“Some think Wall Street is hopeless, some are more optimistic than ever.”
Women don’t apply for jobs unless they feel like they have every qualification. Being a Black woman, I was committed to ensure there was no box I didn’t check. I could do asset management, I could do wealth management, I could do investment banking, I could do retail, I could lead large organizations, I could run strategy, I could handle a P&L [profit and loss statement], I could focus on product distribution. I was going to have all the licenses, I was going to have all the degrees.
You need to be prepared at all moments, because you never know when “that moment” is. I wouldn’t have known that that meeting was going to be “the moment.” I always bring 110%. I’m always overprepared, and I always want to make sure it’s that level of quality at all times. It was like, this is a celebration of diversity? And I just remember thinking, Do you not see the irony here? No. OK, great. Awesome.
The thing that I say all the time to juniors [in the office] is it doesn’t mean that you can’t have a career, but you do have to know that [being supercareful] is the case all the time.
[But] you can’t skate by at the same level of your White colleagues. You have to be excellent in order to succeed. What they were doing was almost training you to learn the language, learn the customs. We were taught and groomed how to operate in a White corporate world. People are very resistant to give up any elements, traditions of the White corporate American culture to make room for something that looks different.
I wanted to work in a company where I felt that I would get a fair shot. And some of the other companies I interviewed at—they were top-notch companies—but I wasn’t convinced that they had enough diversity within the executive and senior ranks to make me feel that if I was there I would get a fair chance. Having Ken and others like him at American Express made me feel more comfortable joining the firm.Dick Parsons, 72, is a senior adviser at asset management firm Providence Equity.
That sometimes is unavoidable, because you’re in a group discussion, and it comes up, and you have to deal with it. But it’s not something that anybody that I knew, back in the early ’90s, looked forward to discussing at work, because it was just a negative reminder about how unfair things are, and how they work, and unfortunately how they still are in America.
So that’s where I really started to get my first taste of what it’s like to be Black on Wall Street. I was on the institutional sales desk, and I’m not blameless. I was a young kid. There’s also quite a bit of hazing sometimes, especially when I was coming up in the late ’90s. One day I responded back to someone hazing. I don’t know what I said. I probably snapped back and said something.
Electronic trading and innovation in the bond market became something that I was obsessed with. I worked for a startup that then became public, and from there, I ended up moving over to the sell side, going back to traditional Wall Street. But I was going back not as a salesperson or trader. I was going back as someone who was supposed to be leading innovation.
There comes a time in any job when you want to be valued as an employee. You’ve got to take your boss aside, and you’ve got to say, “This is what my expectation is. How do I get there?” So, I took my new boss aside: “This all has to do with perception of value. I wrote the plan. I’m implementing the plan.” My ask isn’t outrageous, and [yet] he’s telling me I should probably look for another job.
One time, I had my boss speaking to me, and I just was drifting off because of the way he was speaking to me. I was thinking to myself, “You know what? If we matched résumés right now, in terms of just academic accomplishments and all of those things, I would trump yours. In fact, I bet you if we matched our parents’ résumés, my parents would trump your parents.
Can you imagine how hard it is to become recognized to the point where you get a cold call from the head of a f---ing European regulatory body? You’ve got to really be doing some stuff. I’m randomly walking on the floor about two weeks later, and one of the few Black partners pulls me aside. I don’t know this guy. I know him by name. But I don’t really know him. And he says, “Chris, your bosses wanted me to speak to you. I actually don’t understand what the problem is. I’ve observed you being a really capable guy. I thought that maybe you would lean on me for how to navigate here as a Black person. You never seem to need me. I’ve actually found that quite refreshing.
I would probably push a little further on mentors and sponsors. A mentor is that person that you can bounce an idea [off of], get some advocacy from. But what’s really critical is sponsorship—that senior executive that’s going to be your advocate whether you are in the room or not and who is looking at you as the next talent.
I would tell my younger self, “You’re going to find it harder, you’re going to work harder, you’re going to experience more obstacles, but your persistence and drive and faith are going to allow you to have a journey that will make it better for your daughter and girls that are coming behind you.” And I’d end it with, “I see you. I see you.”Wall Street is not doing a good enough job thinking about why people fall out.
Obviously, I got hired at a very senior level at Amazon. Now I am [a mentor]. And to be fair, I was that person for several people at HSBC. I can say that I think that there were lots of juniors who saw me there and thought, OK, maybe I can do this, right? Yes. And so I did think about that a lot when I left. I’m the person, and I’m leaving. What does that mean? How did they interpret that?
I did internalize a lot of those messages to be a nonthreatening Black person to White people. As traditional as they come: That’s the idea. Wear a suit. Present yourself this way, so people don’t feel a sense that this is uncomfortable. You don’t want to look like you’re overindulging. A few people reached out to me and said they were going through a lot, and they thought it was really difficult. And so I just wanted them to hear from me. I want to share my feelings. I want them to know that I found the recent instance to be horrific, to be inexcusable, and to be maddening.
So, parents are having to be at home with their kids in the house, sheltering, not sure what’s next. In that environment, we have a lot of emotion, a lot of anxiety, a lot of stress, a lot of uncertainty. Everyone’s watching television, watching the news, on social media and online. This young African-American guy wasn’t young—he was like 26, 27—he was the backup coverage on this account. The lead coverage got moved to a different desk. And so they hadn’t figured out who the new coverage was going to be. As the backup coverage, he’s doing all of the work.
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