For Babak Hatami, finance runs in the family.
Hatami’s parents worked in the financial sector in their native Iran. When they immigrated to the US, they had difficulty finding comparable job opportunities.
“That was a major motivation for me,” said Hatami, who is now a finance major at DePaul. “Financial literacy, investment – things like that aren’t easily accessible for first-generation immigrants. I want to use finance to help people in those circumstances.”
With his parents’ support, Hatami started investing when he was just 13. A few years later, the Covid-19 pandemic hit. The value of his portfolio plummeted.
“I learned so much during that time,” he reflected. “It would have been easy to walk away. But I decided to double down, to learn as much as I could. And after Covid, when things bounced back, it kind of locked me into finance. This is what I want to do. This is what I love to do, even when things aren’t going well.”
The CME Group was already a household name for Hatami when he earned the scholarship. He grew up with images of bustling trading floors. Getting to visit those trading floors at CME was a full-circle moment.
“We got to see a modern-day trading pit, full of computers,” he said. “It’s definitely one of the most inspiring things I’ve ever seen.”
Another inspiration was seeing just how many careers a marketplace can support. Hatami recounted meeting cybersecurity experts and learning about CME’s shift to cloud computing.
For Hatami, the project was familiar. He had just spent his summer working at Skender, a general contractor. Among his tasks: Working with data as the company transfers it over to the cloud — and working with AI tools to make that data far more accessible.
“I love how efficient new big data technologies can make these processes,” he said. “Accounting can be a super tedious job. What I’ve done is make the data more readable. Before, accountants might have had to spend two or three hours finding data. Now, with the power of AI, it can take as little as two or three minutes.”
The experience has opened Hatami's eyes to the growing importance of data across industries. As Hatami returns to campus for his junior year, he’ll continue working with Skender: this time, as a part-time employee. He’s excited to explore his newfound interest in data analysis and financial accounting. And he’s more excited still to apply what he learns in the classroom to the real world.
“When you’re working in accounting, it can be easy to get desensitized to the impact of what you’re doing,” he said. “I love getting to drive around to sites my company is working on. It’s cool to see that what you’re working on is actually having an impact on the world.”
This story is part of a series on four DePaul students who earned a prestigious, $20,000 scholarship from the CME Group Foundation. Read the other scholars' stories here.