The month of March marked the end of the Risk Management Project, one of the highlights of my journey at Rotman. It was a busy and transitory month for the MFRM program. We finished our industry projects, came back to school to present our work, and kickstarted the final semester.

Apart from the two semesters of academics, the MFRM program engages us in two months of work on a project with an industry sponsor. This professional experience is a great opportunity to build relations, apply classroom-gained knowledge to the real world, and get to know ourselves and our career paths better.

In November, many industry sponsors were invited to showcase their project proposals over Zoom. These industry sponsors were from a varied background of fintech, banks, consulting firms, insurance companies, and regulatory bodies. After reading the project proposals and talking to the professionals, we had to decide and submit our top choices. I had always wanted to work at the Central Bank, so I put in my first choice as the Bank of Canada. To my delight, like most students I got paired with my first choice to work at the Bank of Canada in market research.

After we came back from our winter breaks in January, we started career week and working for our sponsors right away. Career week is a week of career enhancement and development workshops offered by the MFRM program. During this week, our career consultant helped us redesign our résumés, write cover letters, and prepare for our interviews. We also learned a few tips on how to build and manage long-term professional relationships. We attended a lot of workshops on career strategy and learned from many internal and external speakers and alumni. Career week came at an apt timing, right before our projects started.

While working on the project, I had the opportunity to talk and network with different departments, work with policy makers and researchers, and most excitingly, write a Staff Analytical Note for publication.

I had a very steep learning curve in the two months I worked at the Bank of Canada, and the experience reshaped my career path. The connections I made and the knowledge I gained at the Bank in that time could not have been gained through just classroom experience.

The project ended in the second week of March; this meant coming back to school for our second and final term. It was a pleasant surprise when we found out that all our classes this semester would be in person. While I was not thrilled about ending the project, I did look forward to seeing my friends in class.

The first week of the semester was extremely busy with classes and project presentations. During this week, every student presented their work which they completed while working on the industry project. It was humbling to learn the depth of knowledge and skills my fellow MFRM students had gained during the last two months while in their industry projects. The week was eye-opening to how the MFRM program opens doors to limitless possibilities of career choices.

The Master of Financial Risk Management is a full-time program designed to prepare ambitious young professionals for careers in risk management and finance.