I've always had a passion for finance. It's always been what I've wanted to do. At the same time, I've always been very interested in technology. I've been programming and coding since I was small, but my degree was focused on finance. I never knew I could bridge my passion for finance with the technological side of things until I came across the world of quant finance by chance. I did some research on it and a light bulb went on. Quant finance was the perfect bridge between what I've always wanted to do. I think it's a great field. There's so much depth to it, and so many interesting problems.
When I started the CQF, I was working in data science. I was looking for something that could help me bridge that gap into the financial world. I started doing the CQF part time while working. Even during my pure data science work, the techniques I picked up from the CQF helped me, especially some of the advanced mathematical concepts. Then an opportunity arose at Prescient, and it turned out that the skills from the CQF were very well aligned to what they were trying to do. So, the CQF definitely helped me to get where I am right now. I still have my books sitting on my desk in the office and refer back to them often. The CQF is really helpful in terms of progressing your career and helping you understand how everything fits together.
The biggest thing is that the CQF helped me step into the financial world after working in a different sector. Investment processes are complex and diverse: there’s equity, multi- assets, cash, income, etc. Without the CQF, I would never have been able to catch up with the information that I needed to know to be able to do my job. The CQF prepared me to step in and be comfortable with all these terms and fundamentals. It would have been very difficult to just pick that same knowledge up naturally on the job. The CQF really did prepare me to work in a quantitative investment firm and work with these tools on a day-to-day basis. Also, it was practical. So, you pick up the correct skills for industry-based work.
