[MUSIC PLAYING] JESS WELLS: I’m Jess Wells. I’m an associate within Fixed Income in London. I work in the coal portfolio management team. And I studied at Cass Business School in London. I studied investment and financial risk management. Originally, I worked in law for a year and decided it wasn’t what I wanted to go into. And then went back to studying.
And it was my second and third year, and I really knew what I wanted to go into. What excites you about coming to work is mainly the pace and the change of everything each day. And that could be from the decisions that we have to make on our funds, or it can just be watching the traders and their expertise.
I can sit opposite the head of trading. And my MD sits behind me. I can have conversations with anyone across the floor that has worked in the industry for however many years. Or I can have conversations with people who have just started at the firm and they’ve got fresh ideas.
Whether it’s the Asian desks in Singapore, with the London desk, and then back to New York, and then San Francisco. And there’ll be people that I would be speaking to on a daily basis probably more so in the New York office than I would someone that sits a row or two behind me in the London office. So it’s really interesting to see the different aspects of different offices and working across all the different regions. There’s been a real push for it now to work with not only fixed income, but in trading as well and across different businesses.
I think when you think of the actual size of money that’s managed and the risks that you are taking, it can be quite daunting and challenging. But then you also need to develop your own confidence and really back yourself in decisions that you make. And what you’re doing in your day to day role. It’s quite challenging as well to find something that you’re an expert in. And then as time goes on, you actually realize where your skill set is. And you think, oh, actually, no, this is where I can have my time to shine.
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