Jeanne Chrisanthopoulos (SSE ’20, MFIN ’21) spends her days cleaning, analyzing and visualizing data — and not just any data.
As a strategic planning analyst at Children’s Hospital New Orleans, Chrisanthopoulos derives insights from the data to help support its mission: to serve the pediatric healthcare needs of children across the region.
“Our analytics team tells the story of what’s going on in the hospital,” Chrisanthopoulos says.
Working at Children’s Hospital enables Chrisanthopoulos to combine her interests in health care and business. One of her primary roles is to analyze the hospital’s financial drivers — the numbers and data that help the hospital remain a financially sound resource for children throughout the city and region.
On a daily basis, Chrisanthopoulos pores over the data to uncover new trends. There are a lot of moving parts, but she says the real-world knowledge she gained at Freeman helps her navigate the challenges of the job.
“The Master of Finance program really gave me both soft and hard skills in business to build a career at the intersection of health care, data and finance,” she says.
With an undergraduate degree in neuroscience, Chrisanthopoulos originally planned to attend medical school, but the pandemic plunged hospitals into chaos and crisis, and curiosity led her to Freeman’s Master of Finance program.
She chose Freeman for its specialized approach and small classes that would let her connect with professors and peers. During the program, Chrisanthopoulos says her professors and peers encouraged her, challenged her and helped her flourish. Her professors regularly – and happily – put in extra office hours to help her succeed.
She graduated from the program with valuable experience and a wealth of industry connections. She attributes much of that to one class in particular — the Darwin Fenner Studented Managed Fund course, taught by Professor Sheri Tice. In that course, Chrisanthopoulos and classmates analyzed investments and studied healthcare stocks, eventually creating a model that would eliminate stocks she thought would perform poorly over time. At the end of the year, she and her classmates invested real money in the stocks they had studied.
“It was real stakes,” she says. “It was very motivating.”
It was through the Darwin Fenner course that Chrisanthopoulos became interested in analytics. A classmate had previous experience in the field and contributed his knowledge and connections to the class.
“Students come from so many different states, countries and age groups,” Chrisanthopoulos says of the program. “You can learn so much from each other.”
Her role at Children’s Hospital also requires communication – and a lot of it. Her team must understand each facet of the hospital, and that means working with everyone from physicians and nurses to executives and administrators. Those skills, too, relate back to lessons she learned at Freeman, where she worked with peers to create pitches and presentations.
All those experiences now contribute to the hospital’s mission to provide comprehensive healthcare for children throughout the region.
Chrisanthopoulos encourages any student considering the program — even those without a finance background or professional experience — to do it.
“Don’t let that stop you,” she says. “No matter what your background is, you can immerse yourself and take what you want from this program.”
— Martha Sanchez, msanchez2@tulane.edu
You must be logged in to post a comment.