About
Fifteen years of teaching, a career in quantitative finance, and an unreasonable attachment to differential geometry.
Background
I read computer science at Oxford, took a master's in financial engineering at Princeton, and spent my career in quantitative finance — first as a quantitative developer, later as a quantitative researcher. Alongside it I have kept up research in algebraic topology, differential geometry and stochastic analysis, which is an unusual thing to continue once you have a job that pays properly. I continued because I like it.
Later I took an MBA at London Business School. That taught me a second language: how the people who decide these things actually think, and how little of it resembles what candidates assume. It is the reason I can be useful on an application rather than only on the mathematics.
The teaching is not something I fell into. Fifteen years of it, because I enjoy it more than almost anything else I do, and because the moment when something genuinely difficult becomes obvious to someone is a good moment to be present for. Most people who could do this work well are too busy doing something else.
I work with a deliberately small number of clients. Not as a marketing posture — it is what the work requires when one person does all of it, which is the arrangement.
[Your Name] British and American · working remotely, worldwide
The record
- MSc Computer Science — University of Oxford
- MSc Financial Engineering — Princeton University
- MBA — London Business School
- Quantitative developer and quantitative researcher — career in quantitative finance
- GMAT 99th percentile — achieved twice
- GRE 99th percentile — verbal and quantitative
- 15+ years teaching
- Research — algebraic topology, differential geometry, stochastic analysis
Why "Geodesic"
On a flat plane the shortest path between two points is a straight line. On a curved surface it is not, and the curve that does the job — the geodesic — is often counter-intuitive until you understand the shape of the space you are moving through.
Admissions and hiring are curved spaces. The obvious route is usually not the efficient one, and most of the wasted effort I see comes from candidates walking a straight line across a surface that is not flat. Knowing the shape of the space is the whole service.