On the Plane To America

I came into the states as a skinny 17 year old from West Africa. I was one of the very fortunate kids to have been granted a visa to receive my college education in the United States. The day I received my visa, I and my twin were selected out of thousands of kids to study in the U.S.We just received admission from a community college in Pittsburgh, and we boarded the plane hungry, desperate, and with lots of ambition.

After a semester at the community college, I transferred into Georgia Tech in Atlanta. Engineering was a very hot field at the time and I was drawn to it because of the challenge, and I also loved math. I really loved math and science, so I majored in Engineering.

I finally graduated in the Summer of 2006, and I was utterly clueless in deciding what to do with my life. I knew I wanted to be involved in business either on the consulting side or in the private equity and restructuring space, but I was confused on how to get there. Some friends asked me to consider business school, but that was out of the question because I couldn't bank on my parents to fund it. Also, as of this time I was worried about the immigration officials expunging me out of the states for overstaying my visa. So instead of going to business school I decided to spread my net wide, and I jumped into the job market looking for a job in business.

They say engineers are great for sales and trading, management consulting, all of which are very analytical in nature but I was very confused which was best for me. Prior to my senior year, I worked as an Engineer at a fortune 500, then I worked at a software start up, and that was all the experience I had in the business world. In my last semester in college, I took a design class that had a finance component to it. I was responsible for the valuation part of the project, while my team mates handled the design, and hard core engineering. My senior design project was the only accounting and finance class I ever took in college, and it proved to be extremely helpful much later down the road.

With my background I decided to pursue consulting, Fixed Income Sales & Trading, and Investment Banking as a last resort.