Find out why Isabella chose CRA

Hello everyone! My name is Isabella and I am an analyst in CRA’s Boston office. Since joining CRA’s Finance Practice in the summer of 2015, I have had the opportunity to work collaboratively with senior staff members on litigation cases requiring rigorous analysis of financial theory and advanced financial modeling. I wanted to use this blog to share with you my thoughts and reflections on working at CRA and my personal experiences of working in the economic consulting industry.
Prior to joining CRA, I attended Wellesley College where I studied Economics and Chinese. During my senior year, I wrote an honors thesis entitled, “The Growth in the VA’s Disability Compensation Program: The Role of Health.” Many of the skills I learned throughout the process of writing my thesis were skills I knew I wanted to continue to hone in my post-undergraduate career. In addition to my economics courses at Wellesley, I also had the opportunity to cross-register at MIT. One of the courses I took, “15.535 – Business Analysis Using Financial Statements,” sparked my interest in combining the econometric tools I had learned in my core economics courses with the financial modeling and accounting tools I had learned at MIT. I was drawn to CRA as it presented me with the opportunity to leverage the skills I had learned at Wellesley and MIT, and because of the people I’d be working with on my project teams.
Since joining CRA, I have gained a unique and transferable skill set that enables me to work on litigation cases across industries. Most recently, I worked on a project in the renewable energy industry. On this project, I gained exposure to working with an outside expert who is a finance professor at a university. I served as the lead analyst for the CRA team and frequently worked directly with the team manager to develop and execute the core analysis for the case.​
I look forward to writing future blog posts and hopefully giving you a good picture of life as an analyst in CRA’s Finance Practice!