Alumni Profiles

What have you been up to since graduating from Bowdoin?

I am currently a PhD student in the economics department at Stanford University, focusing on labor and industrial organization. Before starting my PhD, I spent three years as a predoctoral research fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), where I collaborated with Heidi Williams on research related to incentives in patenting and innovation.

Why Economics? (What drew you to the major/minor and how has it shaped your path?)

My path to becoming an economist actually began in my senior year of high school when I was lotteried out of AP psychology. Instead, I enrolled in AP economics as my social science class and have been engaged with the discipline ever since. Even before studying economics, I enjoyed policy discussions, largely through my participation on the high school debate team.

Are there any classes, professors, or experiences that had a lasting impact on you?

Professor of Economics John Fitzgerald's Economic Evaluation of Public Programs seminar during my sophomore year was the first time at Bowdoin that I felt like I was doing “real economics.” The course excellently distilled the concept of applied economic research, teaching both causal inference and policy design with a rigor I hadn’t found elsewhere at the college. This class equipped me with the skills to write my thesis, work at the Boston Fed, and serve as a predoctoral researcher at SIEPR before applying to graduate school.

Similarly, Associate Professor of Economicsssor Dan Stone’s Game Theory and Strategic Behavior course closely resembled my first-year graduate classes. For anyone considering a PhD in economics, taking mathematically rigorous courses like this is invaluable. I’m often surprised how many topics from that class reappear in the accelerated first-year PhD curriculum. The foundation gained here is crucial to keeping pace in graduate school.

But coursework wasn’t the only way Bowdoin’s economics department shaped my career. In my first year, I met with an alum from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston who spoke during our Macroeconomics lecture. That connection was pivotal, leading to an internship in the bank’s research division, which I later leveraged into my research fellow position at SIEPR. 

What advice would you give to current students or recent graduates interested in your field?

Read broadly. Economics underpins far more than it initially seems. Often other disciplines are practicing economics without realizing it. In many ways, our greatest contribution is refining and formalizing intuitions that others have already developed.

What have you been up to since graduating from Bowdoin? 

I was fortunate to land a full-time role doing equity research at Bank of America directly after college. I cover payments, processors, and IT services with a sub-sector focus on consumer finance and some fintech.

Why economics? 

I wanted to apply my aptitude for mathematics and general interest of psychology into a major that aligned with my planned career path. Economics gives a framework to understand our world—it encapsulates how governments, businesses, and people all simultaneously make decisions and how those interactions affect our everyday life. Its application varies widely. While it may explain how excess money supply will drive inflation, it can also quantify the impacts of divorce on child outcomes. There’s likely a niche of economics that students of all backgrounds can find a particular affinity towards. It’s challenging, yet exceptionally rewarding.

What have you been up to since graduating from Bowdoin?

I have been working as an associate analyst at Advanced Analytical Consulting Group out of Boston, Massachusetts. The primary focus of my work is to help corporate clients detect and remediate potential pay disparities across gender and race. Companies provide us with employment and compensation data, which I perform statistical testing on to asses whether compensation is fair and equitable for different sub-groups of workers.

Outside of the office, I’ve developed a love for cooking and running. Most nights you can find me trying out a new recipe or out on a long run training for my first half marathon in July.

Why economics?

My senior honors project in economics—“Accounting for Gender Differences in Cultural Industries: Evidence from Film and the Fine Arts”—remains one of my proudest achievements from my time at Bowdoin. I was able to research how a hedonic approach can identify factors that can help explain gender differences in earnings in cultural industries.

What have you been up to since graduating from Bowdoin?

It has been a very unconventional path! After graduation, I went and worked in Texas, where I'm originally from, and took an inside sales position at a valve distribution company. I did that for about a year, but had this underlying plan to fly in the Navy and become a pilot. It had really started back in my sophomore year in college. About three months after I submitted my application, I received a decision and was admitted to Officer Candidate School. I am currently going to primary here in Corpus Christi, Texas, training in the Texan Six Bravo. I had been thinking about this future for a while, but it is a kind of 180 change from my economics major at Bowdoin.

Why economics?

My professional aspirations kind of changed over time, but as I explored the economics degree and started taking different classes, I began leaning on the support of different economics professors, such as Erik Nelson. Anytime I had an elective course or could take an elective course, it was going to be with him. I use both my major and my minor to look at real-world problems. At Bowdoin, I was able to take my economics knowledge and apply it to my current work in Texas. I really enjoyed learning the material and believe it's still very relevant to my life today. 

What have you been up to since graduating from Bowdoin?

I started out working at a bank in emerging markets trading before joining a small fintech startup that focuses on retail shareholder engagement and democracy in an operational role. The startup was acquired by a larger fintech company, and I'm continuing my role there, hoping to broaden our reach.

Why economics?

I declared a major in economics because I liked the intersection between the quantitative and qualitative components of economics and how easily I could connect the dots between what I was learning in the classroom to what I was hearing about and reading about in the rest of the world. From a career perspective, economics doesn't apply to just a select few industries or job titles. Microeconomic fundamentals impact every sector and business to some degree. Even though I no longer work in a traditional finance role, what I learned in those courses still informs how I make decisions that involve customers, clients, coworkers and other companies that I interact with. Macroeconomic principles can be useful for anyone who's interested in pursuing a career with a global aspect. Regardless of what career someone chooses, economics helps us understand the world better and makes us more informed global citizens. It gives us a conceptual framework for breaking down why geopolitical events on the other side of the world can affect grocery or gas prices we see in our day-to-day. It's also helpful in developing financial literacy, like how understanding a Federal Reserve policy decision's effect on the economy and markets can in turn influence how we manage our own finances. I truly believe economics can impact multiple facets of our lives. 

What have you been up to since graduating from Bowdoin?

After Bowdoin, I worked briefly in economic consulting, and then I worked at a quantitative hedge fund doing data analytics and investor relations. Then I went to Harvard Business School, and I just graduated in 2021. I have since transitioned into tech. I had a summer internship at Adobe doing go-to market strategy and operations, and I soon learned about my current company, which is called Clari. I've now been with Clari for over a year on the the externally-facing 'business development partnership' side of things. I think it's a perfect combination of sales strategy and thinking big-picture in terms of where there could be synergies.

Why economics?

I came into Bowdoin thinking I was going to be a government and legal studies major, but couldn't get into a class because they were so popular, so I signed up for my first economics class. I was just amazed at how the things that were intuitive to how I lived my life actually had names and were derived from economic principles. Economics is also, in a way, almost a study of how people would rationally live their lives, so it's then interesting to study how real life deviates from the models. I really think having studied economics, for me, has been helpful in every aspect of life—from personal investing to better understanding the world.

What have you been up to since Bowdoin?

I currently live in St. Paul, Minnesota and am a staff economist at Minnesota Management and Budget, a state government agency. My unit produces forecasts of Minnesota economic activity and major sources of tax revenue for the governor and state legislature, mainly revenue from the state income tax, sales tax, and corporate tax. I’ve worked here since October 2020.

Before I started my job in state government, I spent 2 years obtaining a master’s degree in Applied Economics from the University of Minnesota. From 2016 to 2018, I worked in upstate New York for the nonprofit Ramapo For Children. There, I was mainly a retreat program leader for school and community groups from all five boroughs of New York City. I also worked with young adults with special needs engaged in a residential transition-to-independence program.

Why economics?

I guess I have several answers to this question — one answering why I started studying economics and several why I continued studying and working in the field (albeit after a couple years “off” after I graduated from Bowdoin).

I started studying economics in my last year of high school. I don’t think I had ever really heard of economics at that point, to be honest, so it piqued my interest. Or if I had already heard of it, I had no idea what it was. I transitioned into introductory economics courses when I came to Bowdoin and was intrigued by the breadth of questions that economists address. At its core, an economy is made up of a group of people who value things individually, act on their valuations, and are typically constrained by the fact that things tend to be scarce, or at least finite. Making sense of economic relationships is important for so many meaningful goals that we humans have — combating climate change, creating successful school environments, and being financially secure in retirement are some examples. At Bowdoin, I benefited from so many great economics professors who were engaging and supportive. I ended up writing an honors thesis on the U.S. organic fruit market with Professor Erik Nelson my senior year.

A couple years removed from Bowdoin, I decided to apply to graduate school in applied economics. From my two years of hands-on experience in the nonprofit world, I had come to highly value public service. I saw a master’s degree in economics as a flexible and practical opportunity for me to begin an eventual career in the nonprofit or public sector. Now, almost a year into my role working in Minnesota state government, I can say that the field of economics never ceases to be engaging, relevant, and impactful.

What have you been up to since graduating from Bowdoin?

After graduating in 2015, I spent two years working at the Massachusetts General Hospital as a part of a research group that used a microsimulation model to explore the clinical outcomes and cost-effectiveness of HIV-related health policy. I then attended the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee. I graduated in 2021 and now work as a resident physician in the internal medicine department of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts. 

Why economics?

I was drawn to econ because it showed me a new way to understand systems. I had initially started taking classes in the econ department because I was curious about the financial crash of 2008 and the conditions that set it in motion, but quickly realized that the tools that you develop when you study econ are applicable to much more than banks and stocks and the price of milk. It helps to understand how the structure of a system can often lead to predictable yet unintended consequences, how important incentives are to understanding the behavior of rational actors, and at higher levels of the discipline, why and how people behave irrationally or in ways that are contrary to the common good. It’s an incredibly broad field of study that is applicable to all career paths and walks of life, and I would highly recommend exploring the department.

What have you been up to since Bowdoin?

After graduating from Bowdoin with a double-major in Economics and English, I got my Maine state teaching certification through the Bowdoin Teacher Scholars program for both English and Social Studies. I ended up English at Yarmouth High School during the academic year, and economic game theory with Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth in the summers. Eventually, I decided to pursue a PhD in quantitative education policy analysis at the University of Virginia, which I finished as of May 2022. My dissertation revolves around how we can rigorously and fruitfully combine traditional econometrics with nascent data science and machine learning techniques to both shed new light on empirical issues in education (especially as related to equity and access in higher ed), and formulate new potential solutions. More specifically, I've spent a lot of time developing the use of natural language processing techniques ("machine reading") to analyze the vast quantities of text data pervasive throughout education, and hope to continue this work in future positions. I'm currently working as a Data Scientist at The Common Application, Inc.

Why economics?

Honestly, I sort of fell into Economics at Bowdoin when I took 101 to fulfill a math requirement, but I've loved it ever since and haven't looked back! I stuck with it because of how potent a tool it was in my analytic toolbox from the get-go — how radically it changed how I thought about everything from business to society and even my teaching practice. Not to say economics is the *only* analytic lens by which these things should be understood, but it's certainly a potent one — and one made even more potent in combination with other disciplinary frameworks, too. My time with Behavioral Economics and Game Theory especially changed how I approached strategic and complex decision-making situations across contexts, something that has come in handy throughout all realms of my life to date — teaching, grad school, research, and more. If you plan on grappling with complex social issues in the future, I can't recommend at least some training in economics enough!

What have you been up to since Bowdoin?  

Since graduating Bowdoin in 2013, I have furthered my education while simultaneously striving to make a positive impact on the world. First, I was fortunate enough to be awarded a Fulbright scholarship to Luxembourg, where I earned a Master in Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Additionally, I worked with the US Embassy Luxembourg, government of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, and private companies to promote and support entrepreneurial growth and development in Luxembourg and across the European Union. Shortly thereafter, I earn a dual MD/MBA at the University of Rochester School of Medicine & Dentistry and Simon Business School in Rochester, New York. Prior to completing my dual degree, I spent a year at Harvard Business School working for Professor Michael E. Porter at his Institute For Strategy and Competitiveness, working to “fix” health care delivery globally. Presently, in addition to my ongoing health policy work and health services research, I am an orthopaedic surgery resident physician in the Harvard Combined Orthopaedic Residency Program, providing musculoskeletal care at Mass General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Boston Children’s Hospital.   

Why economics? 

There are a number of reasons why I pursued a degree in economics. First, I believe one of, if not the most important, part of a college education is to teach students how to think, not what to think. A close second to that primary goal is communication. At Bowdoin, the economics department provided a robust curriculum that challenged students to reach their full potential. In order to succeed, I had to learn to tackle complex problems and then effectively communicate my findings. If I did not do those two things, I did poorly (and deservedly so!). I knew these skills would help me in any career I chose following graduation. Second, I am a firm believer that the core principles of economics (e.g., supply and demand) and incentives—financial, social, and otherwise—drive much of human behavior (including within health care); thus, I wanted to learn the general principles more in depth. Lastly, I greatly enjoyed my classmates and professors. Each of them were not only colleagues and teachers but friends, and I am forever grateful to learn with and from them, respectively.

What have you been up to since Bowdoin?

After graduating, I worked in economic consulting for three years. I then went to graduate school in economics at Michigan State University. Since getting my PhD, I have been an assistant professor in the economics department at Oberlin College. I teach classes in principles of economics, labor economics, econometrics, and poverty and inequality. Broadly, my research is on policy issues related to child well-being, poverty and inequality, education, health, and family demography.

Why economics?

I love the framework that economics provides. Economics is all about making choices under constraints—and this way of thinking can be applied to many kinds of problems in many fields. I was also drawn to economics because the work economists do is incredibly useful for designing policy. I will say I did not really like Econ 101. I came back to the subject and started to really enjoy it after taking a class called Economics of the Life Cycle. In this class, we talked about decisions related to education, labor supply, marriage and divorce, fertility, and retirement—all the kinds of decisions everyone makes! This is when I realized how far-reaching and applicable economics is, as I thought these topics were limited to psychology or sociology.