How did you become interested in economics?
I've always had a keen interest in understanding the world around me through observation and trying to understand how mechanisms that govern and operate our society and interact with one another work in tandem and create what we see around us. Simple questions like why is a candy bar more expensive than it was last year to complicated thought such as what does this new policy imply and how does it change our experience at a micro and macro level.
I found that economics was an excellent bridge that could help to explain the more qualitative aspects of how society as a whole functions and translate that into a field that one could model and understand through mathematics and analysis. The introductory principles of macro and microeconomic classes at DePaul opened my eyes to this aforementioned hypothetical bridge and brought my mind to a realm of thinking that I had always sought to place it in.
From brief lectures about game theory and trade offs to micro and macroeconomic models that put topics like consumer tastes, interest rates, unemployment and other complex theories and models into a light that made these topics easily visible from a conceptual standpoint, I knew that I had found a field of study that peaked my interest in theoretical thought and helped me understand the empirical aspects of our surrounding reality.
What is one aspect of DePaul that helped you find your career interests or has been important to your career?
I think the most influential aspect of my time at DePaul and how my path is currently shaped was definitely the professors and research opportunities I was granted during my time with the university. Namely, the work that I was able to do with Professors Anthony LoSasso and Yanchao Yang.
This experience opened the door that bridged two academic passions of mine: writing and quantitative reasoning. Being able to publish a research paper and spending two years on a project that went from pure theory and speculation to transforming that project into a publication in the Health Affairs journal showed not only the potential that I have as a researcher and my enjoyment for research, but also made me come to the conclusion that this is definitely what I want to do after my time at DePaul. Learning under the tutelage of Professor LoSasso in his health economics courses opened my perspective into the world of health economics and has proven to be a pillar of my career and studies since the first day I entered his class at DePaul.
Being able to conduct research and work with talented and experienced economists helped me to see that while economics is a challenging and, at times, an unintuitive field, it is a field filled with extraordinary results and beautiful conclusions that can help the most complex questions be answered with simple solutions and elegant explanations.
Do you have any advice to current students about careers in economics?
A career in economics is one that can be frustrating. It is a career that can breed feelings of confusion, conflicting opinion and interpretation of fact and can create a general sense of "do we know that this is true?"; however, I would argue that this is the beauty in economics and where one will find passion in both their studies and work. Complicated economic problems, challenges and predictions can take five minutes, five days, five weeks, five years and more to solve; this is why economics can be an entertaining and rewarding field.
Economics is a field where many disciplines will come together to construct an understanding of our world. Mathematics, statistics, data analysis, data structure and engineering, human behavioral psychology, industrial organization, finance, criminology, writing and a plethora of other studies all combine under this umbrella where you may find that the most elegant solution is a fundamental building block of one of these fields. A complicated lock could be unlocked by a simple or fundamental key hidden inside of another discipline. One example of where you may find an answer to an economic problem could lie in linear algebra, and how an understanding of linear optimization can yield simple solutions to what would otherwise be an intricate problem. While you may not have gone to study as a mathematician, you will find yourself utilizing their tools in an effort to find an economic truth or principle; in this process you might also find a new passion or interest.Keep an open mind to everything that you learn and absorb in other classes and disciplines; keep an open mind to your ability to mold those lessons into what you do in your pursuit of knowledge and advancement in your own work and studies.
As an excellent economist, you will more likely than not find yourself to also be an excellent statistician, mathematician, epidemiologist, data engineer, financial advisor, psychologist, writer, journalist, professor or perceive yourself as someone in a profession from a field that may not seem related upon initial observation. Economics could be perceived as an amalgamation of knowledge that helps to explain the world around us, and gives you the unique opportunity to learn and see the world in a variety of lenses from both the macro and micro perspective.
What was your favorite economics course?
The first classes that come to mind would be the health economics courses taught in both undergraduate and graduate levels (though I may be biased as I specialized in health economics). I couldn't offer an unbiased opinion of which class was my favorite as I gained a plethora of knowledge from every class I took, I can say through an unbiased lense that this was due to the professors that I was blessed to have been able to work and learn with and from. The abundance of knowledge that DePaul's economics professors possess and plant into their courses have grown into trees of information that I utilize to this day in my career and daily thought.