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At Fordham, Yang was part of the first cohort of students to earn a B.S. in global business at the University’s Lincoln Center Campus. She focused on global finance and business economics and pursued a second major in interdisciplinary math and economics. She also cofounded the Consulting Club after noticing a gender gap in the finance world—one in which women’s global representation on executive committees is only 20%, according to Forbes. The club gave Gabelli students, many of them women, a chance to learn from each other and industry experts about “the problem-solving skills needed to effectively pair creativity and opportunity in the consulting world,” Yang said.

As a student, she worked as an investment banking analyst at Morgan Stanley and CIBC Capital Markets, and she is currently a partner and head of advisory services at Coefficient Partners, a financial advising firm. Yang also founded a blockchain project called IconFashion, which functions as what she calls a “dress-up game” for users’ NFT avatars—non-fungible tokens that serve as unique digital identifiers. Like the Fordham Consulting Club, which Yang called “the root of [her] entrepreneurship,” IconFashion came out of what she saw as a lack of female representation, this time in the cryptocurrency and NFT spaces.

While working and pursuing her own business, Yang knew she wanted to continue her education with graduate studies, and after talking to several friends who were Schwarzman Scholars, she decided to apply.

“It’s something very unique,” Yang said about the Schwarzman program, which had over 3,000 applicants this year. “It’s a very small class—about 150 people this year—and from all different backgrounds.”

Lorna Ronald, Ph.D., director of Fordham’s Office of Prestigious Fellowships, described the Schwarzman award as “the scholarship for studying in China.”

“They’re really intentional about building a leadership community and having the cohort learn from each other,” she said.

One of the goals of the Schwarzman Scholars program is to “build a global network of young leaders that are prepared to confront the pressing challenges facing the world,” according to the press release announcing the Class of 2023–2024. “Scholars are selected based on their leadership qualities and the potential to understand and bridge cultural and political differences.”

For Yang—the second Fordham student to be accepted to the program, after Ran Niu, BS’16 —the program will give her the opportunity to deepen her knowledge of global affairs, network with students from diverse backgrounds, and figure out how to continue growing her business. Even just going through the application process, she said, “gave me a chance to take the time and connect the dots between school, work, my business, and what I want for my future.”

Yang’s feelings about the application process echo what Ronald told Fordham News in November, when she said that applying for prestigious awards gives students and alumni “a beautiful opportunity to think about [themselves] and [their] place in the world.”

After getting to know Yang, Ronald was unsurprised her Schwarzman application was successful. “Cheryl is really incredible,” Ronald said. “She is very, very thoughtful and deliberate about her path. I think it’s that leadership—she sees a situation that’s out of whack, and she says, ‘What can I do about it?’”