Michelle Tirta C’25, G’26 participated in the competition bringing AI and finance together
June 2026 – Drew University Master of Science in Finance student Michelle Tirta C’25, G’26 recently helped her team earn a bronze medal at the McKinsey & Company Global Finance Hackathon in New York City, where participants were challenged to tackle real-world finance problems using artificial intelligence.
The competition brought together students, finance professionals, and innovators from across the country to develop AI-powered solutions capable of providing insights at the CFO level. In just a few hours, teams were tasked with identifying a timely finance challenge and building a functional AI application to address it.
Tirta and her teammates addressed a pressing question: How can finance leaders determine whether investments in artificial intelligence are actually delivering measurable value?
Their solution was QuantumTrack, designed to provide CFOs with ledger-backed evidence of AI performance and return on investment. The platform analyzes financial and operational data, evaluates AI-related spending and outcomes, and helps organizations distinguish between projected benefits and verified results. By generating metrics such as payback periods, revenue impact, and confidence scores, the tool enables finance leaders to make more informed decisions about which AI initiatives to expand, reevaluate, or discontinue.
QuantumTrack earned the bronze medal in the competition, outperforming more than 100 CFOs, finance professionals, and other participants from across the country. The team has since launched its own proprietary business, with Tirta focusing on product development.
Department of Business Chair Steve Firestone commented, “Michelle has been so creative in applying the skills she has learned in the Master of Science in Finance program at Drew. That is what Financial Engineering is all about—finding innovative solutions to thorny, complex problems.”
In addition to her studies in Drew’s Master of Science in Finance program, where Tirta concentrates in Financial Engineering, she is spending the summer as a Private Equity Associate intern with Finlay Parker Holdings, LLC, a private equity firm based in Morristown, New Jersey.
