On April 3, 2026, Jones College Prep hosted its first ever Financial Club Conference, fully organized by students and bringing together students from not only Jones, but from all over the city of Chicago.
The event has been in the works since the beginning of the year, and has fostered a community of business driven students at Jones.
“Beginning of the year, we organized a group of students and fleshed out the idea for having this conference, to come together and listen to finance individuals,” said Francis Somol ‘27. “As we went on, we had formed individual committees who each handled their own responsibilities, and shortly after we started meeting with the APs and students alike to get them to board and sign up for the event.”
The event is fueled by a mutual love and passion for business that the organizers share, helping to bring the conference to life.
“We’re all interested in the business world, and we feel that at Jones, or high schools specifically, there’s not enough financial literacy,” said Aadesh Patel ‘27. “We want to improve that by addressing some issues that guest speakers could provide, and overall give valuable insight to students.”
The day started off with breakout rooms for students to get to know each other, alongside hearing from a top professional on a topic of their interest.
“We want kids to have four different guest speakers ranging across different topics within the industry, so attendees can pick which breakout room seems most interesting to them, and get a more personal connection with a guest speaker,” said Max Rubenstein ‘27
The two keynote speakers for the event were Ravin Gandhi and Sujee Jeganathan, two esteemed professionals in their industries who will be able to provide valuable information to attendees.
“Gandhi is a CEO who has been featured on CNBC, CNN, and Fox News Business frequently, and is very experienced in speaking,” said Rubenstein. “Jeganathan is CEO of a tech company called Trust Clarity, so getting both of them for this conference is a great opportunity for us.”
Planning the event was a collaborative process with committees such as logistics, financial, and interpersonal, bringing together students of different interests in the field of business to plan the event fluidly.
“I was in charge of the logistics committee which, for me, has been an amazing experience,” said Somol. “I really found joy in working with other students. Everyone has been on top of it, and everybody really seems motivated to get this event going.”
In addition to Jones students, students from all across CPS worked to organize the event.
“It’s mainly Jones kids, but some of our committees have kids from schools like Lane Tech, Northside, and Whitney Young,” said Rubenstein. “It bridges together a lot of different schools and a lot of different students, all of it coming together at the conference.”
Collaborating with a vast variety of students has been beneficial to the events, allowing for multiple perspectives to be listened to.
“Due to the fact that we have a bunch of people from outside of just Jones, they can provide us valuable insight that can make the event more creative and more adaptive for everyone’s needs,” said Patel. “That really helped me really how maybe things might not go exactly how I plan, but by using other people’s help, we can make the conference better for all students and allow them to gain the best learning experience.”
Around 100 students signed up to attend the conference, and students are excited for the opportunity to be exposed to a wide array of knowledge.
“At public schools, there’s not a great chance to expose yourself to guest speakers or to professionals in the field,” said Rubenstein. “It’s a relatively short event, but there’s a lot of quality within and students are excited for the chance to have an open event where anyone can hear from these good speakers and seek out insight from one another.”
The conference organizers hope to continue the event past this initial event, passing it down to the next generation of Jones students.
“Assuming this goes well, the goal would be to have a bi-yearly conference, one in the fall and one in the spring,” said Rubenstein. “We have freshmen and sophomores in our committees. We’d love to eventually pass it down to them and have this be a lasting legacy for CPS students in the future, to always have this chance.”
With a passionate team behind it, the Financial Club Conference was a successful event that made large strides in achieving its goal of giving opportunities to students to better understand financial literacy.
“A very large value of the conference is to meet other kids. Sometimes it can feel isolating to like something like finance when people aren’t being exposed to other people who have the same interest,” said Rubenstein. “That’s something our conference hopes to solve, and to help bring people together.”
