As Jared Sender (MVS ‘94) was nearing the end of medical school, he had a decision to make. 

The movement science alum was near the top of his class and could have attended any residency program he wanted. He had even thought about becoming a surgeon. Yet, when he was chatting with practicing attending surgeons during his rotations, he was surprised they encouraged him to use his medical degree in less traditional ways — to go into law or finance, for instance. 

At the time, there weren’t too many MDs that worked on Wall Street. But Jared’s brother, Adam, who worked for a prominent hedge fund, had recently shown Jared research reports from one physician who’d made the leap from medicine to equity research. Adam gave Jared the idea that the medical knowledge he gained could be applied to other industries — in this case, biopharma investing.

Jared was intrigued.

“If one of those things had happened in a vacuum, I don’t know that that would have really spurred me in the finance direction,” Jared said. “It was the combination of the two forces — the influence of a family member and the influence of people who were actually doing what I was aspiring to do telling me, ‘Maybe you should think about doing something else,’ that really got me to investigate an alternative path and propelled me forward.”

Jared decided to forego his residency and instead join Merrill Lynch to work on the investment giant’s pharmaceutical equity research team. It was one of many risky moves he’d make throughout his winding career, which would take him from hedge funds to a health system to a Medicaid managed care organization to investment banking over the course of 25 years.

“I didn’t feel like I was ever giving up my medical background for my career,” Jared said. “I felt like I was leveraging the language that I learned in all those years of schooling at U-M and at med school but just harnessing that education and knowledge in a different direction, always with the focus of improving patients’ lives and doing something that’s good for society.”

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Jared’s career journey began in the basement of the U-M Central Campus Recreation Building, where he sat in kinesiology lectures with future NFL player Tyrone Wheatley and other star Michigan athletes. Jared had initially intended to become a physical therapist, but after acing classes in biology, chemistry, anatomy and physiology, he pivoted to the pre-med track.

“It all started right there,” Jared said. “Because it was my scientific work at the School of Kinesiology that put me on the trajectory to go to medical school.” 

Jared said he had a naive perspective about the career opportunities that existed when he was an undergrad student and even in the first two years of medical school. He never thought about business as a possibility.

Yet he found himself several years later on Wall Street, first at Merrill Lynch and then at Exis Capital Management Inc., a hedge fund Adam had just started.

“I think success in life is not always about how smart you are,” Jared said. “A lot of times, it’s luck and being at the right place at the right time.”

Jared worked first for Exis as an analyst and then transitioned to become a portfolio manager, covering the health care space as a professional investor. 

He would spend time at several different investment firms over the next several years, with some non-finance stops as a senior director for New York’s safety net hospital (a health system that sees patients regardless of their ability to pay for health care) and at Fidelis, the largest Medicaid managed care plan (a health plan administered to people on Medicaid) in New York State.  

At Fidelis, Jared built out an entirely new department focusing on value-based care, an approach of paying more to health care providers who make an effort to drive up quality and down costs for their patients. 

He says all of those experiences have helped him in his current role as a managing director within BTIG’s healthcare investment banking division, where his focus is mergers and acquisitions for biotech companies as well as connecting the companies with appropriate investors to fund new drugs.

“All those years of being an institutional investor are really beneficial to me when I have conversations with current investors because I understand their process,” Jared said. “I understand what it is that helps propel them into making an investment decision. And frankly, I know a lot of them from my days of investing, and those trusted relationships run deep across many years.”

“When you’re investing in health care, understanding all the different components is so important because there’s interplay with everything,” he continued. “So understanding things from the medical provider perspective was very valuable. Understanding value-based care was very valuable. I had no idea what that was before I worked at the New York City health care system. Every single aspect of my career, all the twists and turns and the diversity of it, has really helped guide me to where I am today.”

I think success in life is not always about how smart you are. A lot of times, it’s luck and being at the right place at the right time.

He encourages current Kines students to tap into the vast U-M alumni network and speak to as many people as possible to learn about different career paths — and to have the courage to create a path that doesn’t exist yet.

“Back in the day, graduating from medical school and going into finance was more of a novelty,” he said. “Now, anyone that invests in biopharma invariably has health care professionals — MDs, PhDs, chemists — embedded on their team. You have to have the background, the proficiency, and the education to really do proper due diligence in the potential investments you’re looking at.”

“I don’t like calling myself a pioneer or anything like that,” he added, “but sometimes you have to blaze your own trail.”

If you’re a Kines student interested in speaking with Jared, please email Mary Clare Fischer.

QUICK QUESTIONS

The U-M memory he’ll always remember: Desmond Howard winning the Heisman trophy. I was actually at that game where he outstretched and made that crazy touchdown catch near the student section and then also at the game where he did the famous Heisman move.

The Kines course that had the greatest impact on him: Exercise Physiology with Professor Victor Katch.

The classmate(s) he still keeps in touch with: Jarrett Irons, former U-M football captain, and Jimmy King, who was part of the Fab 5 basketball team.

The one thing he suggests students do before they graduate: take a semester overseas (which I regret not doing!)

The activities he makes sure he does when back in Ann Arbor: eating at Zingerman’s and walking through the Diag.