Blake Binkley ends his tenure as a Berkeley MFE staff member this week, having been with the Program in conjunction with his undergraduate studies. For four years, Blake worked as a work study/intern on a wide range of MFE projects while also balancing his academic and extracurricular pursuits.
Blake joined the Berkeley MFE Office in June 2013, shortly after he graduated from high school in Reno, Nevada.
“I couldn’t wait to take classes at Cal, so as soon as I graduated I moved to Berkeley and enrolled in summer courses. I applied to the Berkeley MFE Office, admittedly knowing nothing about financial engineering, because I wanted an on-campus job that would also help develop my resume for post-grad employment.”
The MFE proved to be much more than just an on-campus job for Blake, and he notes that working at the MFE had many perks.
“The Program was incredibly flexible with my schedule. If I needed to take time off for finals, or study abroad in London, the office was more than happy to accommodate me. I knew there would be a place for me when I came back.”
“By far, though, the best part of the Berkeley MFE Program is the people. The MFE staff are truly inspiring and they were a formative part of my college experience; they imparted to me a strong work ethic, a benefit in both the classroom and beyond school. Linda Kreitzman, the Executive Director of the MFE, consistently amazed me with her dedication to her students, to her full-time staff and to her interns. I fondly remember when she took a group of us interns to lunch that first summer- an impressive feat, given Linda’s very busy schedule. Having just moved to Berkeley, that really made me feel welcome on campus and it set a promising tone for the start of my college career.”
While at Haas, Blake honed a quantitative and analytical skill set through his work on marketing initiatives and analytics, competitive analysis, and industry research (to keep the MFE curriculum on the cutting edge of finance). During the summer of his junior year, Blake spearheaded a strategy project for the Dean’s Office, through which he performed regression analysis, wrote a VBA macro and presented his findings to Haas’s executive leadership.
Blake will be joining KPMG Advisory, where he will provide management consulting services to state and local governments. Having already sat the LSAT, and scored in the 98th percentile, Blake intends to apply to law school in the distant future.
“Joining the Berkeley MFE team was one of the best choices I made at Cal. I’m tremendously grateful to be a part of the community. The MFE truly changes lives.”
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