Claire Fox, MSRM '13
It is hard to miss Claire’s return on investment from earning her Master’s in Risk Management from NYU Stern. Within months of graduating, she had landed a new job in a different sector of the financial world. “I obtained my current position as Risk Manager at Harbour Fiduciary Services through another MSRM alumnus, and it probably would not have happened had I not completed the program,” Claire remarks. “I acquired the breadth of knowledge that enabled me to move from risk management in banking to performing risk management for a private equity real estate fund—in a role I love.”
Born and raised in Bermuda, Claire returned home in 2002 after attending university in England to begin a career in banking. For a decade she worked in a variety of risk management roles within the banking sector. She recalls: “Enterprise risk management as we know it today was just coming to fruition, so you did not have access to the range of courses and certifications in risk management you have now—even less so if you were living on a small island in the middle of the Atlantic. I spent a lot of my days reading the Basel Accord cover to cover and getting my hands on whatever literature involving risk management I could.”
Her day-to-day work with risk management only stimulated her interest in formalizing her education and expanding her skill set. “I knew that I wanted to be a specialist in my field. It was important for me to ensure that my contribution to the organization was value-added and that persons within the organization could depend on me to be a subject matter expert and respect what I brought to the table. I also wanted to increase my knowledge of other areas of risk, and Stern's program seemed like it would be able to do that—and it did!
“Stern’s program filled in the gaps in the knowledge I had accumulated on my own. Because you are in a classroom amongst your peers, you are also able to gain additional knowledge through their experiences, which is something you cannot always get just from doing a certification where you self-study.”
Once she dug into her new position at Harbour Fiduciary, Claire discovered just how broad her responsibilities could be—and how well Stern’s program had prepared her. “My current role has me as a jack of all trades, which I love,” she says. “My days are never boring! They can be a mixture of pure ERM combined with liquidity risk analysis or modeling our investment portfolio. The level of diversification the program gives you allows you to have, if need be, a multifaceted role. I am lucky, as I have gained so much from the program.”