. 

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