While academia and the public sector remain popular destinations for Indiana Economics Department graduate school alumni, several IU econ graduate school alums have landed jobs in New York City in the last two decades. While there are many jobs for economists on Wall Street, it takes some perseverance to go from graduate school to an investment bank or hedge fund, our alumni observed, but job searches become much easier once one has landed an initial job in New York.

For instance, Mary Clare Bland, who began graduate school in 1992, left Bloomington after completing two chapters of her dissertation and began applying for any posted job openings she saw on Wall Street while also working with several headhunters, who helped her mainly by informing her of new job openings.

She landed a job at the Loan Pricing Corporation that she described as a stepping stone to the job she really wanted, and said it was her background in statistics that the firm found most appealing. She had also taken classes in the finance department while at Indiana, which made her more attractive to prospective employers as well.

After two years in her first job, she had a track record as well as a network of friends in the industry, and she was able to leverage her connections to get interviews for jobs that were a better fit for her skills and interests. She remarked that one must “do the time” in order to get respect in finance.

She said that being diligent remains the best way to land the first job: She responded immediately to phone calls and emails from potential employers, dressed professionally for every interview, and made sure to follow up with the interviewer.

Mike Gapen, who recently began a job as chief U.S. economist for Morgan Stanley, arrived on Wall Street via Washington D.C., where he was a senior economist for the IMF and then the Federal Reserve. In his case, his experience dealing with the financial crisis at the Fed made him attractive to Wall Street, and when the crisis ebbed and banks started hiring again, he began a job search in New York. When he began his career in Washington, he envisioned one day transitioning to Wall Street, and that goal dictated his career decisions.

Mike said that his policy experience and communication skills helped him land on Wall Street, and today he appears regularly on TV and sends out well-regarded notes to clients about how current events might impact financial markets.

Kajal Mukhopadhyay made his way to New York after a decade at Notre Dame, where he had a joint appointment with the economics department and the school’s lab for social research. His first job in New York was with American Express, which he got via a classmate from his undergraduate school. His econometric and programming skills are what clinched his first job, he said.

After a few years in New York Kajal started his own marketing consulting firm with his wife Sumi Duttaray, who also got her economics Ph.D. from Indiana University.

Kajal observed that it took him a few years to establish a network in the city and that doing so was necessary for him to both change firms and then start his own. He commented that while he doesn’t know many IU economists in New York, he has run into other IU alumni in the city.

The Dan Duesterberg Fund, established by Dan’s family and his classmates, is intended to help graduate students in economics at Indiana University with non-academic job searches in places like Washington D.C. and New York.