Martina Cheung, president and CEO of S&P Global, will be the featured speaker at ºÚÁÏÉç’s Spring Commencement on May 15 at EagleBank Arena on the Fairfax Campus.
Can you share one piece of personal or professional advice you received that has influenced your life or career and that you would like to impart to this George Mason Class of 2025?
My advice is to take a long-term view when thinking about your career and when you’re making big decisions. If you get too caught up in the short term, you could lose sight of the larger and more important long-term opportunities.
Careers last decades. When you come to a crossroads, when you’re thinking about whether to take a job, stop and ask yourself: Where do I want to be in 10 years and what can I do over the next two to three years to help me get there? This will help you decide which way to go.
What is one thing every college student should do to set themselves up for success after graduation?
Network. Get involved, volunteer for projects, and find a mentor or trusted advisor. Mentors can be professors, aunts or uncles, or people in your professional lives. You want to look for people who will give you honest feedback and advice. And then make this relationship mutually beneficial. What I mean is that the relationship should not be one-way learning, from mentor to mentee. Graduates might be surprised that mentors are going to learn from them, too.
George Mason this spring rolled out a new model for universities to advance a responsible approach to harnessing artificial intelligence and driving societal impact. Where do you see AI five years from now?
GenAI is having profound and accelerating effects across all sectors of the economy and in society. We’re using it at S&P Global to be more productive and to create better experiences for our customers.
Companies and consumers are just at the beginning of tapping the potential of this technology. We are building toward a future where AI agents—systems that act autonomously and dynamically, selecting the actions needed to reach their goals—vastly improve consumers’ experiences by handling multistep, complex processes. In the financial services sector, that could mean AI agents will be able to perform quantitative data analysis for investors.
Some people are saying that GenAI is the end of the knowledge economy. I don’t see it that way. Now, more than ever, workers need to be lifelong learners. You want to be intellectually curious. Throughout our lives, we all should strive to acquire new skills and to be critical thinkers.
What was it about George Mason that led to S&P Global Ratings becoming a corporate partner with the university’s Costello College of Business? How can universities and industry, including S&P Global, best work together for the benefit of graduates and employers?
George Mason has a fantastic business school. It’s dynamic and prioritizes innovation and real-world applications. We learned about the school through President Washington, who serves on S&P Global’s Board of Directors.
Our partnership allows us to support scholarship and internship opportunities, as well as other student engagement activities. For example, we hosted students in New York at our global headquarters where they got to meet our analytical and research teams, who exposed students to our work on credit risk and the latest trends in financial markets.
Relationships between the private sector and higher education are essential for connecting students with people and experiences that will support their professional growth and development. Through internships and co-ops, students benefit from hands-on experience, allowing them to apply classroom knowledge in real-world settings while gaining valuable skills. And businesses benefit from making connections with talented people who could ultimately become part of their teams.
You grew up in Ireland. What brought you to the United States and how did that experience influence your career path?
I came to the U.S. in 2000 to work on a consulting engagement because I had a skillset that was needed by a particular client. Following two successful client projects, I decided to transfer to the U.S. as I was part of a fast-growing, busy consulting team, doing exciting work for our clients.
My consulting career spanned 35 clients over 12 years across multiple industry segments. My final client was S&P Global. After I made the jump to S&P Global, I was fortunate to work in many positions around the company, which helped me to develop a holistic understanding of our customers and the important work that we do to provide essential intelligence to power their decisions. I led some of our largest and most successful growth projects along the way. Now, I am proud to be the CEO and excited for the next phase of growth and value creation at the company.
Is there anything you would like to add?
I’m excited to visit campus and speak with the Class of 2025. Congratulations, graduates! I’ll see you soon.