Robin Banerji ’15 is starting a career in economic analysis at Moody’s Analytics, an organization devoted to economic research, in West Chester, Pa. He will be responsible for writing economic reports about Hawaii, Wyoming, and a number of Midwest cities using over 300 variables, ranging from overall GDP to dairy farm bankruptcies.
“My job [will] be to learn everything there is to know about the economy of these areas, test some hypotheses about the data regarding what sectors of the economy drive growth and development, and make some predictions about where that metropolitan or regional economy is headed,” says the economics and linguistics double major.
Banerji has always been interested in economic analysis, but he credits Haverford with exposing him to the economics of developing countries, specifically. He was particularly inspired by a week in his sophomore year when three speakers—Esther Duflo, the director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT; Dean Karlan, the president of Yale’s Innovations for Poverty Action; and Michael Weinstein, a former Haverford professor and the Chief Operations Officer at the Robin Hood Foundation in New York—came to Haverford.“I was desperately hooked on the power of economic research to make the world a tangibly different place for the billions of humans in need on the planet,” says Banerji, who is looking towards a career in international development and economic research.
The following summer he took this new interest to an internship at the Millennium Challenge Corporation, where he worked on American aid projects in Guatemala and Namibia. After his junior year, he was funded by the Center for Peace and Global Citizenship to travel to Bihar, India, to work with a women’s empowerment organization, called Jeevika, while gathering data for his senior thesis.
Haverford helped Banerji in other ways, too. “I think that the most important skill I’ve taken away from Haverford is the ability to make a clear, concise, and well-substantiated argument in writing,” he says, “Over my four years, I’ve found that my writing has evolved to be more organized, clearer, and limited to the data and analysis that my professors and peers have found convincing.”
—Jack Hasler ’15
“Where They’re Headed” is a blog series reporting on the post-collegiate plans of recent Haverford graduates.