Monday, October 29, 2012
Friday, October 26, 2012
Thinking about Financial Services
Lately, I've been trying to reconcile my new-found interest in working in financial services. In college, it had never crossed my mind, but now, a financial services firm, State Street, has become my top choice for the next step. In fact, just to participate in State Street's final round interview, I gave up an offer at a marketing consulting firm. Some of you guys might find my new path funny or strange because you probably never thought I'd go into finance. Truth be told, when interviewing for a financial services firm and one of my interviewers asked me "what do your friends think you'd be doing after college", my immediate answer was, "well, not financial services...*nervous chuckle*". I'm not sure if that was the best answer...but anyhow.
So why now? And what about sustainability?
After much thinking, I've actually reconciled the whole bit quite well. I went into Environmental Studies to be a productive problem solver. However, in the summer of 2010 (when I was in Turkey working for a semi-governmental environmental consulting firm), I had the realization that while I had great motivation to tackle sustainable development projects, the usual end-points for environmentalists were non-profits, think tanks, and government jobs, which didn't come across to me as being all that effective. Yes, people were motivated in bringing about a greater good, but their influence was weak. To realize a true difference, they relied on persuading someone else to make a change and could not be direct drivers of change themselves. Corporations (and also wall street) on the other hands have enormous influences. If I want to be a productive problem solver, I can't be stuck at a place that doesn't get things done and I can't work at a place that doesn't try to solve the problems I want to solve either.
I then sought to combine my interest in sustainability (the answer to a problem) with business (an effective vehicle to deliver the solution). On this track, I started working at the Yale Office of Sustainability to calculate the financial returns on their investments in sustainability. I was also thinking along these lines when I decided to start building my own social enterprise, Sprout, with Ray and Mike. A social enterprise that addressed environmental and social issues was the perfect vehicle for me to both tackle the problems I wanted to solve while being effective.
Now that Sprout is a thing of the past, I've arrived at a new crossroad...and I'm quite excited about the direction it might take me! Regardless of whether or not I will work in financial services in the upcoming year (aka, whether or not State Street will hire me), the whole job search process has allowed me to brainstorm many options that I haven't realized existed before.
The new idea is: what about sustainability and finance?
Sustainability is becoming more and more connected with the role of the CFO. In hard economic times, investments in energy efficiency and other cost-cutting "green" projects have found a niche with CFOs who can claim to doubly reap the benefits of cost-savings and better corporate image. Lately, CFOs have also begun to make sustainability a strategic investment in ways beyond cost-cutting. I am not aiming for one of those CFO jobs, but I think there is a potential niche in the future for those who can occupy the dual realm of sustainability and finance. One potential opportunity is sustainability related investing (like what I did at the Yale Office of Sustainability). Investments are still made on the basis of profitability, however, the only projects considered are limited to ones that are considered socially-good. Just today, I've received the offer to do first round interviews from one such impact investing firm, New Island Capital--and I'm pretty psyched! Maybe they'll hire me. :) There are also more traditional investment possibilities such as forest resources, other natural resources, energy, transportation, etc. A skill set in finance becomes a vehicle through which I can serve the purpose of sustainability.
Instead of thinking of finance as a bad thing (an opinion that was no doubt influenced by my days of working for a mortgage consultant in the summer of 2008--the height of the US housing bubble burst--and the collapse of the world's economic system in my first few days of college), I've come to understand finance as the allocation of capital where it is needed. The people who work in this industry are like firefighters, but instead of delivering water, they deliver money, and instead of fighting a natural disaster, this disaster is usually man-made.
Finance isn't a bad thing in of itself, it just has a poor reputation in the US because it is poorly regulated and have all the wrong incentives in place. Give any industry the wrong incentives that encourages corruption and a lack of accountability, and they'll surely become "bad" too. For example, if doctors could receive generous paychecks from from pharmaceutics companies in the form of prescription "commission" and suffer no consequences if a patient found the drug to be ill-prescribed, the bad incentives and lack of accountability would also make the medical profession "bad", even though the inherent services of a doctor--that of treating patients for a disease--is good. I'm sure this is happening in some form in the US, but it's especially acute in China, which is why I never want to go to a Chinese hospital. ever.
So this is my inspired rant after watching the documentary "Inside Job", which was really well made (and also narrated by Matt Damon!). It's a much harsher, convincing, and entertaining condemnation of the current financial system/the players involved than the other documentaries I've watched on the topic (such as "The Meltdown" and "The Flaw"). Of the three, I'd definitely recommend "Insider's Job" which was more informative and had interviews with some of the important characters. You also finish the film really wishing someone would eff up Goldman Sachs who seems to have made money off selling risky stocks to pension funds and then profited when it came to light that the loans were bad because Goldman Sachs got themselves insured. You also kinda hate the fact that all the CEOs/big fishes got to keep their big bonus checks even though their companies went bankrupt (no accountability, sigh).
I am glad to report that State Street, the financial services firm that I want to work for, has remained relatively clean in this industry.
So why now? And what about sustainability?
After much thinking, I've actually reconciled the whole bit quite well. I went into Environmental Studies to be a productive problem solver. However, in the summer of 2010 (when I was in Turkey working for a semi-governmental environmental consulting firm), I had the realization that while I had great motivation to tackle sustainable development projects, the usual end-points for environmentalists were non-profits, think tanks, and government jobs, which didn't come across to me as being all that effective. Yes, people were motivated in bringing about a greater good, but their influence was weak. To realize a true difference, they relied on persuading someone else to make a change and could not be direct drivers of change themselves. Corporations (and also wall street) on the other hands have enormous influences. If I want to be a productive problem solver, I can't be stuck at a place that doesn't get things done and I can't work at a place that doesn't try to solve the problems I want to solve either.
I then sought to combine my interest in sustainability (the answer to a problem) with business (an effective vehicle to deliver the solution). On this track, I started working at the Yale Office of Sustainability to calculate the financial returns on their investments in sustainability. I was also thinking along these lines when I decided to start building my own social enterprise, Sprout, with Ray and Mike. A social enterprise that addressed environmental and social issues was the perfect vehicle for me to both tackle the problems I wanted to solve while being effective.
Now that Sprout is a thing of the past, I've arrived at a new crossroad...and I'm quite excited about the direction it might take me! Regardless of whether or not I will work in financial services in the upcoming year (aka, whether or not State Street will hire me), the whole job search process has allowed me to brainstorm many options that I haven't realized existed before.
The new idea is: what about sustainability and finance?
Sustainability is becoming more and more connected with the role of the CFO. In hard economic times, investments in energy efficiency and other cost-cutting "green" projects have found a niche with CFOs who can claim to doubly reap the benefits of cost-savings and better corporate image. Lately, CFOs have also begun to make sustainability a strategic investment in ways beyond cost-cutting. I am not aiming for one of those CFO jobs, but I think there is a potential niche in the future for those who can occupy the dual realm of sustainability and finance. One potential opportunity is sustainability related investing (like what I did at the Yale Office of Sustainability). Investments are still made on the basis of profitability, however, the only projects considered are limited to ones that are considered socially-good. Just today, I've received the offer to do first round interviews from one such impact investing firm, New Island Capital--and I'm pretty psyched! Maybe they'll hire me. :) There are also more traditional investment possibilities such as forest resources, other natural resources, energy, transportation, etc. A skill set in finance becomes a vehicle through which I can serve the purpose of sustainability.
Instead of thinking of finance as a bad thing (an opinion that was no doubt influenced by my days of working for a mortgage consultant in the summer of 2008--the height of the US housing bubble burst--and the collapse of the world's economic system in my first few days of college), I've come to understand finance as the allocation of capital where it is needed. The people who work in this industry are like firefighters, but instead of delivering water, they deliver money, and instead of fighting a natural disaster, this disaster is usually man-made.
Finance isn't a bad thing in of itself, it just has a poor reputation in the US because it is poorly regulated and have all the wrong incentives in place. Give any industry the wrong incentives that encourages corruption and a lack of accountability, and they'll surely become "bad" too. For example, if doctors could receive generous paychecks from from pharmaceutics companies in the form of prescription "commission" and suffer no consequences if a patient found the drug to be ill-prescribed, the bad incentives and lack of accountability would also make the medical profession "bad", even though the inherent services of a doctor--that of treating patients for a disease--is good. I'm sure this is happening in some form in the US, but it's especially acute in China, which is why I never want to go to a Chinese hospital. ever.
So this is my inspired rant after watching the documentary "Inside Job", which was really well made (and also narrated by Matt Damon!). It's a much harsher, convincing, and entertaining condemnation of the current financial system/the players involved than the other documentaries I've watched on the topic (such as "The Meltdown" and "The Flaw"). Of the three, I'd definitely recommend "Insider's Job" which was more informative and had interviews with some of the important characters. You also finish the film really wishing someone would eff up Goldman Sachs who seems to have made money off selling risky stocks to pension funds and then profited when it came to light that the loans were bad because Goldman Sachs got themselves insured. You also kinda hate the fact that all the CEOs/big fishes got to keep their big bonus checks even though their companies went bankrupt (no accountability, sigh).
I am glad to report that State Street, the financial services firm that I want to work for, has remained relatively clean in this industry.
Happy Birthday Hilary!
Just blogging and wishing a happy 65th to my girl Hilary Clinton. I've narrowed down my girl crushes to like 3 people, and Hilary Clinton is definitely on the list (the other two, in case you're curious are Natalie Portman for Leon and her awesome SNL short and Tina Fey, who never fails to make me laugh. I love Emma Watson too because her pixie cut is so cute, but she hasn't made me laugh yet). In celebration of Hil's birthday, I'm posting a few links that other people have created because they love her too!
Textsfromhilary.tumblr.com
A video titled "Bitches is the New Black" by Tina Fey.
And 65 Reasons Why We Love Hilary!
Oh yeah, and I promise to finish reading your biography someday.
Textsfromhilary.tumblr.com
A video titled "Bitches is the New Black" by Tina Fey.
And 65 Reasons Why We Love Hilary!
Oh yeah, and I promise to finish reading your biography someday.
Monday, October 22, 2012
movie watching
What's an unemployed person to do when they're not applying for jobs? Watch netflix of course. I've only recently gotten into it, and I'm not sure if I'm a fan of the service ...something about instant demand doesn't work well with me. I like that I used to "work a little" for my movies and my TV programs, such as remembering to tune in on the day that it premiers so that I can catch the episode online for free, requesting it through the library's inter-loan service and waiting a week before I rode my bike to the library to pick it up, or at least driving to the nearby redbox to get it. Netflix is like constantly having a large pizza in your house, and then suddenly, you're binge eating because it was there and you weren't really thinking. We've never really had cable as a kid (maybe like for 2 years), and I kind of like not having the option of "instant" tv. Or maybe it's been so long since I've been idle that all things idle make me feel a little bit bummish.
Or maybe I'm thinking about all this, because the movie that I watched on this lovely Monday afternoon when everyone else was working, studying, or being otherwise productive was about a 30 something year old man who stilled lived at home. It's called "Failure to Launch", and pretty much the plot revolves around said man-child and his parent's attempt to get him out of the house by hiring a "professional" lady friend to seduce him into accepting adult responsibility. The side characters were hilarious and I really loved Zooey Deschanel's aggressive/adorable character.
Or maybe I'm thinking about all this, because the movie that I watched on this lovely Monday afternoon when everyone else was working, studying, or being otherwise productive was about a 30 something year old man who stilled lived at home. It's called "Failure to Launch", and pretty much the plot revolves around said man-child and his parent's attempt to get him out of the house by hiring a "professional" lady friend to seduce him into accepting adult responsibility. The side characters were hilarious and I really loved Zooey Deschanel's aggressive/adorable character.
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Changing the title, but it's still about 1-800 contacts
I was so impressed with 1-800 contact's customer service that I have to blog about it! First of all, they have a guarantee of beating any competitor's price by 2% (good idea!), so I called, and within 1 ring and NO AUTOMATED MESSAGES, I was immediately connected with an operator who then worked out the deal for me. Because I ordered there like once 5 years ago, they had all my information automatically on file and it was the quickest/most efficient customer service I've ever had! I'm truly impressed.
Anthony mentioned that this post sounds like a spam post It kinda is, but, it was good service, and after waiting on the phone for like forever with some other companies, I thought it was well deserved.
Anthony mentioned that this post sounds like a spam post It kinda is, but, it was good service, and after waiting on the phone for like forever with some other companies, I thought it was well deserved.
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Butterfly Estates
What's not to like about getting into a room filled with butterflies?
Queen Butterfly
Koi pond!
Butterfly throne
Queen Butterfly
Koi pond!
Butterfly throne
Monday, October 15, 2012
Beach Wedding
While lounging this past weekend at Clam Pass Beach and waiting for the sunset, we also got to watch a beach wedding take place. It was so funny because quite a big crowd gathered to watch the wedding and people who were located fairly closely like us, even turned their beach chairs and towels towards the wedding to get a better angle. I guess everyone likes to participate in happy occasions. Some people even took out their phones to record the occasion. I just snapped a few pictures, and I have no idea why someone would want to record a wedding that they're not even invited to...
Little beach goer going about his business
Little beach goer going about his business
Friday, October 12, 2012
mini golf
Interestingly enough, Fort Myers is abound with mini-golf courses. We went on a family outing to this pirate themed mini golf course with live alligators! It was my mom's first time playing and we had a lot of fun!
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Santa Barbara
Erika's wedding. I really liked that both her and Peter walked down the aisle at the same time and that they were accompanied by both parents.
Natalie and Julia!
Nari, my lovely host, striking a ballerina pose in the SB courthouse. Look familiar?
View from the parking lot rooftop
Saturday, October 6, 2012
Lucy and Me
Lucy (my long lost best friend from the age of 0-1) and I were able to reunite at Erika's wedding! Even though I don't know her very well, I think our baby connections and sharing of a mutual good friend make us strangely intimately connected. Lucy after all, is one of my firstfriends, even if I have no recollection of her...
Anyhoo, it was cool to see her at Erika's wedding, and Erika and Peter even had the foresight of seating us next to each other!
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
In Santa Barbara!!!
Going from Florida and California is really something...my first impression upon landing in Santa Barbara is that it's SO DRY here. No rain clouds and a lot of the vegetation looked very crisp. I guess this is pretty typical for summer, but still I was caught off guard.
In the meantime, I'm having a multi-day sleepover with Nari! Yayyyyy!!!!!There are so many fruit trees in their garden that are currently producing, including tangerines (yes!), persimmons, figs, oranges, and tomatoes.
This morning, we had a breakfast of greek yogurt mixed with fresh cut figs, almonds, and walnuts, drizzled with honey.
This morning, we had a breakfast of greek yogurt mixed with fresh cut figs, almonds, and walnuts, drizzled with honey.
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