// Economics · Data Science · Finance
Jacob Waldo
Incoming Market Risk Intern at Goldman Sachs · USC · FRM Part I — passed, top quartile across all four domains.
01 / About
Background
Incoming Goldman Sachs Market Risk Intern (Summer 2026) · SI Leader for ~100 students · FRM Part I, top quartile.
Junior at USC, majoring in Economics & Data Science.
I've never been great at memorization — I look up syntax, I struggle with state capitals, biology was never my thing. What I do well is understanding the logic behind things. That's what keeps pulling me toward analytical problems: macro trends, probability, risk, and finding the cleaner way to run a computation.
I'm always looking to grow, and I enjoy connecting with people who share that same problem-solving mindset.
Previously · Chapman University · B.S. Computer Science & B.A. Economics · 4.0 GPA · transferred 2024
Incoming · Summer 2026
Summer Market Risk Analyst
Goldman Sachs · Market Risk Division · Dallas, TX
- Joining the Market Risk Division for Summer 2026.
Aug 2025 – Present
Supplemental Instruction Leader
USC Dornsife Next Generation Science Programs · Los Angeles, CA
- Lead 3 sessions per week for ~100 undergraduates per semester in ECON 317 (Statistics for Economists), writing notes, problem sets, and exam reviews from scratch.
- One of only 2 SI Leaders in USC's economics department.
Jun 2025 – Jan 2026
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Dr. James Alcala, USC · Los Angeles, CA
- Investigated inherent bias in LLMs (GPT-5, GPT-5 Nano, Ollama, Gemini) across viewpoint, sentiment, and context.
- Built a LangGraph summarization pipeline with attention-inspired MapReduce refinement, cutting 40+ page review from ~1 hour to under 5 minutes.
- Incorporated attention-inspired message passing so chunk-level summaries refine each other, achieving 2–3× faster processing while improving long-document summaries.
Jun 2024 – Aug 2024
Manager on Duty
Palo Alto Swim and Sport · Palo Alto, CA
- Directed operations for a rotating team of ~15–20 daily staff, coordinating scheduling and safety for 150–500 daily patrons.
02 / Research & Projects
Selected Work
Bloomberg Terminal options paper (with interactive charts), Fed Challenge presentation, and an LLM pipeline — all using real data.
College Federal Reserve Challenge — Team Analyst
Competed as part of a USC team in the College Fed Challenge, a national competition judged by Federal Reserve economists where teams simulate an FOMC meeting and defend a rate decision. Our October 2025 presentation, "Navigating Monetary Policy with No Risk-Free Path," assessed four areas of the economy: growth, inflation, the labor market, and financial conditions.
The core tension we identified: inflation was still running well above target (Core CPI at 2.9%, Core PCE at ~3.1%, PPI at 4.6%), with 1-year inflation expectations rising back to 3.4% — all pointing to unfinished business on price stability. The labor market, while soft in spots (June 2025 marked the first net job loss since COVID), was broadly balanced: the unemployment-to-job-openings ratio had returned to 1:1, and the Sahm Rule indicator had declined to 0.24%, suggesting gradual cooling rather than a recessionary break.
Our recommendation at the October 2025 meeting was to hold the Fed Funds Rate at 4.0–4.25%. We argued that further cuts would exacerbate still-elevated inflation without providing meaningful relief to a labor market that was softening gradually, not collapsing. We also flagged that markets were pricing in 50 bps of additional cuts by year-end, making a hold a credibility-reinforcing signal on the Fed's inflation commitment.
03 / Skills & Credentials
Toolkit & Credentials
FRM® Part I — top quartile across all four domains. Python, R, Bloomberg Terminal, and more skills inside.
Top quartile (76th–100th percentile) across all four exam domains.
04 / Beyond the Resume
Art & Illustration
Featured piece on the biology of anxiety and stress — with a full written breakdown. Plus a gallery of oil, ink, and graphite work.
Outside of coursework and research, I paint and draw. Most of the work explores psychology, the body, and social pressure, usually through a recurring cast of skeletons, vines, and hands. The pieces below are a mix of graphite, ink, and oil.
The Body's Response to Chronic Anxiety and Stress
Ink, coffee wash, acrylic marker on paperMost illustrations of anxiety focus on the psychological or social dimensions: what it feels like, or how it's perceived. This piece tries to fill a different gap, asking what is actually happening inside the body. It draws on the biology of chronic stress (the HPA axis, allostatic load, and the SAM system) and looks at how medications like Escitalopram partially, but not completely, restore order.
Allostatic Load. The vines wrapping around the brain and chest represent neural atrophy and declining muscle protein, both hallmarks of prolonged HPA axis activation. The coffee stains on the canvas stand in for bone deterioration and the late nights caused by stress-related sleep disturbances. The chaotic scribbles are the feedback loop itself: stress triggers cortisol release, resistance builds, which demands even more cortisol, which compounds the damage.
Sympatho-Adrenomedullary System. The heart sitting outside the ribcage represents the physical sensation of a panic attack, specifically the feeling of your heart beating out of your chest. Vines around the throat simulate the shortness of breath that accompanies acute anxiety episodes.
Mitigants. The magenta boxes are the only structured, geometric elements in the piece, representing SSRIs like Escitalopram. They bring order to isolated corners of the composition. But the surrounding chaos remains: medication reduces cortisol, not everything.
Full Written Explanation (PDF)
Anxiety over imperfection preventing work from even starting. Hands paused mid-motion, unable to commit to the first mark.
The external pressure many young people feel to overperform in everything. Drowning in the volume of it, arms still reaching for more.
External forces pulling the strings. Vivid, willful hands above controlling a skeleton that has no say in the direction it moves.
Good intentions dragging the bottom hand into a better environment, even as the process destroys it. The vines that carry the flowers also unravel the hand below.
05 / Contact
Let's Connect
Email, LinkedIn, and résumé — all listed below.
Let's Connect
Whether you're interested in discussing research, risk, or just want to connect — I'd love to hear from you.