Monique’s creative mind briefly takes her to Art school, but she quickly realized there are many ways of being a unique thinker “I wanted to have fun being creative, while focusing my mind on something else.” Monique decided to pursue her other favorite interest: business and economics. After a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, she moved to Amsterdam for “I knew I wasn’t done learning yet.”
Great organizational level
The VU organizational skills impressed her from the start “Everything was just handled so well. Tests being graded you name it everything was always on time. It was always very clear what to expect.” The availability and short communication lines emphasized this even more. “You don’t just email a service person of a certain department; you can directly email the coordinator of the course with your questions and get a reply too. This saves a lot a frustration.”
The theory versus practice ratio is about 60/40, she estimates. “A lot of self-study was expected, I always did this at VU, especially in the week before the exams, I spend hours on campus.” Despite the liveliness of the extensive campus, Monique could always find a good spot to study: “On the second floor at VU there is a beautiful space, full of plants, it has a nice homy feeling.” Especially nice because VU is the second home to a lot of international students: “My fellow students came from all over the world, Taiwan, Italy, Spain, the UK, even South America.”
“In finance it’s still a man’s world, but the girls in the SBE Master of Finance were great, we teamed up, just to show them we could do better. We were very dedicated and still good friends.”
Sustainability
Monique loved how there was a lot of freedom in how you created your projects, as long as your choices were clear, and you could explain and motivate them. “My favorite project was a small thesis about ESG Investing versus normal investing, to see if sustainability indexes perform better than normal indexes. What investment profits the most in ten years?” They’re lessons she still thinks about in her daily job at ABN AMRO Clearing Bank. “I see products being traded and I’m curious to see how it could develop, the solid background VU gave me, helps me to properly analyze it.”
After a one-year traineeship at ABN AMRO Clearing Bank, Monique now works as Junior Market Risk Manager “I like that it’s a very fast-paced industry, with a lot of technologies that are constantly evolving.” The 26-year-old is always on top of the action. “Even recently, when the first vaccine was approved, our team was looking at the market. Are our clients in position? What is the impact going to be for our clients? Are they on the right side and making a profit? Very exciting!”
Open
The best thing she learned at the VU is to be open for new things and ask questions. “To always be open about what you know, and what you don’t know. To always ask questions. That is something that is valued in our line of business every day.”
