After getting my Bachelor’s degree in Finance 16 years ago, I started off in the industry at Bloomberg L.P. with the aspiration of becoming a portfolio manager. Within a couple years after joining the firm however, I soon found myself integrated with the code and design of screens on the internal Bloomberg system for a newly formed department with over 30 teams, all needing screens for their specific team information. It was not long after that that people in the company started coming to me with questions regarding the company’s proprietary programming language, commentary, and within a year I was asked to join a new team and be the company’s main liaison for all questions regarding commentary. After joining this new team, I paired up with a VBA programmer who recognized a need for a program that could write the code for the end-user while designing or updating a screen through an interface, thus eliminating the need to learn complex code in order to create or update screens for the Bloomberg system. Two years later, my partner and I implemented The Commentary Interface program, and it has been a legend in the company ever since.

I spent the next 3 years distributing the new program to members in the company worldwide, providing trainings to help groups anywhere in the company get their screens up and running and handling all help requests. It was during this time in my career that I feel I had the greatest opportunity to be creative, as I wrote and designed all my training materials, including training books and class practice exercises, as well as designed a full help system for The Commentary Interface program using RoboHelp software.

Unfortunately once The Commentary Interface program was introduced to the company, there was no longer such a high demand for my assistance regarding commentary programming inquiries and I was then moved into a group responsible for checking the quality of financial data for corporate bonds. At first I embraced this change and getting back into finance, but I soon found myself very unhappy and unmotivated as my job became very routine and boring. Two years later I decided to leave Bloomberg and join a small financial firm, QED Financial Systems, where I worked as a Client Support Specialist. Although this job offered me much more variety in terms of my responsibilities, I found that the only times I felt motivated was when I had the opportunity to be creative, whether it be for designing training materials, or writing step-by-step instructions. Two and half years after joining the company, I was laid off, which was truly a blessing in disguise.

After spending about 6 months interviewing and trying to find a job in the finance industry, I finally decided to go back to school for web design. It was something that I had always wanted to do ever since my time at Bloomberg and this time in my life seemed like no better to make such a drastic change. I soon found myself researching schools with web design studies in my local area and quickly chose the Art Institute of Philadelphia for its focus on the design aspect in web design. My experience in school has been wonderful and 3 years later I am so proud and honored to have this portfolio of work to share with you!