By Rob Iaboni
This past summer I interned with the Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund (CFE Fund) as a Research Intern. The CFE Fund’s mission is to leverage municipal engagement to improve the financial stability of low and moderate-income households by embedding financial empowerment strategies into local government infrastructure. Launched at the New York Stock Exchange in April 2012, the CFE Fund provides funding and technical assistance to mayors and their teams to develop, launch, replicate, and test financial empowerment strategies.
This summer I worked closely with one of the CFE Fund’s principals, conducting statistical and regression analysis to evaluate the impact of the services that the CFE Fund provides to its clientele. In addition to the regression analysis, I worked on a geospatial mapping project to provide seventeen of the CFE Fund’s partner cities with a tangible illustration of its impact. All of my work this summer used the programming language R.
The aspect of my internship that I found most enjoyable was applying concepts that I learned in IPED to tangible issues. My role pushed me to make great strides in my programming and data analysis ability. Despite the uncertainty and changes to my original plans caused by the ongoing pandemic, I feel that I was still able to have a fruitful summer thanks to my experience with the CFE Fund.