31 December, 2018

2018 Flashback

Hi All,

Fully sinked into being a corporate professional, I admit, life has not been same as it was during university days. One of the biggest changes I see is the LACK OF TIME I find in all aspects of life- being anything to pursue my hobbies or getting time for blogging. This is evident that I have written absolutely 0 blogs here this year - what a shame on myself! I find myself constantly juggling between trying to relax on weekends and have a lazy day or to get something valuable learnt or delivered from the two days I get off every week. 

Lately, I have been spending my weekends on my first startup - FinCrack - through which I run a mentoring program for CFA candidates to help them nail the toughest examination of Wallstreet. Being from a tech background and learning about in the field of Finance by pursuing CFA over the past 3 years, I had faced many challenges. However, I didn't actively track them and found the solutions googling and having trials and errors. It was until recently, in August 2018, that I received my CFA Level 3 results, and aced with more than 90%tile, that I received a lot of comments and queries and questions from fellow candidates. In hindsight, I feel, having a mentor, especially for someone like me who likes to self-learn would have been very advantageous. And I wanted to give that luxury to my fellow generation CFA exam takers. Hence I started FinCrack - more details in the next post.

2018 has been a wonderful year - with few key highlights below:

1. Job switch - from Technology Associate at Morgan Stanley to Business Analyst at Deutsche Bank.  
Being known as techie and geek girl since my undergraduation,  life took a turn when I got placed into Morgan Stanley. My interest in Finance grew from that point and I started pursuing CFA. From that time itself, I wanted to have an exposure to a role which is more inclined towards business and gives me a deeper understanding. That wishlist is checked.

2. CFA Level 3 exam clearance with more than 90%tile
Out of ~12.5% who qualify for a charter, I wanted to be one who clears all 3 levels of CFA in first attempt and in consecutive years. Voila! I made it.

3. FRM Level 1 exam given ( Results on 3rd Jan 2019 - Fingers crossed)
The intent was not to make an alphabetical soup, but I just managed to gain one more ingredient ;)

4.  FinCrack - My First Step in Entrepreneurship Journey
Always a dream to be an entrepreneur, I took my first baby step. Being an engineer and someone who studied finance through CFA and FRM, I faced challenges and thought to pass-my-knowledge on in a better way. I was able to handle the initial setup to the getting customer to deliver content all by myself within a month. 

5. Campus Hiring
Being on other side of the table in an interview room made me much more aware about myself and the responsibility that I had on every candidates' career as well as on my firm. I went for hiring as a panelist to 2 universities this year - BITS Goa and IIT Guwahati.

6. Re-joining Toastmaster
Toastmasters is an organisation that I always wanted to get associated with and had benefitted from my past experience attending the meeting and taking up several roles. I rejoined TM club with Innovative Planning as the new Pathways.

Before the year ends, I didn't want to break the streak of posting blogs and here I am, check marking the blogspot journey.