Chris Gryniewicz, Finance

Many USF students struggle to find the balance between jobs, academics, and community engagement, but Chris Gryniewicz has excelled in each arena.

Gryniewicz worked for two years with Valpak of Central Florida, frequently winning monthly sales contests despite competing with veteran sales professionals. He taught himself graphic design, web design, and search engine optimization, and implemented a Customer Relationship System using knowledge he gained in USF information systems classes. After leaving Valpak to pursue finance-related internships, he interned as a valuation analyst at Crosstree Capital Partners. His peers trust him to handle large sums of money: he is the student government treasurer, helping to shape policy regarding the student government’s $15 million budget.

While devoting himself to these professional opportunities, Gryniewicz has also found academic success as a member of the Applied Security Analysis course, known as one of the most challenging College of Business classes. He and other students research and make stock recommendations to an advisory board, which votes on investing real money irom the Student Managed Investment Fund based on the options recommended by the students. Recently, Gryniewicz competed with a few other students from the class in a statewide competition against graduate and doctoral finance students.

Gryniewicz is involved in his church as a youth team leader and musical accompanist, and is using his finance knowledge to develop an investment policy for Metropolitan Ministries.