Ritu attended Barnard College; she was the first person in her family to attend an Ivy League university. During her time in college, she studied abroad in London and absolutely loved it, leading her to pursue an internship in England after graduation. Upon completing the Mountbatten Internship Programme, she returned to her hometown of New York and started her career in financial services at Goldman Sachs within their prime brokerage group. She then worked for a small hedge fund where she assisted with both investor relations and operations, and then held an operations role at J.P. Morgan before pursuing a graduate degree. She received her MBA from Columbia Business School, where she was Co-Editor-in-Chief of The Bottom Line, the school’s newspaper. She was also elected Historian for her cluster, and created a blog featuring interviews of her clustermates — an initiative she absolutely loved.
After achieving her MBA, Ritu worked in several marketing roles, and is currently the Head of Investor Relations for RD Advisors, a real estate debt firm. She has worked with The Art of Applying® since 2014, and enjoys guiding clients through the application process. Fun fact: she landed her current finance gig through a TAOA client!
In her free time, Ritu enjoys traveling (basic, yes, but nonetheless interesting), cooking (loves hosting dinner parties!), reading (though she has been trying to get through Anna Karenina for the last three years), watching films (another fun fact: her uncle is a Bollywood actor), and creating scrapbooks. Oh and great food — whether it be on the streets of Mumbai or a Michelin-starred restaurant in New York. She has a strong appreciation for organized beauty and had been practicing the life-changing magic of tidying up long before Marie Kondo entered the scene.
