“The Next Generation”: ATLAS Fellows Featured in Emerging Manager Monthly
Where does the next generation of finance talent come from, and what does it take to get them there? ATLAS Fellows was featured in the May 2026 issue of Emerging Manager Monthly as it looked to answer that question.
The piece explores how ATLAS Fellows are working to change who gets access to careers in finance, and why that work matters, both for the students and for the industry itself.
Dmitry Balyasny co-founded Balyasny Asset Management in 2001 and serves as managing partner and CIO of the hedge fund firm, but in late 2020 he wanted to put together an organization that combined scholarships and internships in a way that provides talented young people access to opportunities and careers within the industry.
Roughly half a year later the ATLAS Fellows program, which is focused on “under-resourced students” starting as rising freshmen in college in the Chicago and New York metropolitan areas, welcomed its first cohort of 15 students. Now in its fifth year, the program admitted its sixth cohort of 62 students last month.
“I think the genesis for recruiting under-resourced students comes from looking at what are the obstacles to entering the profession of finance, and it’s a profession that’s very hard to break into if you don’t have social capital or social cachet,” Executive Director Phoebe Anderson said. “It’s extraordinarily competitive. Early internships are very important, they’re very hard to get, and so if you are a young person who doesn’t have that network or isn’t sitting at a dinner table where parents are talking about lunch meetings or golf outings, it doesn’t mean you’re less intelligent, less talented, less smart, it just means you need some doors opened.”
Anderson leads a six-person team made up entirely of people who have been in a classroom in some capacity, something she feels sets the organization apart.
“We really understand this population with whom we’re working and know what to do to help them believe in themselves and really live up to their potential,” she said.
You can read the full story in Emerging Manager Monthly.
