Professional Experience
Professional Experience
Before graduate school, I worked full-time for five years as an economic consultant at Bates White. I primarily worked on antitrust cases, especially those where government agencies filed legal challenges to proposed mergers and acquisitions. Several of the cases were closely related to healthcare, including proposed mergers of hospitals, physicians, or health insurers.
Since I started my PhD, several folks have reached out to ask about my experience transitioning from consulting to graduate school. This is generally because either:
They currently work in economic consulting or an adjacent field, and are curious about applying to graduate school; or
They are currently an undergraduate or PhD student in economics, and are curious about working in economic consulting after graduation.
If this describes you, please feel free to reach out over email and I would be happy to talk about my experience! I feel that my time working in an industry job generally (and economic consulting in particular) helped prepare me effectively for graduate school and am always happy to share my thoughts with others.
Here are some selected highlights from my time at Bates White:
Contributed coding, analysis, writing, and research to 30+ deliverables in multiple phases of the U.S. Antitrust litigation process
Summarized economic analysis for lawyers, government agencies, and Fortune-500 companies
Produced and validated SQL queries, R scripts, and Stata scripts to analyze 100-million+ observation datasets, and calculate market shares, consumer diversions, prices, and potential damages
Oversaw project teams of consultants, economists, and summer interns, managing their onboarding and professional development
Communicated clearly and effectively with team members and clients
Outlined and structured analysis and argumentation in experts' testimony
In addition to my core work supporting economic reports during litigation, I was heavily involved with firm activities like:
Charitable giving initiatives through our fundraising Coordination Committee. I oversaw dozens of fundraisers spearheaded by individual employees. I coordinated with the initiatives' organizers, facilitated firm matching funds, and oversaw our annual raffle (including the Stata script that selected our winners!)
Recruiting for undergraduate interns and full-time hires. I drafted case interviews and hosted candidate interviews and lunches, both in-person and over Zoom.
Overall my professional experience at Bates White taught me a lot about how to be a thoughtful and capable economist, and gave me a very strong appreciation for professional service activities. I am grateful to have started my career working with a lot of kind and talented people.