Justine Zwicker

"My personality matches were Communicator, Influencer and Investigator. Reading the descriptions, I think that fits me well. I've always loved math, problem solving and figuring things out (investigator) but I also really enjoy talking to people, collaborating, explaining and teaching. I like to get people in a room, hear everyone's input, and then get us all on the same page about the plan moving forward - whether that's at work or coordinating social plans among friends."

"I work on a team that writes code for financial models. Imagine you wanted to sell your house, and you wanted to predict how much you could get for it. You might look at how much you bought the house for, how long ago that was, how much house prices have increased on average since that time, what similar houses in your area have sold for recently, etc. You would take all that information (data) and somehow combine it to land on a final estimate of a price, or maybe a range of prices. We do a very similar thing but for financial instruments called \"bonds\" instead of houses. There are millions of bonds and our models need to price them all multiple times a day - it's way too much for humans to do manually, so we have computer code (models) that take in all kinds of data and try to determine the best price in seconds. It's a lot of fun because we're always trying to make our models more accurate, and the markets are always changing - sometimes a model that used to work well needs to be updated because some law or practice changed and now things behave differently. Starting salaries range quite a bit, but usually in the range of $80k-$120k USD. "

"I always loved math and science and when I was in high school I thought I wanted to be a doctor. I went to McGill University for life sciences but decided to switch to math and physics in my first term because I loved those classes and wasn't enjoying chemistry. I participated in the seminars of one of my professors and ended up staying at McGill for a Masters (MSc.) in Mathematics with him as my supervisor. In the end, I didn't really enjoy grad school as much as I thought, so I decided to apply for jobs instead of doing a PhD. I searched for \"data analyst\" jobs online and got a job as a data scientist for a health tech startup. It was a small company and I wasn't making much money at the beginning, but I really liked my boss and my team. Because it was a pretty new company and new team we were always trying new things. I got to talk to clients and help solve their problems with data - it was a lot of fun. But after a few years I started to feel like I wasn't learning and growing much anymore. I also wanted to move to a bigger city. So I applied online to a bunch of Data Science jobs in the financial industry in NYC. I got a bunch of rejections, but I also got a couple interviews and eventually got my current job at Bloomberg. I got my work visa for the US and moved to NYC 6weeks later. That was 2.5 years ago and I still feel like I'm learning so much everyday."

"I moved to NYC for this job and I love the big energy of this city. Pre-covid I was always on the go - checking out museums, plays and concerts, trying new restaurants, hanging out with friends, etc. I volunteer once a week teaching math to adults who want to get their high school equivalency diploma. I'm also quite involved in my church and bible study home group. I love to travel and also to visit my family in Canada, so it was important to me to chose a job that had enough vacation time each year for me to do both. Now that we have to stay at home because of COVID, I've been cooking quite a bit (I love trying new recipes!) and I've just started learning how to knit. I also try to stay active by running in Central Park and cycling. "

"Most of my day is spent at my computer, and most of my time I am coding. I often have to Google how to do things or ask other people on my team - even though I've been out of school for over 5 years, I'm still learning new things and having to figure things out every day. I have about one meeting a day with colleagues about projects we're working on together, or to update my boss, or to present the results of some research I've done to other teams. About once a week I'll go to hear a \"Tech Talk\" from someone else in the company, outside of my team - I've given some of these myself - or participate in a social/networking event. There is a very active women in tech community at Bloomberg (\"BWIT\") that puts on lots of events. Every once in a while (a couple times a year) some code that I'm responsible for will break, and then it's \"all hands on deck\" to figure out what went wrong and try to fix it as quickly as possible. Those times are a bit stressful, but the energy is also somewhat exciting."

"BSc in Mathematics and Physics (McGill University)MSc in Mathematics and Statistics (McGill University)"