Q:What is your main interest outside of work?
A: My main interest outside of work is mentorship and giving back. I believe that whenever someone finds success it is important to always give back in some way.
Q:Where did this interest originally stem from?
A:This interest came from my surroundings, for example at my school I am a Managing Director at the Phoenician Investment Fund which is a club on campus (at FIU) that helps students learn more about Wall Street and hopefully land an internship at some of the top banks in the world. After seeing students working at Goldman or JPMorgan, those same students could have easily left the club and do their own thing. However, they didn’t and they stayed back to mentor and help the next generation secure their future.
Q: What does your ideal environment look like to succeed and why?
A: I would have to go back to the team work environment. If you want to be successful in such a challenging sector like finance it is important that everyone is working together and that everyone wants to succeed with the firm.
Q: What is one thing people should focus more on to improve society and why?
A:That’s a great question, I think people tend to label too much whether its age, gender or even physique. A lot of people would look at someone and right away decide what they think of them just by appearance. I think that needs to stop, I don’t think it’ll stop tomorrow but if you compare this time to earlier years of American history you can agree that we have come a long way.
Q:What does work-life integration mean to you?
A:Work-life integration one hundred percent means alot to me. Gary Vaynerchuck said it best and when he mentions that someone should not keep looking forward to the weekend because that means that from Monday to Thursday you’re miserable. Which if you think about it that means that 60% of your week will make you miserable, which sounds bad to me. What I mean by that is the people that think like that either need to do a better job at organizing their day because they are working too hard, or just simply needs to change their career.
Q:What do you believe businesses need to do to better work-life integration?
A:It is tough to say, because I believe in that if you’re passionate about your job than you’ll never work a day in your life. I think that business should be understanding a little more or give an employee a little more freedom. For example, I would let my employees come in whenever they leave as long as they are professional and produce at a high level. I’ll give you an example, I worked with a guy who worked in investment banking who used to show up to work at 9:30AM and leave at 5:00PM. He was one of the top producers at the firm so no one cared when he came in and when he left. But, the moment he stopped being one of the top producers and still came in at those hours my boss had to sit him down and tell him to step, which he did.
