The Investing Club and Future Business Leaders of America hosted the 2026 annual investing and business conference on April 28 with a diverse panel of business professionals, including three UPrep alumni and CEO of Zillow Jeremy Wacksman. 

In the first part of the conference, which was a fireside chat in the ULab commons, Wacksman explained how studying engineering helped him in business.

“For students who are thinking about getting an engineering degree, engineering can be a great framework for business,” Wacksman said. “It’s basically learning how to solve problems, learning how to pattern match. And that can be applied to everything.” 

Wacksman also talked about why he chose to get a Master of Business Administration.

“For me, I had focused more on STEM and on engineering and on product and technical, and I didn’t have really any business training,” Wacksman said. “I didn’t go to a school that gave me access to an investing club and a business club. I didn’t have any of this.”

Wacksman believes that the academic element of an MBA can be attained through independent study, but a school offers a clearer path and networks of connections, so whether or not one pursues an MBA should be dependent on what they value and the connections they already have. 

Wacksman left Microsoft to work at Zillow, which, at the time, was a small startup. 

“When I did that, I didn’t expect it to be a 17-year career. I mean, most startups fail, and I thought it would be a really good set of experiences, and maybe I’ll go back to Microsoft or Amazon, or maybe I’ll go to another small company,” Wacksman said. “So I wasn’t thinking this was 20 years, but the decision to kind of jump into something that seemed less popular at the time gave me a lot of opportunities.”

Wacksman believes that saying yes to opportunities when they arise is essential in the business world and that it is dangerous to commit too fully to one path.

“I would say, ‘Don’t obsess over is [the job] the perfect fit, and does this fit on the career resume,’ I imagine just kind of say yes to the opportunity,” Wacksman said. 

After Wacksman explained his background in business and school, the conference questions began to focus on the advent of AI. 

“I saw the Internet revolution come, and that was a huge revolution for the entire economy. And then the mobile phone,” Wacksman said. “Well, generative AI is, I think, bigger than either of those, and it’s probably larger than the internet.”

Wacksman thinks that AI will affect our lives unpredictably and that we need to be able to adapt quickly to new changes. 

“You’re going to be born into a career that is a few years into that, and so you’re going to just ride whatever that wave is, and you’re going to help figure it out, too,” Wacksman said. 

AI has helped Zillow quickly program new features for proof-of-concept testing, something which took much longer when every potential feature had to be handmade before it could be tested and possibly rejected. Zillow also uses AI to map houses and allow users to “fly through the home.” 

With the new uncertainty of AI and before that, the internet boom, Wacksman has learned the importance of admitting when he doesn’t know the answer to something. 

“In business, to learn intuition, to learn strategic thinking, to learn all these things you kind of have to embrace, ‘I don’t actually know.’ And like, saying ‘I don’t know’ is not a weakness. Saying ‘I don’t know’ is actually a strength, because it turns the question to the room, and someone else in the room might actually have a better answer,” Wacksman said. 

Wacksman advised students to practice writing because almost every career involves writing reports, emails or papers, and professionals need to be skilled at communicating well. 

After the fireside chat, Wacksman responded to crowd questions. He emphasized that the impact of AI on industry was more important than the environmental impacts of AI, and also claimed that housing prices are becoming unaffordable because new houses are not being built fast enough to accommodate the next generation. 

After Wacksman finished answering crowd questions, everybody was allowed to serve themselves a free dinner from the restaurant Agua Verde, before going to the conference workshops. Following the workshops, the last event began, which was a panel of three alumni. 

The three alumni were Don Blakely, an executive director at the U-District Partnership; Shawn Filer, a co-owner of Real Residential; and Carly Presho-Dunne, who works as the head of worldwide WhatsApp communications at Amazon. 

Filer talked about his experiences becoming a real estate agent and how hard it was for him to get into the industry.

“The first six months, I did one deal, and I almost quit three times out of necessity because I just wasn’t making any money,” Filer said. 

Real estate is a hard industry to enter into, because when you’re starting out, all of your clients will want to know how many houses you have already sold, and if you say that you have sold none, they will not hire you, according to Filer. Filer said that finding an already successful agent to shadow is the best way to gain experience as a new realtor. If you are older, you can use your professional experience in other fields, such as law, as well as your personal connections, to get into the business.

Filer also believes that to be in the business of selling something to a consumer, you need to have a passion for what you are selling. 

“For me, selling insurance was not natural, and if you don’t come across as natural, you’re not going to do a good job at sales. People aren’t going to think you’re authentic. They’re not going to believe you, want to trust you,” Filer said. 

Blakely has worked with many nonprofits, and he believes that you will have the most success when you are working with the right people. 

“You’re then across the table looking at jobs, like, they know you’re a good person, you have those references, and you built a reputation that you can do good work together,” Blakely said. 

Presho-Dunne graduated with an economics degree, but she had trouble finding work because there was a recession. She jumped around between jobs until she got into the marketing and communications industry. 

“Now I’m working with about 21 different countries and regional marketing leads to figure out how Amazon can reach customers with different types of shopping experiences on WhatsApp as a marketing channel,” Presho-Dunne said. 

When faced with difficult tasks, Presho-Dunne reframes it into something that she can accomplish. 

“When I got there, the client [Comcast] was insistent that the problem was making people hate them a little bit less, and that is such an ambiguous problem to solve,” Presho-Dunne said. “So I started by reframing the problem and trying to sell them on a different methodology of understanding what the root cause really was.”

Presho-Dunne, as an advertiser, was not able to stop Comcast from doing things which worsened public opinion of the company, but she did make several commercials which highlighted the good things which Comcast was doing, for instance, providing low-cost high-speed internet to communities which otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford it. 

As a marketer, she understands the importance of relationships. 

“Relationships are everything. And I benefit from the fact that I actually love developing relationships with people,” Presho-Dunne said. “If people can trust your opinion, if you listen to them, these are all things that will make your job easier as a business person, regardless of what business you end up going into, and they translate globally.”

Co-president of the Investing Club, senior Gavin Angeloff, was an organizer of the event. Preparations for the conference started in January, although brainstorming began before the new year. At the 2025 conference, FBLA leaders found that the event covered material similar to their club’s focus, and the two clubs decided to co-lead the 2026 conference. 

“It was really fun to partner with them. And I think we were able to get a lot more done and kind of cover more avenues,” Angeloff said. 

In addition to working with FLBA and other members of the Investing Club, Angeloff met with Associate Director of Development Claire Fallat to find local alumni who met the parameters of the conference. 

The first conference, started in 2024 by Evan Hartford (‘2023), was hosted on Zoom, with about 20 attendees. The 2025 conference, which Angeloff worked to plan, hosted about 40 people in person, and the guest speaker was the CEO of Nautilus Biotechnology, Sujal Patel. For the 2026 conference, Angeloff estimated 70 attendees. Angeloff is glad that he has been able to bring so much attention to the conference.

“We’re trying to educate high schoolers about business, investing, finance, and economics, and those things are not really talked about a lot in a high school setting,” Angeloff said. “But it is really important for their future, both in saving money, working a job, right? 401(k)s, Roth IRAs for their retirement. Like, there’s a lot of important concepts there.”