About Anna

Anna completed her undergraduate study at Cornell University in 2004 with a cum laude Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry. While at Cornell, she was involved in the Caspian Ecology Project – an international collaboration between American, Russian and Kazakhstani scientists researching the impact of oil development on the sea. Together with Dr. Sandy Tartowski, the head of the project, Anna traveled to parts of Russia and Kazakhstan where she contributed to research with her knowledge of Chemistry, international background and fluent Russian.

In 2004, she joined L’Oreal skincare laboratory in Clark, NJ as a Jr. Chemist. During her time at L’Oreal, Anna reformulated numerous skincare products for Kiehl’s and BioMedic brands and developed original formula of a face cream containing highly stable vitamin C complex. Anna’s other involvement at L’Oreal included investigation of structural and chemical changes of hair in the permanent waving process. She used Differential Scanning Calorimetry and tensile testing of hair with Dia-Stron instrument to determine the impact on hair due to chemical perm. This project was completed under the supervison of Dr. Nghi Nguyen and Dr. David Cannell, the founder of Redken.

Moving on in her career, Anna continued her quest for knowledge and undertook a self-study of financial derivatives using John Hull’s book “Options, Futures and Other Derivatives”, among others. In 2007, she joined Moody’s Wall Street Analytics in New York City (now Moody’s Analytics of Moody’s Investors Service) in the position of Financial Engineer where she structured Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) and performed computer modeling of these most complex financial products. Her role of Sr. Associate from 2010 to 2011 at GlobeOp Financial Services, a leading hedge fund administrator, enriched her financial knowledge with hands-on experience with credit default swaps, credit default indices, options, and other plain vanilla and exotic derivatives.

While positions in the finance industry presented Anna with opportunity to use her analytical thinking and math skills in an entrepreneurial setting, her love of Chemistry led her to a teaching position at Cedar Grove High School, NJ where she taught AP and Regular Chemistry in 2009-2010 and later on to Graduate School at Princeton University where she completed 1.5 years of graduate coursework in Chemistry. Whether it is finance or physical chemistry, the common underlying feature for both is math and Anna excels in it. She loves her science field and is a dynamic learner of finance.

Currently, Anna lives in Plainsboro, NJ where she conducts her independent research on heterogeneous reaction dynamics on platinum and assists high school and college students in one-on-one tutoring of Chemistry and Physical Science. In her leisure time, Anna enjoys running and yoga.