Volleyball Player Discusses Summer at Freddie Mac

Sept. 26 – (PITTSBURGH, Pa.) – As an economic downturn and housing crisis captivated the country, Carnegie Mellon junior volleyball player Cara Fatigati landed herself right in the middle of a government agency dealing with the predicament.

During her summer break, Fatigati worked as an intern for Freddie Mac, a government-sponsored enterprise that was created in 1970 to help stabilize the housing market. While working for the agency outside Washington, D.C., Fatigati got a first-hand look at the operations side of the organization.

“Freddie Mac as a whole is a unique organization,” Fatigati said. “There’s a lot going on and a lot of different parties involved. I did a lot of work with the implications of data management and data change concerning the different securities that are marketed and sold by Freddie Mac on to Wall Street.”

A student in the Tepper School of Business, Fatigati says her experience set the stage for a career in the financial world upon her graduation in 2010.

“It was really important to see how different speculations and rumors translated into stock market price volatility that Freddie Mac was such a big part of this summer,” Fatigati said.

Fatigati has done extremely well in her coursework at Carnegie Mellon, but that’s only one of the areas she’s excelled in during her years on campus. As a defensive specialist for the volleyball program and co-chair of the Student-Athlete Advisory Council, Fatigati has worked hard to make a mark in every aspect of her life.

“Athletics and academics are really hard to balance, but it forces you to be both efficient and effective with your time,” Fatigati said. “You not only have to work really hard at what you’re doing, but you have to work smart to make sure you’re optimizing every opportunity you have.”

Fatigati and the volleyball team will compete in the Blue Jay Classic at Elizabethtown College this weekend before hosting a conference round-robin in the Carnegie Mellon University Center on October 4-5.

To learn more about Cara Fatigati’s summer experience at Freddie Mac, listen to the full podcast interview.