What are your key roles and responsibilities in your current positions? What do you like most about your job and what do you find most challenging?
I oversee hedge fund investments since 1989. This role requires intuitive as well as objective analytical process; one cannot hide from the year end fund results. In addition, I have the opportunity to meet exceptional individuals globally.
List or describe the top 5+ professional skills that are crucial to your role.
- Rigorous objective technical analysis
- Project management and organizational skills
- Leadership within motivational context
- Negotiation skills that foster win-win outcomes
- Creative macro-contextual thinking oriented towards the future
How did your time at Yale shape your career trajectory? For example, what skills and/or experiences did you acquire that have contributed to your career success?
My doctoral thesis was a very granular analysis of global industrial sectors which gave me deep understanding of operational processes, trade and technological transfer. I had to be creative in finding the data, enhance my interviewing and interpersonal skills, and build sustainable two way networks. In addition to learning where theory stops and reality intrudes.
What were the biggest challenges that you faced when transitioning to different workplaces and cultures? What advice and suggestions can you offer to current students to help them prepare for those challenges?
Yale as an academic training ground for rigorous analysis was essential; gaining real world experience to help transition to a non-academic environment was very helpful in that my research and my Yale management consulting with GE and other corporations enhanced my real world understanding. Entering investment banking in competition with MBAs was challenging but they often lacked serious research capabilities and were mathematically constrained in their approach to a project.
