Alumni Spotlight: Xiaokuan Zhao, Duke FinTech ’24

Duke University’s Master of Financial Technology (FinTech) graduates are equipped with the technical, financial, and management expertise needed to lead financial innovation. One of those graduates is Xiaokuan Zhao, Duke FinTech class of 2024.

After graduation, Xiaokuan secured a role as a Risk Analyst at First Citizens Bank. He develops and monitors comprehensive capital analysis and review (CCAR) and current expected credit loss (CECL) models for the company’s equipment finance portfolio. Xiaokuan also develops and maintain data dashboards to generate reports to monitoring purposes. Additionally, he helps with commercial real estate workstreams by validating code for their model development.

When reflecting on how the program prepared him for his current role, he mentioned how he was able to hone his skills in programming and effective communication. This helped him land his current role, as well as helps him maintain high performance in his daily work. He mentions how the Quantitative Risk Management course helped him understand the risk management industry framework and provided him domain knowledge. Additionally, the first programming class in the program helped him build up his foundation in programming. This helped him when he needed to learn SAS for his role at First Citizens Bank, as he was able to pick it up quickly.

If you are interested in any of our programs, please email pratt_fintech@duke.edu.