>> My name is Andrew Nookle [phonetic] and I'm an investment banker by training.
Investment banking is a little bit more ordered.
It's a little bit more professional, a little bit more organized.
There is quite a lot of analysis that needs to get done and we call that valuation analysis.
And what that essentially means is a lot of work goes into valuing companies.
Trying to figure out how much they're worth in the public market.
How much somebody would be willing to pay for them
and how much somebody would be willing to sell them for.
So it involves a lot of Excel crunching and a lot of number crunching,
sitting at the computer, and working with a lot of data systems like Capital IQ
and other data systems that feed into your valuation models.
And that involves a lot of putting together presentations to talk about valuation
and to talk about positioning and to talk
about where your company sits within the rubric of its peers.
And where its valuation sits within the rubric of its peers.
I think, for me, it's very tangible.
I like the fact that I can see exactly what I'm doing working
with numbers and I can see a clear result.
And I can see the value or the fruits of my labor very carefully afterward.
It's very tangible.
I can see the valuation that I created.
I can see the book that I put together.
I can see the document that I put together.
And I can walk clients through that in a very engaging way and get to a consensus
about valuation and a consensus about what to do about the company.
So I think, you know, for people who are in college, I think you pursue your passion.
Pursue what you're good at.
Pursue what you enjoy doing and then let life evolve the way it is supposed to evolve.
If you were meant to be working in investment banking, you will find a way to that path.
I'm 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 8 and I had always wanted
to be a professional opera singer.
And that was what I was intending to do when I came to Pomona in 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 Folks Opera 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.
I think somebody who doesn't require a lot of sleep [chuckles], who is very driven,
very much a type A personality, very thorough because it's a very meticulous job
and it has a great attention to detail.
So you have to be very thorough.
You have to be -- have a lot of energy.
You have to be very committed.
You have to be able to function on very little sleep.
And you have to be in it for the long haul.
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