Saulė Keliauskaitė

Saulė Keliauskaitė `23, an economics major and international student from Lithuania, has been creating her own narrative.  

Although she is in her second full year of being on campus due to COVID-19 disruptions and studying abroad, she has been able to heavily intertwine herself with the campus community and take on many leadership roles. Currently, she is a co-manager for the debate union, an investment portfolio co-manager for Pioneer Capital Investments group (PCI) and a multi-hyphenate for the Donald and Winifred Wilson Center for Innovation and Leadership (Wilson Center).  

Keliauskaitė started a debate club in high school where she won 1st place in a national competition in 11th grade. She said this helped her gain her public speaking skills.  

Keliauskaitė said she wanted to study in the U.S. due to the prevalence of a liberal arts education, an area that is lacking in many European countries. When she came to the College, she joined the Grinnell Debate Union and had the opportunity to travel around the U.S. for tournaments. Here, she began debating with native English speakers, and she served as co-manager in her second year. In her third year, she studied abroad in London at the London School of Economics and Political Science.  

Where debate has been a continuous part of her life, Keliauskaitė did not enter the investments sphere until she joined PCI, known to be a male-dominated space, during her first year at the College.  

“Instead of being, ‘oh no, I don’t belong here,’ I wanted to lean into that feeling that I want to explore this and maybe it’s going to be interesting,” she said.  

She said PCI teaches their members to apply reasoning to their financial decisions and not give into the herd mentality of any current economic event. The club sparked her interest in financial literacy. At the end of her first year, the board of PCI encouraged her to lead the club the following year, an encouragement she describes as “very fulfilling.”  

“You need to have people that believe in you. Then you can also carry that forward,” said Keliauskaitė. “This then puts you in a position to help others and make it more inclusive going forward.”  

While she said that the areas of business, entrepreneurship and investing can have an “evil” connotation and narrative to it, Keliauskaitė promotes understanding businesses and companies beyond the flowery language, independent thinking and circle of competence. This way, support for social causes and impact-oriented spaces can be achieved.  

“If you leave the decision-making to people that will utilize them in not the best ways, I think their narrative is gonna continue,” she said. “But if you come in with your own goals and your own narrative of how things can be better improved and take up that space, I think that can improve.”  

With the Wilson Center, she was the host and on the speaker-relations committee for TEDxGrinnell, is a research assistant and student leader for the Elkes Airport Project — a feasibility study of chartering direct flights to and from Grinnell — and is leading the establishment for an upcoming entrepreneurial incubator.  

This semester, she was the emcee for TEDxGrinnellCollege, themed “Food for Thought,” and she continues to use her “Food for Thought” water bottle. Here, Keliauskaitė punctuated the speeches with personal stories about how food tied her and revealed a surprising tie to her — discovering her third cousin at the College. 

She came to the U.S. without knowing anyone, and although very few students at the College come from Eastern European countries, even fewer come from Lithuania, making her a “rare bird” as the office of international student affairs calls it.  

For Middle of Everywhere, a program where students give presentations on their home countries, members of the Global Kitchen made her favorite Lithuanian dessert called tinginys, otherwise known as lazy cake. Todd Amstrong, professor of Russian, also greets her in Lithuanian whenever he sees her.  

“They’re small things, but they really light up my day,” she said. 

At the brink of the formation of new narratives for the world of economics and her personal life, Keliauskaitė is looking to gain hands-on experience in the fields of investing, finance and entrepreneurship. She especially values furthering financial literacy to help regular people invest in a way that is good for them and not based on fear. She wants to go back and forth between the U.S. and Europe, including Lithuania and London.