DRW, a leading trading and technology company in Chicago, in collaboration with GEECS, will be co-hosting an on-campus information session featuring Kelley Fernandez, a financial application support engineer at DRW. Kelley’s session will discuss a woman’s ability to both lead and contribute in vital programming, trading, and quantitative roles.

Kelley’s path to the trading world is unconventional and can serve as motivation to young women who are interested in such a career but don’t know where they’d fit in. Graduating from college with a political science degree, Kelley was introduced to the industry when she met someone from Toji Trading Group and had the opportunity to start out as a liaison between traders and developers. She began developing programs complementary to the trading systems, and eventually started leading the support of all the firm’s trading systems. Today, she carries on this very same role at DRW — one she never thought she’d have.

There is a common misconception that you have to be a quant developer working directly on a trading system to survive in trading. However, there are many other roles that build incredible and complex technology, both within trading systems — like Kelley’s role, which involves working within different parts of the systems — and outside them, in risk, infrastructure, etc.