Alejandra Pruneda ’22

I work at the Central Bank of Mexico as a researcher on the liquidity risk team. My main responsibilities are to monitor banks’ liquidity risks, design models to analyze risk, develop monitoring tools, and support the analysis and implementation of financial crisis management tools. The Master’s Degree in Systemic Risk’s focus on unpacking the causes of the Global Financial Crisis and on the analysis of macroprudential theory, its application and policy implementation, has changed the way I approach risk reduction.

Yale SOM faculty are experts in financial stability and systemic risk topics. They apply economic theory, along with their expertise in very specialized financial stability topics, to solve the real-world cases we study in ways that I have never seen or considered before.

One of the most important insights I’ve acquired is the need to be constantly evolving in my understanding, because the financial system today is constantly developing. It is important to really think critically when you’re analyzing a financial system for vulnerabilities, to study how the system interacts with shocks and risks. We need to avoid falling into the “this time is different” belief when it comes to assessing a potential crisis. There are tools that can mitigate risk if we deploy them early enough.

Throughout the school year, we’ve worked on so many different assignments and projects that perfectly match up with my job needs. I already have two analysis projects that I’m going to propose continuing at the Central Bank in Mexico.

We’re a very small and quite mixed class, in the sense that we come from both developing and advanced economies. Our perspectives are truly diverse, and from my classmates, I’ve learned different ways of analyzing and solving problems. Being a small group has also facilitated the creation of stronger relationships and deeper discussion. I’ve come to deeply know the people here, some in a personal way, and I hope to maintain our colleague network for life.