Fateh’s World View Cultivated at ILR

Christopher Fateh ’13 vividly remembers struggling on an economics prelim and the two hours Associate Professor George Jakubson later spent with him. 

“The time and care he took to go through it with me and line up the dots – George took the notion of economics and brought it down to a human level,” said Fateh, who is corporate vice president of risk management at New York Life, a global financial services company with over 23,000 employees and agents. 

“I look back on that and say he did God’s work. He helped change the way I operate and view the world.” 

Professors Sam Bacharach, Harry Katz and others have also helped shape him in ways that play out daily in his role, Fateh said. “I’m very proud of what the ILR School has done for a whole lot of kids. The school has given us truly valuable skills.”

“I took courses such as ‘Politics of the Global North’ at ILR that benefit me every single day. In my role leading risk intelligence, I’m constantly looking at data from across the globe that could impact the company. If not for ILR, I wouldn’t appreciate the intricacies of how organizations operate with and navigate geopolitics.” 

Fateh, who didn’t want to limit his future by choosing a career path when he entered ILR, said the school gave him a well-rounded education and an appealing philosophy—that he could make a difference in the lives of regular people.

“The ILR program differentiates itself by giving you a background of social science understanding.”

“You learn how to read a contract, you gain an understanding of the broader behavior of an organization, and how goals are achieved. It can take many years or a decade to get those core concepts down. But ILRies come equipped with those on day one, which makes you a more dynamic player in a large organization.” 

“When I see global news come in, for instance, part of my job is to triage, to take that data and quickly determine how it applies to our risk appetite. You need to know foundational macroeconomic modeling and how nations interact. That’s when you can get to those ‘a-ha!’ moments.”

Contract disputes, bank failures, arbitration, liability and other issues covered in ILR courses helped him better understand, for instance, he said, how to quantify and navigate risks on behalf of a major organization. 

At Cornell, where his sister, Jeanna Fateh, is an ILR senior and a brother, Joseph Fateh, CALS ’15, studied, Fateh said, “I was among some of the brightest minds in the world. I was intellectually challenged while going through the curriculum. Cornell put accountability on the shoulders of young individuals to take hold of the future.” 

At ILR, he said, “You’re encouraged to learn how you will take a role in making a difference, how you can become the next U.S. secretary of labor or the next federal reserve chair. It was this normal notion that you should strive for great things and not be afraid of reaching for something that is bigger than you think possible today because the skill sets will help you get there tomorrow.”