Investments

Steve Scharff has proven himself to be a valuable player on the business side of the muni business by changing the firm's approach to writing official statements.

Chris Wimsatt's work to raise capital for the Sacramento County Department of Airports' massive infrastructure program earned him the nomination.

"What has kept me so interested in this market is the ability to actually learn something new every day, which has been extremely rewarding," said Morgan Fahy.

"I'd always had a public interest leaning, but to bundle finance with public policy and federal tax law into this gumbo of a practice that produces essential public projects is fundamentally attractive to me," said Joshua Bonney.

"Having a chance to talk directly about what we're doing and why we're doing it, it's reinforcing, in a way," said Claude Lockhart Jr.

"Part of the mission of the New York Fed is making the U.S. economy stronger and the financial system more stable for all segments of society," Timothy Little said, "and I really feel the municipal market is a critical component of that."

"Matt has become a seasoned and well-respected credit/risk management analyst," said Victor Chu, managing director at Assured Guaranty.

"I've been fortunate to have worked with some great people along the way, both on the law firm side and client side," said Stephanie Kim.

Taylor Klavan worked on financings for both LaGuardia and the Terminal 6 project at JFK Airport.

Sarah Jansen was introduced to the world of public finance while taking a public financial management class in graduate school at the University of Texas.

"The teams are pretty small, so I got exposure to things very early and that's helped me along the way," Stephanie Lom said.

Anthony Kinsey's talent comes in handy while helping issuers with the ongoing challenge of updating their official statements and investor presentations based on new disclosure requirements.

"I had no idea what public finance was going into it," Olyvia Jarmoszka said. "Dealing with the government was actually something that I enjoyed, considering my education."

"I traded in my labor and delivery scrubs for a career in finance when I had an incredible opportunity to intern at Merrill Lynch as a 16-year-old senior at Stuyvesant High School," William Kim said

"I had the opportunity to work with interesting issuers and complex transactions early on in my career, which gave me a solid foundation to build on," Kevin Plunkett said.

Greg Shuman said he favors municipals for being a niche market, its blend of government policy and economics, the quantitative focus of fixed income as an asset class, and the complexity and evolving nature of municipal finance and markets.

"What I've learned is to do my best no matter what and always have internal goals for myself," Brittany Whelan said.

"I've always been interested in the fiscal health of a city or county, it goes to the health of the people really," Rob Widigan said.

While supply this week is "softer," uncertainty and volatility may prevail once more due to "yields still not exciting longer-term investors," said Matt Fabian, a partner at Municipal Market Analytics.

Increasing private school enrollment has little to do with falling California public school enrollment, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.