Harrison Powe ’25, an econ concentrator, flashes a confident grin as he settles into a gray leather swivel chair, backed by a panoramic Providence view. “All good to begin?” he asks. He fiddles with the cuff of his white dress shirt and looks to James Hollier ’18 and James Kovacs ’11, founders of the Brown Value Investing Competition, seated across a large conference table. Judges, in person and on a screen, look on.
After the OK, Powe makes a 10-minute pitch on semiconductors in electric vehicles. A half-hour Q&A follows, then he shakes hands with Hollier and Kovacs and leaves the room. The next student enters.
It was the second year students had crafted detailed pitches for a publicly traded company of their choice. Kovacs and Hollier hosted a webinar explaining what makes a strong pitch.
Powe picked up third place and $1,000. Larry Heller ’25 and Ari Rosenstein ’25 earned the top prize of $5,000 with a pitch regarding the salvage car industry.
Hollier and Kovacs, who met in an entrepreneurial finance class in 2016 and started Silver Beech Investing, said they were blown away by this year’s talent, especially considering second place winners Jack Blitzer ’28 and Chandler Shriky ’28 were first-year students.
Judges included Porter Collins ’98 with Seawolf Capital, Scott Clark ’95 with Darlington Partners, and Kimberly Donovan, an investment director at Brown.
Scottie Cho ’26, a co- president of the student-run Brown Investment Group, welcomes the competition. Investing is a very apprentice-based industry, he says, and being trained by the right people pays dividends.
