so I just kind of take you through the Ah, the the short version. It's, um it wasn't planned. Um, I and and as an undergraduate, I did a senior thesis, and I really enjoyed the research process. So that convinced me to get a PhD in economics because I really enjoyed, um, working on my senior thesis in economics. Um, I I did that. I did that at Princeton, where they require a senior thesis. So one thing I would suggest to people that have enjoyed doing research is even in a year. Even in an undergraduate program that doesn't require a thesis. Princeton does. Um, if it's an option, I would encourage you to take it. It sounds it may sound like a lot of work. It may sound quite challenging, but you might learn something very important about yourself. So So that was a very good experience for me. Um, it's Stanford. I know. I did graduate school in economics, and I ended up I had a really I had a really influential professor Tom, Sergeant and Tom had was very, very mathematical. He was quite good at understanding math and statistical tools and computer programming. Um, he got me into Matt Lab in the late 19 eighties. That was pretty groundbreaking for the late 19 eighties. Um, and I think I think Tom has all the students today learning Python. So he's got you've got people up on the latest technology. But Tom actually got me thinking about some really interesting problems, and he also is a big fan of of history. So at graduate school, I did applying game theory to his economic T episodes in economic history, I actually built a model of why the King of Spain in the 16 hundreds, 15 hundreds are in the 16th century. Um, would stir cheat was strategically go bankrupt. Um is a way of sorting out his relationships with his generals, lenders, and, um, and from and from EC and I, I started off life as an academic. I was I worked as a researcher at the Bank of Spain and at the University of Texas in the University of Madrid. And so into my early thirties, I was pretty much an academic, Um and then at one point, I, um, I felt like I wanted to kind of get into it where the action was get into, ah, job where I had responsibilities and would make decisions. And I was finding the effort to create published articles, um, to be just just tiresome. Not as not as not as invigorating as it used to be when I was a graduate student. And so I ended up working at Lehman Brothers, which was an investment bank, and that was a really important lesson for me. And I guess, let me take a bit of a digression here for people who are undergraduates back on that. Back in the late 19 nineties, investment banks were quite different than they are now. In many ways, they were. They were exposed worst places. Um, but they were very entrepreneurial, and a lot of smart people were there and doing very creative things. And, um, you could you could try a lot of new ideas. And the great thing about working on markets is if your ideas were good and successful, you would make money with your ideas and you and you you had a very objective major. Was your part profit and loss. Was your piano positive? It was not personal. It all right? And if your ideas weren't better than everybody else's. And if they weren't working, you'd lose money and the rules were very clear. You lose used too much money, you lose your book and your book might be. You have to go another job if you lose your book or you might are, or you might have to Do you know another job within the bank or you might have to leave the bank. So it was quite clear what? So that was really good because you realized the thing I've learned at that job leaving brothers was that people would help you if you tried hard and you're honest with yourself and you are honest with them. There was lots of help around Lehman Brothers. It was kind of rough and tumble. It could be a bit, uh, it could be a bit intimidating, but a sense of humor at Lehman Brothers was very important. If you could laugh at yourself, laughed with others. So I learned a lot of really good things that Lehman Brothers back them. I think now the banks are much more regulated, much bigger organizations. So perhaps it's ah, it's a different experience than when I went to Lehman brothers and then my experience that Lehman Brothers kind of taught me that I liked being in an entrepreneur in environment. So friend. So from the next 15 years I've worked in hedge funds, which is small organizations with very little politics, and you have to you have to be able to master many schools. Many schools quite quickly take a lot of chances, be very entrepreneurial, think of a solution implemented, try to make money. And I did that for 15 years. Um, for the last almost two years now, I've been at a big insurance company, so it's come. It's from an organizational perspective. It's quite different. But the reason I went from hedge funds to a large organization like a I G. Has to do with how the world has changed. Um, investing now requires much more scale. And there's, um, there's a lot more, um, upfront costs to creating an investment process. In terms of information technology, you have to use lots of machine learning data science, bring a lot of quantitative tools into the investing process. Um, you need to work very closely and carefully with I t. Um and I team requires lots of infrastructure. You know, you have to think of the security problem, Dev ops, which has to do with building up your service, your communications and all the data processes that you need to pull in data and a fast, inaccurate way before they even get your models. Um and so what? I realized that perhaps a larger organization, you know, with more overhead bureaucracy and the like, Um, but they also have their better at project planning. They have more capital. They can sustain projects for a longer period of time. Which smaller scale, sort of more nimble hedge funds, um, are struggling to do right. And this new in this new investment environment. Um, so that was I think that was the thing that pushed me from the hedge fund world, where I have been quite happy for about 15 years. Um, back to a large organization. And, um so that's, um, and the one thing I would remark about my journey is when I when I left graduate school, I was an expert on the economic history of early modern Europe and in particular Spain and game theory, um, and and actually computational solutions, because the games that I saw it didn't have analytic solutions that I had to be a good programmer. Um, now I think about a lot about Oh, and as an undergraduate, I took a lot of optimization and, um, operations research. So that's actually this training that they stood be invested. So now I do nothing but econometrics statistics, programming optimization, lots of finance. My work now is is almost unrecognizable compared to what? I didn't graduate school, and I think that's the great thing about about my career. Is I got to read. I got to get a Ph. D in finance as I went alone I and and so that's the one thing I do is I still read tons and tons of finance papers. I'm always look going to websites going into, you know, looking at universities. I still have relationships with people at universities, you know. Now I talked to finance departments and stats departments instead of economic historians and macro economists. But my my my journey has been one of basically still being a graduate student. After all these years, I still feel like a graduate student. I'm coding. I'm looking at data I'm learning. I'm thinking with the one difference that now I have appeal and I'll have to worry about every day is supposed to when I was a graduate student.

So it's interesting that us that, um thankfully, I don't have to do a lot of travelling air G. Um, and so you mentioned travel, and many drugs do incorporate a lot of travel. I know with Kobe, a person might think that we'll certainly temporarily, at least there's no travel or very little travel to speak of. I think travel is quite important, Um, being face to face and working with people, being able to have dinner with a colleague, have lunch, see people face to face. Um, you know, humans at the end of the day are were animals, you know, we're biological species and the spirit with which somebody intends something the being able to be in the room with somebody, the the breath of information that you have to communicate when you, when you when you know in this business is very important to get. And it's just much more efficient to get to convey all that information and meaning when you're face to face. So so even though we have great technology to virtual do virtual conferences and work from home, and in many ways it's much more efficient, there's no substitute, I think, from being face to face forming human bonds and relationships. So I do think that drops with lots of travel will come back. I personally find travel very, very taxing when you're young, it's a lot more fun. And, um, but the one the one thing I would warn you all is that you will find that travel gets old relatively quickly and you don't want to overrate travel when you're young. Um, it what does it do? What does that do to you? It disrupts your friendships in your and your social life at home. Now I'm talking to you is young people when you get older that the your social life becomes your family life. But it's he was born and us those times, and it's very disruptive to that. If you like staying in shape and feeling good, feeling alert by going out and being able to run and stay in shape. Travel disrupts that. You will find that restaurant food doesn't make you feel very good after a time. So there are all these things, and being on an airplane is very taxing. Um, you know their airplanes, you come off an airplane if you've been on an airplane long enough with something that the people call it, Um, airplane hangover, Right? You're dehydrated and something funny happens on an airplane. You know that background noise in an airplane that roar your your mind filters it out, And so you have to run to think of a computer that's constantly running a filter when it's filtering noise. The fact that you're if you're If you're not sleeping in your wake on an airplane and your mind is constantly filtering that that background noise, it makes your brain quite tired. And that contributes to some of the fatigue that you get in an airplane. No, if you're young, you're not gonna notice that. But on a long flight, if you do it over and over again, you're going to find out the airplanes really wear you out. So now that I've tried to straight you all from taking jobs, we have, Let's travel. Um, it's the best time to do it is when you're young and it's great to work in foreign countries. Um, I am. I love every time I get to go to London. I love it. I'm very familiar with London is a town in the destination. I've lived in Madrid. I lived in Bermuda. I've lived in Singapore. Um, I've lived in Mexico City, so I have discovered a great wealth in my own personal development and my perception of life by having lived in lots of different places. So if, um I so having an international career, Um, where you take a job in a foreigner in a foreign place, you put your hand up and say, Yes, I'll go wherever the company wants me to go. Um, I think there are big benefits to that. That's one thing I've discovered regarding now. You asked me about my balance of my responsibilities. I spend. I do try to spend a lot of time in our New York office. Um, I have I have a team of about, um, about 11 people that work for me now. And I think a lot of other people in related teams who are doing things on our behalf for my team would probably extend the people that I am directing to about 30 or 40. And so one of my biggest responsibilities is to is to try to add value to the people that work for me um, there different types of bosses, different types of managers with philosophies. My philosophy of management is that, um I work for my employees. Um, they depend on me for certain things and certain things. I have to deliver to them. And of course, they deliver other things to me. But I think of it as a symmetric relationship. Um, they're things that that I have to teach my employees. Um and so I tried to be a good teacher. I try to think carefully about the assignments. I give them the skills that they have, the knowledge that they have think what about what they don't have. I tried to be explicit to my employees. Um, here's here's knowledge required for this job. You may not have it. I want you to get it because I don't have time to get it myself. So I expect you to go out and read papers and tell me about what you learn so we can discuss it. Um, something that people get about often and work is that sometimes it's just good to chat with somebody about something. Just ask him a question. Talk about it. Compare. You just need to talk to somebody about something. T help clarify your thoughts. And sometimes an important job. A za boss is a new employees may be working by themselves and have and have nothing. Teoh No one else was really sharing in there and there, Um, in that job, they might be working with someone alone is to be someone to check things over with. Um, but please, part of me for a moment. I'm sorry. Sorry. I can go in. So so that. That's That's one of the things that, as a, um is I feel is my responsibility in terms of what we're seeing on the team that I look at. Another thing that I do is I I spent a lot of time looking through code, both code that people do in code that I do myself. So one of the things I like about the career that I've had as a quant in finance is I get to get to work with code and with data, Um and so I'm constantly being challenged by thinking, you know, working through the coding and the data puzzles that a person confronts in that line of work

So one thing is, when you manage your time, so it's one of the biggest challenges. When you get into any job, you will find that you could you could probably spend three times as much trying doing All the work that you've been assigned is available in a day. You know, if you're trying to keep your your work week to 40 or 50 hours, you could easily spend 150 hours doing everything. So you have to learn. You have to choose what to do and what not to do. And that's one of the biggest challenges. And a lot of times your boss will. Your bosses will understand this, right? They'll understand that very quickly. You're gonna have more things to do than there is time. And so they're going to expect you to choose. They're gonna expect you to economize in your time and pick the appropriate amount of time for different tasks. Um, and so you What you really want to do is be very disciplined about how much time you spend on different things, understanding which things aren't important from time to time. You might say to your boss, I was unable to get to that because I was prioritizing these other things. Um, that's perfectly fine. One of the important things when you get into the work environment is being able to see if you're starting to get stressed, Feel stress. Oh, my goodness, I my, I've been assigned four different things. I'm only halfway through one and the timelines are coming down on me. Shoot your boss or clicking mail saying I'm struggling with prioritization. This one job is taking longer. Oftentimes your bosses will not realize how big the assignments that they're giving you are. If you've got a good boss, they go. Oh, my gosh. I had no idea this was so big, you know? You know, explain to me what you explained to me was taking so long on what's going on? Um, another thing. Very important. It's OK. Everybody makes mistakes constantly. Your boss that you might feel quite foolish. Your bosses like Oh, you're going about this all wrong, of course, is taking you forever. If you have done it this way, you will find it's only gonna take a half hour. No problem. This is the boss. Your boss is there for that. Your boss might get frustrated with him with you. If you have waited too long to tell her that you're struggling, tell your boss that you're struggling right off the bat so she can come back and and correct right right away. And she'll be happy, right? She'll be thrilled. So there's a bright kid, you know? You know, he recognized it might be taking too long. He was feeling a bit of stressed, came from Everton for direction on time, and he's not lost much time. And now he's now he's now he's going the right direction. So these are things that I try to be available and clarify with the people that work for me so that, you know, they don't get into the situation of un constructive stress.