The Pennington School’s popular Applied Science lecture series officially kicked off last week with its very first speaker of the 2024-25 school year, Mr. Walter Loh P’26 ’27. Loh, the father of two current Pennington students, shared his perspective on the opportunities that exist within the finance and business sectors for students who are also interested in traditional STEM fields. 

Loh earned both an engineering degree and an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania, where he attended the Wharton School of Business and the School of Engineering and Applied Science. As he explained to the audience, as a kid who grew up attending a public school outside of Philly, Loh had an early interest in math and science, two fields in which he excelled. He developed an interest in business and the stock market, largely owing to his fascination with the excess of that period and how it was chronicled in the movie Wall Street, as well as the impact of the stock market collapse of the late 1980s. 

Prior to arriving at Penn, Loh viewed STEM and business as two separate things entirely. “When you look at the financial services industry as an overview,” he says, “it doesn’t really sound all that STEMy. But to do this work you need math, and you can combine your passions even further by specializing in STEM-based companies.” In addition to discussing different STEM career options within the business and finance realms, Loh outlined various paths students might take within their schooling to achieve their goals.

Loh has worked at Goldman Sachs in mergers and acquisitions, Palladium Equity Partners in private equity, and Siris Capital in private equity and telecom/technology. He has also worked as a CFO at Mavenir and Stratus Penguin Computing.