As a trader at JP Morgan Chase in London, Ashish
Goyal helps manage billions of dollars of the bank’s exposure to risks
like foreign exchange fluctuations. In his spare time, he takes tango
lessons, plays cricket and goes clubbing with friends. Goyal is also
blind.
Watching him in the middle of the trading floor as he
switches back and forth between computer screens, that is not apparent
at all. But to check his e-mail, read research reports and look at
presentations, Goyal uses a screen-reading software whose speed is so
high that it sounds like gibberish to the untrained ear. When he needs
to read graphs, which the software cannot do, Goyal goes through the
data and tries to imagine the graph in his head.
On his desk, two computer screens show the usual
flashing Bloomberg messages and spreadsheets of constantly changing
numbers. Two keyboards are linked to headsets through which the
information and figures are read out to him at rapid speeds. The same
technology reads out text messages he receives on his cell phone.
Tolga Uzuner, executive director of JP Morgan’s chief
investment office and Goyal’s boss, said he hired the 30-year old
Wharton graduate because he was one of only a few candidates he
interviewed who knew about Asian interest rates, had excellent risk
management skills and knowledge of foreign exchange.
Vladimir Aleksic, who now works with Goyal, said: “We
walked out of the interview room and just said wow.” Many people on the
team analyze historical data and use comparisons to make decisions
about risks, Aleksic said, but “Ashish looks at where things are now and
just follows the news flow. He’s not blinded by the graphs.”
But as someone who can make out only light and
shadows, Goyal also knows his limits. “I told people, ‘You can put me on
the spot trading desk, but I’d be too slow,’ “ he said. “The challenges
are to realize where I can add value and where I don’t. You need to
find your niche.”
Soon, in pursuit of a career in global financial
markets, Ashish came to Wharton in 2006.Not only did he excel in
academics by graduating with honours, Ashish became an inspiration in
the campus. He was known for leadership and extra-curricular activities.
Ashish became a staff writer of the Wharton Journal,
member of a Brazilian drumming group, and chair of the ‘Wharton
Leadership Lectures Committee’, among other things. At graduation,
Ashish was voted by his peers for the Joseph P Wharton Award for
Leadership and Innovation.
Goyal says he always wanted to work in financial
markets. But despite a résumé that includes a top business degree from a
university in India, another from the Wharton School of the University
of Pennsylvania and a three-year stint at an Indian subsidiary of ING
bank, finding people who would hire him was not easy.
After gaining his first business degree, Goyal said
he had made the short list of candidates for jobs at several firms, but
once they realized he was blind he was turned away. When it was ING’s
turn, Goyal recalled, he was so frustrated that he just blurted: “I’m
blind. Do you still want to talk to me or not?”. “They asked whether I
could do the job. I said I think I can, and I was hired,” Goyal said.
Years later, when he applied to Wharton with the goal
of getting a job in New York or London, Goyal said, the university’s
director of admission signed off on his application with the words: “I
have never seen a blind trader on Wall Street. I can’t guarantee you’ll
get a job but you’ll definitely be better off with a Wharton degree.”
Still, even after Wharton, many Wall Street firms
rejected his applications because they could not find anybody else on
Wall Street using the same screen-reading software. JP Morgan was the
only bank to offer him a summer internship, which led to an offer of a
permanent position.
Goyal was not born blind. Growing up in Mumbai, Goyal
said he had a normal, happy childhood. But when he was about 9 years
old, he noticed that he could not immediately recognize some people and
could not see the lines in his notebooks at school. One night he walked
into a ditch, later he crashed his bicycle, and then he started to miss
the ball during his tennis lessons.
Goyal was told he had retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic
condition that damages the retina, and would gradually become blind. By
the time Goyal was 22, he had completely lost his eyesight.
The loss of his eyesight left Goyal “scared and
confused” and with fewer friends, he said. “I was ready to just give up
and not take my final exam and just go and work for my dad,” a real
estate developer, Goyal said. But his mother forced him to sit for the
exam, and to his surprise he not only passed but received good grades.
Despite his achievements, which this year also
included a national award from India for the Empowerment of Persons with
Disabilities, Goyal speaks modestly of himself.
Ashish is the first blind trader to work for a bank and is also the
first-ever blind MBA student at The Wharton School in the United States.
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