>> I am from Montego Bay, Jamaica.
And for the longest time as far as I can remember I was a singer.
I started singing professionally at the age of eight, and I had always wanted
to be a professional opera singer.
And that was what I intending to when I came to Pomona and to 1996; and I was, in fact,
a music major and a German minor.
And so, for a long time, I still pursued that dream.
And, in fact, during my junior year, I took a year off from Pomona
because I got a contract singing at the Volksoper in Vienna which is the second
of the two opera houses in Vienna, and it was that experience that really cemented for me
that music was always going to be a very important part
of my life but not my full vocation.
So I got back to Pomona to finish my degree.
I left the job.
I get back to Pomona to finish my degree and decided that I would go into consulting
because it offered the broadest exposure to the business world.
And, since I was coming from music in German and not very sure about where I wanted
to place my career, I thought that going into consulting would give me the broadest exposure
to help figure that out and figure out where I should be.
So I interviewed for the consulting firms.
I got a bunch of offers.
I took the best offer that I got, which was this McKinsey offer.
I went to work for McKinsey in the LA office right after graduation.
Had a wonderful experience; got a wonderful exposure to the business world.
Realized that I had a knack for business and that I wanted to have a career in it.
And so I went to business school very quickly thereafter to get a credential
in this space given that my first degree was in music and German and that I wanted to work
in business so I needed to get a business degree.
And the rest is history.
I just -- I focused on finance and strategy when I was in business school, got this internship
at Goldman Sachs doing investment banking in between my first and second years
of business school and then did well in the internship.
Got an offer to return to Goldman after graduation and, essentially,
took up Goldman on that offer and go worked for them in New York and then in Frankfurt.