Meet our Alumni

Read our interviews with former students to see the wide range of careers and sectors they ended up in.

Spotlight on: Yacine Le Strat 

Can you describe your career path after graduation?

After graduating from UCL, I spent six months interning at a financial advisory firm to complete my double degree with CentraleSupélec, an engineering school in France. In 2021, I joined 73 Strings, a fintech startup focused on using AI to transform how alternative asset managers handle valuations and portfolio monitoring. As part of a three-person team, I contributed to the product strategy and ideation of the Private Credit module for valuation, laying the foundation for a platform now trusted by global leaders like Blackstone and recognized with multiple awards. Today, as an Associate Vice President, I lead product management, development, and client onboarding, working with a team of managers, analysts, and developers. It’s been an exciting journey seeing how much we’ve accomplished in just a few years!

What are the current trends or challenges in your industry?

One of the biggest trends right now is automation. At 73 Strings, we help our clients streamline their processes by automating repetitive tasks—things that used to take days now get done in hours. This doesn’t just improve efficiency and reduce mistakes; it also means people can focus on more meaningful, strategic work. And that’s the beauty of technology: more brainpower for innovative solutions and less for repetitive trivial tasks.

How has technology impacted your field since you graduated?

Technology has completely changed the game since I graduated in 2019. The rise of Artificial Intelligence, especially tools like ChatGPT and Copilot, has made complex workflows faster and more accessible. Tasks that used to require a lot of coding or expertise are now much easier to tackle. But with great power comes great responsibility—these tools are incredibly useful, but they’re not perfect. You need to understand their limitations, like data privacy risks and occasional inaccuracies, to really get the best out of them.

What skills or knowledge do you wish you had developed earlier in your career?

While UCL’s MSc Financial Mathematics programme will provide you with a strong technical foundation, soft skills should not be neglected. Things like public speaking, simplifying complex ideas, and managing tricky situations are just as important. Surprisingly enough, presenting to a big audience can be more challenging than solving a stochastic differential equation with a Monte Carlo simulation in Python.