• Building a voice-first AI assistant reachable from any phone call, giving people without smartphones or internet access to LLM-powered information, guidance, and services through natural conversation
• Designing for high-impact use cases including rural healthcare triage, agricultural advisory, and educational support in regions where basic telephony exists but digital infrastructure does not

• Designed and built a self-hosted agent that reads AI, technology, and venture sources continuously and distils them into a weekly LLM-synthesised briefing delivered via Telegram and email
• Engineered real-time alerting for high-signal events (SEC filings, major funding rounds) and a persistent memory layer that learns reader preferences from in-chat feedback
• Split inference between a local Llama model (Ollama) for high-volume parsing and a hosted model for synthesis, holding runtime cost near $0.41 per week; shipped a FastAPI dashboard for browsing the full archive

• Identified a market need for native-language educational and career guidance among Albanian students from low-income backgrounds
• Defined the product vision and built an end-to-end RAG LLM pipeline (Python, LangChain, Chroma DB) on proprietary career insights sourced from a global network of Albanian professionals
• Drove product iteration and beta testing with a pilot student group, refining retrieval quality against user feedback

• Developing a concept for stratospheric lighter-than-air platforms that deliver persistent broadband connectivity to underserved and contested environments, building on the vision pioneered by Google's Project Loon
• Collaborating with defence and intelligence professionals through Stanford's Gordian Knot Center to validate operational requirements and explore integration with next-generation mobile mesh networks

Technology Risk Consultant

KPMG • June 2024 - August 2025 | Toronto, ON

• Led enterprise risk assessment for a Top 5 Canadian pension fund ($250B+ AUM), coordinating across audit, IT, and compliance teams; findings directly drove an enterprise risk framework overhaul and new operational risk mitigation strategies
• Streamlined user access review by developing a Python tool that analysed 100K+ access logs; flagged unauthorised privilege escalations and untimely access removals, cutting review time from 3 days to under 3 hours
• Built ETL pipelines (SQL, Python) feeding Power BI dashboards that monitored risk KPIs across 30+ control domains; surfaced $2M+ in risk-reduction opportunities and briefed executives to set remediation priorities

Market Risk & Model Development Summer Associate

TD Bank • May 2023 - August 2023 | Toronto, ON

• Monitored market risk exposure across $2B+ multi-asset portfolios using VaR analysis, Monte Carlo simulations, stress testing, and sensitivity analysis; flagged positions that exceeded risk limits, prompting portfolio rebalancing
• Streamlined data extraction, transformation, and analysis by automating risk reporting workflows in Python and Excel VBA; reduced monthly reporting cycle by 75%, enabling faster response to market volatility
• Validated risk models through back-testing against historical data; detected systematic underestimation of portfolio risk during volatile markets that led to parameter adjustments and model assumption recalibration

Finance Operations Intern

TD Bank • April 2022 - August 2022 | Moncton, NB

• Built and maintained financial data pipelines using SQL, Python, and Excel VBA across business units representing $500M+ in annual revenue; designed automated validation frameworks that eliminated manual data verification
• Prepared 15+ quarterly financial statements (P&L, cash flow, MD&A) for executive decision-making; streamlined consolidation process by standardising data templates across 8 business units

Teaching Assistant and Academic Mentor

Dalhousie University • September 2022 - April 2024 | Halifax, NS

• Led review sessions, graded assignments, and held office hours for 250+ students across four economics courses
• Provided one-on-one tutoring for students in mathematics and statistics courses at the Student Success Centre

• Founded an initiative connecting Central and Eastern European founders with Silicon Valley capital, operators, and networks
• Building a pipeline between CEE startups and Bay Area investors through founder introductions, diaspora outreach, and fundraising preparation

Founder and President

Albanian Trailblazers • May 2023 - Present | Online

• Founded youth-led NGO connecting Albanian students globally; scaled organisation to 30+ mentors and 90+ mentees in 20+ countries through mentorship programmes, professional workshops, and networking events
• Designed the organisation's website and mentor–mentee management platform, now serving 120+ active users, and incubated Qemal, its Albanian-language AI educational advisor

Founder and President

Dalhousie Quantitative Finance Society • July 2023 - August 2024 | Halifax, NS

• Established university's first quantitative finance organisation; organised and led workshops covering modern portfolio theory, derivatives pricing models, and algorithmic trading strategies, growing membership to 50+ students within the first semester
• Led quantitative case competition emphasising econometric forecasting, DCF modelling, and risk-adjusted return analysis; facilitated peer-led sessions applying optimisation frameworks to real-world trading and business management scenarios

Undergraduate Honours Thesis

Dalhousie University • September 2023 - April 2024 | Halifax, NS

Thesis: Shifting Macroeconomic Tides: Investigating the Impact of Interest Rate Uncertainty on the Canadian Economy

Supervisor: Dr. Christos Ntantamis

• Built Python pipeline to process 15,000+ daily T-bill return observations and developed novel market-based uncertainty metric from return volatility, addressing limitations of survey-based and keyword-frequency proxies
• Implemented six VAR-X econometric models in Gretl and R to quantify the impact of interest rate uncertainty on key macroeconomic variables; found statistically significant negative effects on GDP and investment

Bank of Canada Governor's Challenge - Team Lead

Bank of Canada • September 2022 - November 2023 | Halifax, NS

Supervisor: Dr. James McNeil

• Led team to runner-up finish in national economics competition; developed 24-month VAR(2) model analysing CPI decomposition, labour market trends, and inflation expectations to assess monetary policy transmission mechanisms
• Designed risk scenarios integrating household debt stress and energy shocks; synthesised forecasts with Bloomberg Terminal and Statistics Canada data and presented policy recommendations to panel of Bank of Canada economists

Programming

Software & Tools

Methods

Languages

• 2025: Algorithms Specialisation -- Stanford Online verified Show Credential
• 2025: Machine Learning Specialisation -- Stanford Online verified Show Credential
• 2025: MITx 6.00.1x: Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python -- MIT verified Show Credential
• 2024: Undergraduate Certificate in FinTech & Financial Innovation -- Dalhousie University
• 2024: Research Camp Full Program Certificate -- Dalhousie University

• 2024: University Medal in Economics -- Dalhousie Department of Economics
• 2024: Best Economics Research Paper Award -- Dalhousie Department of Economics
• 2024: Douglas C. Mackay Award for Excellence in Money Management -- Dalhousie Faculty of Management
• 2024: Professor W. Russell Maxwell Memorial Scholarship -- Dalhousie Department of Economics
• 2023: Bank of Canada Governor's Challenge Runner-up -- Bank of Canada
• 2023: CFA Institute Scholarship -- Dalhousie Faculty of Management
• 2023: Marjorie F. Ellis Scholarship -- Dalhousie University
• 2022: John E. Betts "Beat Yesterday" Scholarship -- John E. Betts