Careers in International Affairs, Eighth Edition

8 Banking

8 Banking Careers in Banking Jeff Bernstein Jeff Bernstein is a 1985 graduate of the Master of Science in Foreign Service Program at Georgetown University. He is the cofounder and portfolio manager at Keel Capital Management, and he has had twenty years of experience in the investment business. Before cofounding Keel, he was a partner at the Galleon Group, and before that, a managing director at Goldman Sachs. While at Goldman, he started the industry’s first institutional equity sales force dedicated to selling technology equities. RISK IS WHAT we in the investment community measure every day, and it is what the international affairs graduate is especially qualified to assess. As you contemplate how to apply your academic training and passion toward a career that will stimulate you, provide you financial security, and improve the lives of others, it is important to recognize that you have spent the greater part of your graduate study understanding and measuring the risk associated with critical decisions and recommending courses of action based on your conclusions. This is exactly what financial institutions are looking for in their new hires, and it is ultimately the skill that separates successful financiers from the pack. In my twenty-plus years working on Wall Street, I have never seen a better or more appropriate time to seek a career in banking and finance. For decades, the United States was forced to carry the majority of the burden for financing global economic growth. The bulk of the world’s 208 Careers in Banking • 209 population was not represented by governments whose policies encouraged capitalism. Western Europe, Japan, and the United States represented the lion’s share of global consumption, especially the consumption of capital-intensive technology and innovative industrial products. Finance, banking, and money flows therefore were concentrated in these geographies, and the expertise necessary to evaluate and commit capital wisely was similarly focused. That has all changed, and with that change a dramatic shift is occurring in the skill set required by individuals in our industry. Financial globalization has placed new demands on the banking community. These demands include deep and specific country or regional knowledge. They include a much more acute awareness of the socioeconomic realities in regions of the world that most bankers over the age of thirty-five have never been trained to evaluate. They require hands-on experience and relationships with local business and government leaders who themselves are just learning to coexist in a new world flush with liquidity and opportunity. This is exactly what we, as international affairs graduates, have to offer. Financial globalization has placed new demands on the banking community. These demands include deep and specific country or regional knowledge. But why choose this industry? Though it offers the chance for lucrative compensation, is it not tedious and filled with boring MBAs who care little about the global community? How can we, idealists all, commit to a career that appears so unemotional, so numbers oriented? Those were my thoughts twenty years ago, and yes, at times, this industry offers little in the way of empathy or creativity, but for those of us who have worked hard and been blessed with a measure of success, no career offers more opportunities to improve the lives of others on as massive a scale as this one. Your career in finance and banking can take you anywhere you want it to take you—from negotiating huge contracts on behalf of sovereign governments, to financing their economic growth, to underwriting water projects in undeveloped regions, to financing new solar technologies that will ultimately and dramatically reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Each of these kinds of projects will require the diplomatic and riskassessment skills that you have honed, and each will require you to dive 210 • Banking deeply into its details, taking you around the world and building a library of experience and knowledge that is matched by few professions. If you want this, it is there. The world changes every day, and in our industry we get paid to figure out how that change will affect the financial livelihoods of companies and countries. We may not realize it at the time, as we write our research and do our spreadsheets, but ultimately we get paid to protect these entities from harm and to help them build better lives for their employees, their shareholders, and their citizens. So where do...