The challenges students of color face when entering the world of finance came to the fore at FIA Expo on 19 November.
Kwesi Smith, CEO of Greenwood Project, interviewed Imani Noel, a junior at DePaul University, and Andre Reynolds, a senior at the University of Illinois Chicago, on the exhibit hall stage. The two Greenwood Project college intern scholars shared their experiences and the transformative impact their internships have had on their career outlook.
Noel, a cybersecurity major, had a summer internship at Janus Henderson. Reynolds, a finance major, interned at DRW last summer, learning about the middle and back office activities that support trading.
Before either started their internship, they participated in Greenwood Project’s comprehensive program that equips students with the necessary skills to succeed in the world of finance. This includes everything from etiquette courses to coaching from industry veterans dedicated to helping students navigate their career journey with confidence and clarity.
Greenwood Project, a longtime partner of FIA and the cleared derivatives industry, focuses on introducing Black and Latino students to opportunities in the financial services industry. It aims to create and forge pathways for talented scholars to develop in their careers.
The organization reaches beyond students interested in finance, too. It recruits those with computer science backgrounds, among others. As Smiith shared, students are “surprised when we tell them that JP Morgan has more software engineers in Chicago than Google.”
And Greenwood has a strong track record of success. It has supported more than 200 students and more than 70% of its participants pursue careers in finance.
As Smith frequently says: there's no lack of talent, there's just a lack of opportunity.
From nervous networking to confident connections
Reynolds shared how he benefited from that introductory learning experience at Greenwood, saying that he was nervous at the start. “I hadn't had any internship experience, any professional experience. But Greenwood gave me the opportunity to learn the skills that I didn't know I didn't know. It gave me a network of peers and professionals that allowed me to present my best self,” Reynold said. He also shared how the program provided the career readiness skills necessary to feel prepared and confident for his internship.
Noel agreed, saying, “Going into Greenwood, I was nervous as well. And it was also finals week when the program started. So, I was also very busy, but Greenwood gave me a great support system. I was able to connect with professionals that came in for our lunch-and-learns.”
She also shared how Greenwood gave her confidence when networking. “I was always very nervous to talk to professionals ... I'm just starting my career ... So, yes, it gave me a lot of new people to connect with, people that are my peers, but also people that are in the cybersecurity field or the finance field. And that has been very useful to me this year.”
Intentionally being intentional
As a cybersecurity major, Noel needed to find a connection to the daily Greenwood lunch-and-learn speakers working in finance. That prepared her well for her experience at Janus. “The cybersecurity team [at Janus] often works with HR or legal. It's not just the cybersecurity team, so I got to apply that skill, which was really nice. And I got to meet and talk to a lot of new people, which was great.”
For Reynolds, the Greenwood training helped him understand intentionality. As he put it, he had a different view of working. “You go to your job, you listen to your boss, you do what they tell you to do, and that's that. But it really comes down to more than that. And at the end of the day, you have control over your own career,” he said.
“The most crucial skill that I learned was how to be intentional in every facet of your personal and professional life. Obviously, you hear about how you need to make the right decisions in order to further your career. In terms of who to connect yourself with, the things you need to be learning, the courses you need to be taking. But at Greenwood, we really broke it down on a deeper level. That made me realize how important it is to be intentional with every decision – whether it's arriving 20 minutes early to a seminar, or whether it's putting on a certain color suit or going over that that presentation once or twice more, just to make sure that you're confident in your ability to present it.”
That point on intentionality resonated with Smith. “A lot of our corporate partners come back to us and they say, I could teach someone the technical skills, but it's really the soft skills where people are challenged, right? And so, in the training, we do an entire day on etiquette and managing your brand ... We try and spend a lot of time with the scholars, helping them understand the unwritten rules of corporate America and corporate culture, and how to even discern the differences between different corporate environments. I know DRW presents differently than Janus, which presents differently than Schwab, which we're all partners with. And so that's very encouraging to hear.”
Corporate America: Hunger Games or supportive setting?
Given these internships provided the students with their first view of “corporate America,” Smith wanted to compare how their assumptions matched with their experiences.
Noel jumped at the question, offering, “I would say the most surprising aspect for working in the corporate field was how supportive my team was. Similar to what Andre said, I always viewed a job as just a job: I'm going in, I get my work done, and I go home. And Janus Henderson really made an effort to make me and their other coworkers feel supported. Whether it was in weekly meetings or it was introducing me to other people in different departments, they really made me feel included. And inclusivity is a really big value of mine.”
She also shared how she felt Janus lived its values. “One of their values is, together, we win. And they really showed that through day-to-day interactions. I might not know the person I'm walking past in the hallway, but they'll always say hi, they'll ask me how I'm doing. It was a very positive environment, which I was not expecting in a corporate field. I thought corporate was very black and white and gray, and everybody's just focusing on what they have to do. So that was surprising to me.”
Reynolds agreed, saying, “You're working with real people. And at the end of the day, it's normal people just trying to achieve a goal, trying to build an environment, create a culture to further whatever goal they're trying to work toward. And, you know, you watch TV shows and you see movies, and they kind of portray it as you show up at nine o'clock, you sit down at your desk, you're in a cubicle, you can't see anybody, you type on a computer, and then once five o'clock hits, you're out.”
“But the reality is a lot different. It's a lot more collaborative. It's a lot more personal. And people skills are a lot more important than I thought they were. I thought everything was going to be technical. That was actually one of the things I was really concerned with before I went into Greenwood. I was expecting to know how to do everything before I even set foot in the office. But once I got there and I realized that everybody is real. Everybody wants you to succeed. It made me feel a lot more comfortable asking questions and being myself.”
Navigating the new ... and uncomfortable
In responding to a question about feeling outside of his comfort zone, Reynolds shared an anecdote from his first few weeks in the internship.
Faced with a project to build a data set by coding, a skill he did not possess, he leaned into what he learned at Greenwood. He asked his new colleagues for resources to learn what he needed to know, and he completed the project so successfully that it led to additional coding projects throughout the summer.
Noel shared how most of the cybersecurity team took leave at the beginning of her internship to attend a wedding in London. Again, leaning on her pre-internship experiences at Greenwood (and reaching out to Smith directly), she reached out to other colleagues, including some overseas. She took the initiative, asked for help, planned out her work and accomplished her projects.
And it appears to have impressed her team. They have invited her back again next summer.
Going long on Greenwood
Wrapping up the discussion, Smith asked both students to help describe the value of Greenwood Project.
Noel noted how it gave her a support system beyond her family. “As a cybersecurity major, going into class, not a lot of people are very sociable. So, going into the Greenwood Project, being surrounded by a ton of people who are pursuing finance careers, they're more sociable. I was able to make friends that way, and connect with people on that term, and that gave me a support system. I'm still connected with these people today. We meet up, we play tennis together, we get dinner.”
Noel also shared that she met her mentor through Greenwood. “Before our cohort had started, there was a networking pizza event that they had put on, and I met my mentor there, and we kind of connected with each other. I felt like he made me very comfortable and feel included. It took me a couple months to work up the courage to ask him to be my mentor, but he agreed to it. He is in finance, and I'm in cyber security, and we've had a lot of interesting conversations on life and my career path in the future, being more intentional, planning out what I want to do. And he has hooked me up to some people in cybersecurity that have helped me figure out what career I want to have in cybersecurity. So that was super beneficial.”
Reynolds nearly offered a dissertation on the topic. “I just think that in our shoes, being young professionals, young scholars of color, there's just so many different disadvantages that are present. And I think Greenwood does a fantastic job of addressing them.”
He added, “A lot of us don't have direct mentors to help guide us. Going into Greenwood, I had no idea what it was that I wanted to do. I knew that I wanted to work in finance. I knew I liked looking at the stock market, but I didn't really know what career paths were available to me. Greenwood did a fantastic job of spelling that out and getting people in front of us with actual experience in those spaces.”
Reynolds also shared how Greenwood helps prepare students to enter the workplace, how it makes connections for them. “We were speaking with portfolio managers on a random Thursday at lunch, eating pizza right in front of them. It's unbelievable the people that they put in front of us, and the consistency that they put us in front of these professionals.”
Finally, he noted the effectiveness of Greenwood and its deep connections in the industry. “The fact that they were actually able to match me with DRW and match me with a firm that ended up turning into a full time offer, it changed the entire trajectory of my career.”
The students become the teachers
Closing out the discussion, Smith asked Noel and Reynolds what advice they would offer their peers and other students of color interested in finance.
Reynolds noted the importance of believing in oneself. “If you believe in yourself and you actively work toward pursuing your goals, and you're intentional about where you're studying, you're intentional about what circles you put yourself in, what conversations you're involved with, what news sources you're reading, I think the sky's the limit. But it starts with that, if you don't have what it takes within you to push yourself out of your comfort zone and to challenge yourself, then it'll be difficult making it anywhere.”
Noel stayed with the idea of intentionality. “I would also say being intentional, but also pushing yourself. Greenwood Project definitely helped me push myself. They pushed me to the limit, for sure. Every day was packed and busy. And when I finished my internship going into my fall quarter, I was motivated to continue to try and push myself and go to networking events in the Chicago area and connect with people at Google or at McDonald's. It really motivated me to be my best self every day.”
