Nigerian Voices

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Dede: One of those lessons I learned growing up in Nigeria was no matter how bad things are, it pays to be optimistic. It pays to be motivated to see the good in people, in things, no matter how bad things are. But one of the things I try to live by right now is I want to own companies that I’m proud to tell my children, yes, this is what I held. Well, when I have children, I’m proud to tell them, yes, I invested in this type of companies. And I mean, I know that’s quite personal, but it makes me really reflect on certain industries or certain business models or certain types of management teams when we’re picking them. There’s some that we look at, and then I ask myself that question. I’m like, oh, maybe I, I wouldn’t be proud to tell my children or the next generation that, yes, we invested in this company and we gave them our capital to keep growing their businesses.

Aoifinn Devitt: I’m Aoifinn Devitt, and welcome to the 50 Faces Podcast, a podcast committed to revealing the richness and diversity of the world of investment by focusing on its people. And their stories. I’m joined today by Dede Ayasan, who’s founder and CEO of Jenga Investment Partners, a firm that invests globally across growth, turnaround, and cyclical equity opportunities. Welcome, Dede. Thanks for joining me today.

Dede: Hi, Yifan. Thanks for having me on the podcast. I’m really delighted to be here.

Aoifinn Devitt: Well, I think we may have come across each other through some mutual friends on LinkedIn, but I’d love to have you talk through your career journey to date, starting right with where you grew up and what you studied.

Dede: Yeah. So I started joining Investment Partners 3 years ago, just when I was finishing university. But before then, I grew up in Nigeria. So my initial experience with investing started when I was 10. My parents introduced me to the world of investing. And you know, back then in Nigeria, you’ll mainly come across investing through the newspapers, and it was right before the sports section. So I’ll look at the newspaper and my dad told me to pick 3 stocks I picked Nestlé Nigeria, 7up, and First Bank Nigeria, and literally 5 years after, 2 of them had doubled and tripled in value, and then one had fallen by half. So that was literally my introduction to finance, and I decided to find out why some did well and why others didn’t do well. And then I learned what— how a cash flow statement worked, why the balance sheet was the same on the left and right side. And in university, I started Jenga Investment Partners, which was an investment club, then was an investment club, now a regulated fund. But the goal then was just to build a track record, but I got really hooked on investing and I decided to take it further into something, an actual regulated fund.

Aoifinn Devitt: Well, that’s really interesting. Well, I have to unpack a little bit of that. So were your parents investors in their own careers? And I’m guessing at age 10, you weren’t discussing stocks with many of your other 10-year-old friends. It was probably pretty unusual back then.

Dede: So my parents weren’t full-time investors. I think what I learned about my dad was that anyone could invest. So he worked in the civil engineering industry, but he used to invest, and that was where he created, I guess, majority of his earnings from, from his investments in the stock market. So it taught me a principle that, you know, if you have the passion, then investing is for you. And I wasn’t discussing— I mean, I was speaking about— my friends were mainly talking about games when I was 10, but it was mainly with my parents, and that was something we bonded about, the stock market.

Aoifinn Devitt: I love that story. And then when it came to studying, where did you go to university and what subject did you study academically?

Dede: I studied at London School of Economics, so I did accounting and finance. And what happened, or how I started Jenga, was we had a project over the summer where we were meant to find out what the— well, the lease liability, which is one of these complex IFRS rules. In the library in the university, there’s like a Bloomberg terminal. They have 4 different Bloomberg terminals, but no one in the university ever uses them. And then one day I decided to just walk up and open one of them up and I played around on the Bloomberg terminal and I realized, you know, there was just so much you could learn about finance there. And it went from trying to understand what lease liabilities were to looking up the income statements of Apple and all these companies worldwide. And that was literally where the journey started from, or the serious journey started from.

Aoifinn Devitt: And let’s talk about your experience as a founder because there’s a big jump obviously from an investment club to a regulated investment fund and, I would imagine even though you’ve been investing since you were 10 and you’ve had some success stories, that it takes a bit of convincing when it comes to attracting outside capital. So can you talk us through how that journey has been?

Dede: Yeah, so initially my plan was to do 3 years in consulting and then 3 years in banking and then do 4 years in private equity and then start my own fund. That was my initial plan going into university. But along the way, I mean, the passion just kept growing and the curiosity for stocks kept growing. And at the same time, I met a lot of investors who had built successful firms coming out of university. I mean, one of them was Ken Griffin, who started at the age of 19 at Citadel. And for me, I mean, all those stories were quite inspiring, and I just tried to learn what they did and what they didn’t do so I didn’t repeat mistakes they made or do mistakes they didn’t make. And that was where it started from. And along the process, I met our current CEO and CCO along the journey. So I loved investing, but I really didn’t know anything in the operational side, and they introduced me into the operational side of launching a fund, you know, legal side, what you need to do in insurance, and we just worked together over the period. Luckily, we had a family office who wanted to support us very early on, so that gave me a bit of insurance— assurance rather. And that was where we started the journey. And then earlier this year, we applied for the FCA license, which was a very— well, was a hectic process, but it was quite rewarding because I got to really test out the business plan, and reflect on why exactly I was starting Jenga and the purpose behind Jenga. And yeah, that’s where we are today. So we’re currently a team of 3 people and looking forward to the future years growing Jenga.

Aoifinn Devitt: That’s fascinating, and I’d love to hear what your purpose is and your niche, how you approach equity investing, what you think is your edge, maybe any preferred sectors, how you construct the portfolio, etc.

Dede: Yeah, so in terms of the purpose of Jenga, so I know In the US, there’s a popular game called Jenga, and when people think about the name Jenga Investment Partners, that’s what comes to their mind first. But Jenga actually means build in Swahili, and Swahili is the most spoken traditional language in Africa. And for me, it means two things. Of course it means build. And when I started Jenga, I was really asking myself, what exactly am I trying to do? And for me, it was build the capital and the wealth of people who invest in it. And I said, why don’t I just call it build another language? And, you know, the name Jenga came from there. By At the same time, Jenga is something that’s globally known, even though it’s come from, you know, the Swahili region in Kenya, and it’s globally known. And it kind of also reflects our strategy and what our journey is all about. Because I come from Nigeria, and there aren’t that many global investors worldwide known from Nigeria. But then here we are trying to pursue a journey in investing. And for me, I have that same reflection, trying to achieve something at a global scale, even though you’re from a smaller country. But going more into the investment strategy, so at Jenga, what we do is global equities. So we manage a global equities portfolio of concentrated companies, and we look for about 15 to 25 companies. And we’re looking for two things. So one, we’re looking for pretty much good businesses that are undervalued prices. And the other thing we’re looking for are companies that are transitioning from bad to good. And when we say good, that’s really four things. So one, good business economics, so they’re profitable, growing earnings. Second, we’re We’re looking for competitive advantages, which could be switching costs, network effects. There’s so many of them. And third, we’re looking for good management teams, people that we think can grow shareholder value over the long term. And the fourth is that they’re undervalued. The edge is more of a tricky part. I think one of the things I realized in investing is that, I mean, well, especially from the great investors is that their edges weren’t just one thing, it was a bunch of many small things that added up, becomes a big thing. So For example, I think one of our edges is our ability to control our emotions, especially when you think about where the world is and the amount of bad news flowing in. And also the euphoria that happened 2 years ago in the market is our ability to control emotions and think independently. That is one of the edges from the emotional side. Zig and Reynolds are zagging. And then from the behavioral side, or from the technical side, I think it’s, well, I would say it’s our passion. For understanding the world, understanding things, businesses, why people are growing in certain industries, why things are falling, and just having that passion to answer the really big questions and focus on the ideas that are underappreciated, undervalued, and unloved by, I guess, other market participants.

Aoifinn Devitt: And do you think that— let’s— where we are today, we’re towards the end of 2022, we’ve obviously had a volatile year. What excites you most now as you look at different sectors Maybe do you think there’s an area that’s underappreciated, overlooked?

Dede: So one of the things about my journey is I started investing in Nigeria, and I know the macro backdrop is quite tough, especially in the Western world right now. It’s unusual. But when growing up in Nigeria, interest rates averaged between 12 and 20%. Inflation averaged between 15 and 20% over the last decade since I started investing. And when I initially started investing in 2010, the market was then at 54,000. Now is around 47,000. So in the last 12 years, it literally dropped 20%. By the same time, there were quite a few companies that were able to grow threefold, fourfold, quintuple over that period. And I think that’s one of the most amazing things about investing in equities, is that no matter how bad or how severe the macro backdrop is, there’s always going to be some company out there. It might take you a very long time to find, but there’s always some company out there that’s— I wouldn’t use the term benefiting from the environment, but they’re building more advantages during that period. So right now, in terms of what we’re looking at, we found quite a few exciting things. I’ll try not— I wouldn’t name any specific companies, but in Asia, for example, I think what has happened is we’ve seen a tremendous amount of income growth and consumption growth and economic output growth. And you have lots of companies that are just benefiting from that. I mean, India, for example, announced they grew 6.3%. They said it’s slow to 6.3%, and if you’re in Europe, I mean, that’s amazing to be growing at 6%. So there of interesting companies benefiting from all that growth, not just in Asia but also in the UK. And if you look at Europe, I mean, there’s a bunch of French luxury brands, for example, that have diversified well, where they generate 40% of their revenue from Asia, and they’re just tapping into that growth in income spending. So that’s one exciting place. Another exciting area for us right now is what we call, I guess, indirect opportunities. An example is we have companies in, well, Poland, for example, where right now the economic growth rate or the economic outlook in Poland isn’t great, but these companies make their revenues in foreign currency like US dollars. So for example, video gaming companies, they have most of their players and users in the US, and the macro backdrop in Poland gets priced into their share price. But when you think about the fundamentals, they’re actually generating revenue from foreign. So that’s quite inconsistent with fundamentals. And for us as a long-term investor, that’s quite exciting for us. So we look at those type of areas, um, those indirect opportunities.

Aoifinn Devitt: Very interesting. And when it comes to investors’ perception, maybe not just of your fund in terms of its size, but just in terms of some of the areas and regions you invest in, do you think investors have the right picture of the risk involved?

Dede: I think risk in finance is very complex. So I mean, you have, well, I think one of the school of thoughts is that we can boil down risk to a certain number and then I give you the number and you can judge by how risky the fund is. I think it’s very, very complex and there’s a lot of hidden risk when you look at certain things. So for example, I mean, I was talking about China earlier and if you looked at some educational companies, they didn’t look risky when you looked at like the volatility or the beta,, but then you have a new policy where they want to reduce the price of tuition in China, and the companies are told to stop making profits and the stocks drop 80%, 90%. That’s hidden risk and that’s embedded risk. And it’s very difficult. I mean, if I could understand all the risk, I would be, you know, I’ll be having triple digit returns. But I mean, that’s the thing about investing. There’s this hidden risk that we just have to keep thinking about and exploring and also communicating with our investors. So one of the things we do at Jenga is that we have a Jenga Briefings where we write monthly on articles. We’ve also written a book earlier this year, and we just try to share what we are understanding about, you know, this hidden risk and these hidden opportunities. And we try our best to explain it in a very simple way where any client, whether retail or professional or pension fund, can understand and also have a good grasp of what we’re trying to portray there. So it’s very broad, it’s very difficult. Hopefully we do a good job in identifying those hidden risks.

Aoifinn Devitt: Really interesting. And you mentioned some of the giants of the investment world, like say Ken Griffin, that inspired you to set up on your own at a relatively early stage of your career. Would you say there were any mentors or key people throughout your journey so far that have really made an impression directly?

Dede: Oh, there’s so many of them. I mean, when I started Jenga, I had made a list of like 50 different mentors and they were all like— I mean, these weren’t people that I was necessarily speaking to. I call them e-mentors, just watching their YouTube videos and see how they do things. Not just in investing, but also in business and just watching them, you know, how they do things. And that was literally how I learned how to invest and I guess run a company. In terms of people or mentors who have had a significant impact on my life right now, I mean, first my parents, they’ve taught me how to be a good person, love your surrounding, love people. And I think these are very important lessons being a founder. Learning how to inspire people and learn from your colleagues and teammates. That’s been very important for me. So they’ve had a significant impact on my life. There’s also the legends like Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, and also one of the executives you interviewed a while back, Angela Miller-Mays. She’s been quite inspiring in terms of what she’s done in, well, the pension world industry and diversity. But I think right now, in terms of who I guess, which of these mentors are really inspiring me today, There are two of them. One is Allan Gray and another one is Lawrence Sloot. So Allan Gray, he was a South African investor who built two wonderful investment companies. One was called Allan Gray. They compounded in the early 20s percent over 40, 50 years, and I think they’re the largest private investment manager in Africa. And the other fund he built was Orbis, and they were the best single best global fund in the ’90s. I mean, his track record was amazing, but I think what really inspires me about his story was that he came from a very unconventional background as an investor. I mean, he grew up in South Africa. He traveled to the US to learn the world of finance in Fidelity. And I mean, back then, this was in the 1950s and ’60s. I can imagine just going to a different environment or a different background being so daunting, but he succeeded in it and not just succeeded, but he gave back. I mean, if you look at the writings of Gray and Alan and the lessons he instilled in his team even after he died 3 years ago. It’s just been wonderful learning about his story. And the other person who inspires me, well, she’s the number one person in terms of inspiring me right now, Laura Sloat. She grew up blind. So she was blind, I think by the age of 6, 5, 6, very early in her life. She was a woman in the 1960s and she studied history. So a very non-traditional background. Very unconventional, very different from what you expected. And she struggled to find a job. No one really took a chance on her in the ’60s. And if you think about how Wall Street was then, you can imagine how chaotic and cutthroat it was. And no one took a chance on her. And she started her fund, I think in the early ’70s, in 1973. And she had an enviable track record compounding 15% plus per year over the last, I mean, over the 30-plus period she invested for. And what I really learned from her, what I try to instill in myself today, is being able to turn weaknesses into strengths. So for example, well, perceived weaknesses. So for example, I mean, people would interview her and they’ll be like, no, she’s blind, she’s not someone that we should hire. And she always said this thing during her interviews that her blindness was never an obstacle and she just turned it into a strength. So for example, it allowed her to let go of the distractions that people see and allowed her to just focus her listening on investing. So she’ll wake up very early in the morning, 3:00 AM, and listen to several news in the morning playing at the same time. I think it was about 320 words per minute, and she’ll just focus on investing and build a great track record. And for me, I mean, that’s just been inspiring. I don’t think it gets any more inspiring than her, and it’s just something I try to instill in myself. And today, I mean, I complain about certain things, you know, when you get rejected,. And what I try to do is I try to go back to her story, and then once I read it, I just shut up and I just keep going with the battles that I’m facing. And it’s, it’s very motivating for me having those two people, learned about them in a very early stage of my career.

Aoifinn Devitt: That’s so interesting. I’ve never heard of either of them, but really inspiring stories, and thank you for sharing them here. How do you think being from Nigeria has influenced you? I think I’ve done a whole series focused on Nigerian voices. I’ve been very inspired by the energy, the resilience and just the speed at which some new businesses have been founded. And I suppose the really that, that sense of optimism. How do you think that bears on your work now in the global financial scene?

Dede: Yeah, I think Nigeria and certain emerging markets, I mean, especially areas where inflation is very high, Turkey is one of them. Well, Brazil was one of them as well. I think those nations really, they teach you very important lessons very early on. I think one of those lessons I learned growing up in Nigeria was no matter how no matter how bad things are, it pays to be optimistic. It pays to be motivated to see the good in people, in things, no matter how bad things are. And I mean, I was talking earlier about how Nigeria’s inflation was so high, but yet there were still opportunities in the public markets. And that’s really shaped my investment philosophy today. When people complain about interest rates going up from 0% to 5% and it’s like all doom and gloom, I mean, even though yes, we try to understand the facts, but at the same time we try to see the positives in things. And I mean, That was one of the things I learned about growing from Nigeria. And also I think Nigeria, even though the main language is English, it’s just so diverse culturally, lots of languages, lots of different cultures. And that’s just taught me, I think it’s taught me more about building a business and it’s taught me about diversity in general, that there’s just so much out there, so much to learn about people, so much to appreciate about different things. And it’s something I just try to remind myself about every day. Wherever I go.

Aoifinn Devitt: Really interesting. Would you say there’s any creed or motto that you live by that you let guide you? I know you’ve already touched on quite a few. Anything in particular?

Dede: Oh, my mottos change every day. But I’ll say right now, well, my current, I guess, motto right now is just reminding myself that life’s bigger than me. And I should appreciate the things around me. And it’s very important that well, especially building a company, that the journey we make is we put more things into life than we take. And I think that’s not just in entrepreneurship but just in life in general. And it reminds me every day that I should put back more than I take. So for example, in Jenga, one thing that I’ve been doing is that, well, we’ve been trying to mentor young people in investing. And even though they don’t work for Jenga, but just giving them an opportunity to like hear about what we are doing in investing— not investment advice, but just sitting and this is what we’re doing, this is how we’re looking at things, this is what we’re thinking. Many people don’t have that opportunity, and I would have loved to have the opportunity when I was growing up. And it’s just something I try to do 2 hours every week and speak to 5, 6 different people in university. It’s a motto I found to be quite rewarding, and I found it— and I would also encourage other managers to also live by it as well. But I mean, yeah, that’s, that’s the motto I’m currently living by.

Aoifinn Devitt: It’s really interesting. I like that kind of idea of office hours, you know, 2 hours a week. It’s great. My last question is around this concept you mentioned about life being bigger than you, because you starting out a business now, you have a chance to maybe set the standard in terms of what you look at when it comes to a company. And some of those factors, this bigger than us factors right now are around the environment, sustainability, whether it’s aligning with our investors’ net zero targets, or just ensuring that a portfolio is sustainable. How do you approach that with your stock picking?

Dede: I found the topic of sustainability to be very difficult to come to a conclusion in terms of what we do. So I know right now a lot of funds screen out certain companies and they try to use metrics by publishers to guide the sustainability, but I found it to be very, very complex. I mean, for example, you have EV companies that have lower ratings than companies in the oil and gas sector, and it might be due to governance. And if I put that in a portfolio, what comes out is that— let’s say I have these certain EV companies on my portfolio— it comes out that I’m running a less sustainable portfolio than someone who’s investing in oil and gas. And when you think about it from a practical view, so in terms of the transition and what the impact the EV players are having in how we do transportation. It’s bigger than just what they’re emitting or their governance. So I found it very difficult to boil it down into just numbers, and it’s something I’m still thinking about. How exactly do we do it? Because if we’re going to do it, we have to do it very well. But one of the things I try to live by right now is I want to own companies that I’m proud to tell my children, yes, this is what I held. Well, when I have children, I’m proud to tell them, yes, I invested in this type of companies. And I mean, I know that’s quite personal, but it makes me really reflect on certain industries or certain business models or certain types of management teams when we’re picking them. There’s some that we look at and then I ask myself that question. I’m like, oh, maybe I, I wouldn’t be proud to tell my children or the next generation that yes, we invested in this company and we gave them our capital to keep growing their businesses. But I think hopefully in the next few months we arrive at a, I guess, a more practical scope in terms of how we, I guess, run sustainable portfolios for clients. I mean, it’s something I think about a lot, but I found it to be very tough to do just numbers.

Aoifinn Devitt: Well, now thanks for being honest. It is a complex issue and I think we’re still figuring out how to approach it. So there’s a nice opportunity at the beginning of a fund to maybe address it from the outset, but unfortunately no more clarity there than otherwise. Well, thank you so much, Dede. I’ve really enjoyed this discussion. You, maybe you’ve been told this before, are definitely a natural storyteller. And the way you, you told us the stories of those inspiring investors has really, it piqued my interest in them. And your optimism and energy is really shining through, and I can’t wait to see what the future holds for you and for Jenga. So thanks for coming here and sharing what you’re building with us.

Dede: No, thank you so much for having me. Looking forward to also listening to the other podcasts you do. Last thing for me, I would encourage anyone who sees this to, I guess, listen to the other podcasts because there’s so many amazing people on here. And I mean, thanks for sharing, you know, the diversity in finance. It’s really glad to see.

Aoifinn Devitt: Well, when an endorsement comes from someone of your generation, that’s the best kind of endorsement. So thank you. I’m Aoifinn Devitt. Thank you for listening to the 50 Faces podcast. If you liked what you heard and would like to tune in to hear more inspiring investors and their personal journeys, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice, and all views are personal and should not be attributed to the organizations and affiliations of the host or any guest.

Aoifinn Devitt: This series was made possible by the kind support of Main Street Partners, a London-based independent and dedicated sustainable investment advisor that provides ESG multi-asset and multi-manager portfolios and a range of holistic portfolio analytics tools, including sustainability ratings and bespoke sustainability intelligence. It was also supported by Carbonado Partners, an industry expert in capital raising for all asset classes that endeavors to provide thoughtful solutions that address emerging managers’ perspectives and challenges. Our next guest enjoyed a successful career in international finance before taking on a challenge of an entirely different dimension, a role as CEO of the Nigerian Sovereign Wealth Authority. Let’s hear the unique opportunities and possibilities that the role presents in terms of Nigerian infrastructure, technology, and incorporation of ESG considerations at the outset. I’m Aoifinn Devitt, and welcome to the 50 Faces Podcast, a podcast committed to revealing the richness and diversity of the world of investment by focusing on its people and their stories. I’m joined today by Uche Orji, who is CEO of the Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority based in Abuja. A native of Nigeria, he’s had over 20 years’ experience in various financial roles, including semiconductor analyst in Europe and the US before returning to Nigeria just over 8 years ago. He also holds a number of board roles. Welcome Uche, thank you for joining me today.

Uche Orji: Thank you for having me, Afshin. Pleasure to be here.

Aoifinn Devitt: Could you start by talking us through your journey into the finance world, starting with your background?

Uche Orji: My journey was a relatively interesting one, at least from my perspective. I had studied chemical engineering in my undergraduate days at a university in Nigeria called the University of Port Harcourt. And whilst I was there, between my uncle, who was my mentor, as well as my professor, I was encouraged to try my hand in financial area like accounting, just for the skills. And interestingly, after I graduated and did my national service, I took a job with Arthur Andersen, which has now been acquired by KPMG, and started to train as an auditor just to acquire the accounting skills. And then from there, I was hired by one of my clients who was starting a commercial bank, a bank called Diamond Bank in Nigeria. And from Diamond Bank, I went on to business school at Harvard Business School, and that was really the beginning of my journey into finance. From Harvard Business School, I then went on to Goldman Sachs Asset Management in London, where I joined the team that was charged with managing a global technology fund as well as a pan-European equity fund. And I was also both the chemicals analyst on the buy side as well as the technology semiconductor analyst on the buy side for Goldman Sachs. That went very well because luckily for me, that was also at the beginning of the bull market of 1998 that peaked in 2000. And I rode that bull market. It was a very good experience starting out. And then in 2001, I left Goldman Sachs Asset Management for JP Morgan. In London as well, as the lead semiconductor analyst for JP Morgan. It was a role I held for 6 years, rising from vice president to managing director. And then from there, I went on to UBS in New York, also as a lead semiconductor analyst covering US semiconductors as well as global semiconductors for UBS. And I was there for 6 years also in that role as managing director and global coordinator of semiconductor research. Covering companies such as Intel, AMD, Samsung, Nvidia, Infineon in Europe, ARM Holdings. These were all the companies that I covered. And then I left from there to join the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority, where I responded to a call by a headhunter to turn in my resume, went through the process, and I have been back in Nigeria for 8 years managing the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority. So my journey in finance was a journey that started way back in 1991. When I started my training at Arthur Andersen through a commercial bank. And now this is 2021. So yes, it’s been quite an interesting, long journey as well. And I’ve really enjoyed my experience.

Aoifinn Devitt: I’m really intrigued as to what attracted you to the role of running the Nigerian Sovereign Wealth Authority. You were in a successful role already, maybe living the dream of international finance. Why did you come back to Abuja and take that role?

Uche Orji: Sure. It was very interesting because I had I had two opportunities prior to that to join or help start or help run an organization in Nigeria. We all kind of stayed in touch with ourselves, but I had been in New York, and you’re right, my team when I left Europe was number one in semiconductor. I was the lead— I was number one semiconductor analyst in Europe. When I was in the United States, I’d risen to number three in the United States, and my team was highly regarded, highly rated by institutional investors. It was a good life, and it was intense. I enjoyed my work. But then I had turned down two opportunities to come back to Nigeria to work for various entities. The third one that came up was the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority. And for me, before I took any role, obviously I had to go through what was a very simple three-point test. You know, can I do it? Should I do it? And can it be done? And for me, in this case, it was very simple. Can I do it? Yes, I’d been a portfolio manager prior to that. I enjoyed actually looking at the markets. I enjoyed investing. And I think Vestas thought I was a good analyst. Should I do it? It was a very complicated question because I had a young family at the time. My youngest then was 5 years old and they were all in school in New York. So the idea of moving to Nigeria was a bit of a challenge, something I had to talk through with my wife. It was a hard decision to make. And can it be done? Yes. And for me, the real test was this. Look, Nigeria always had this reputation for things not being done optimally. And I thought to myself, here is an opportunity to go and do something that you can do well. And if you don’t go back to do it now, give up whatever you think you’re going to give up being in New York, you will abdicate every right to complain if somebody else took that job and didn’t do a good job. And that for me was the clincher for me was go do it. At worst of it, you know, you will try your hand and if it doesn’t work, yeah, I can always go back to Europe or America. But my view was go there and do something and that way you can also prove that it can be done. It was a very intense process, by the way, because it was a process run by a headhunter. I was interviewed. It took a long time before they made a decision, took about 6 months between the interview and finally being made an offer. And so yes, I moved back. And so that was why I made the decision.

Aoifinn Devitt: And I’m really fascinated by what is at the forefront of your mind in a role like that today. And maybe you can speak about both in light of the current market conditions, but also how you’re investing and in particular how you’re investing in African private equity and venture capital funds and other sectors?

Uche Orji: So let’s sit back and look at the funds that we run. We run actually 3 funds. We run a stabilization fund. This fund holds 20% of our assets, and the fund invests in investment-grade fixed income instruments. You really don’t take too much risk in that fund because it’s a fund that you need to make available to the government in times of economic stress. So that’s a low risk, heavy on fixed income, investment-grade fixed income. Treasuries type portfolio. The second fund we run is what is described as the Future Generations Fund, and this is an income fund or a savings fund. And here we take some risk. We invest in private equity, we invest in public equities, we invest in other alternatives, we invest in hedge funds, we invest in all sorts of asset classes. Highly diversified fund, mostly invested internationally, some invested locally. And then there’s a Nigeria Infrastructure Fund, which is the third fund that we run, and this fund is invested in domestic infrastructure opportunities in Nigeria. So those are the three funds that we run. And our assets are held 20% in the Stabilization Fund, 40% in the Future Generations Fund, and 40% in the Nigeria Infrastructure Fund. Recently, we have reallocated any fresh assets being given to us by government to go 20% in stabilization, 30% in future generations, and 50% in infrastructure. This is the recognition of the opportunities that we see in domestic infrastructure investing in Nigeria. Now regarding general markets, you know, we have a few organizing principles about how we see the market this year. Number 1, we are a little bit more cautious this year with risky assets than we were last year. Last year we were quite bullish, especially when we thought we had seen the bottom in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, so we went a little bit more aggressive with technology companies, we went a bit aggressive with equities in general. This time around we believe that with The threat of inflation, the rising yields, we’re going to be a bit more cautious with bonds, a bit more cautious with highly valued tech companies. Some of these companies are so richly valued that it’s really— you have little room for error. And in a rising interest rate environment, we believe that these companies might be a bit more vulnerable. So we’re trimming our technology bets. We are looking more to industrial cyclicals, consumer non-discretionary— so consumer discretionary sectors such as airlines or hotels. We believe that As we start to see the end in sight with the COVID pandemic, people are going to get more interested in spending, and so some of these sectors will benefit. So overall, I think it will be a slightly challenging year for equity investors. Not that it’s going to be negative, but it’s not going to be like last year. But it’s now about picking the right sectors and picking the right stocks. So this is how we’re positioning ourselves with regards to equities. We’re also a little concerned about emerging markets. Again, this is also one of the sectors that tend to be very vulnerable in a rising interest rate environment. So all in all, we are still allocated to the equity market, but we are looking at changing some of the sector allocations slightly away from tech and more into the consumer discretionary sectors, or into the broader markets, industrial cyclical sectors as well. These are areas we’re looking to be exposed to. So that’s how we see the market, and this is a reflection of valuation, is reflected, reflection of the fact that we believe that interest rate environment will make it look more challenging for sectors such as tech. As we look into Nigeria, you asked me about private equity and venture capital. We are now in the last 2 years, we started allocating to venture capital sector in aggregate, but also in Nigeria. And it’s been very fascinating. You may have been seeing what’s going on with some of the new venture companies in Nigeria, particularly in tech. But the reason why we are looking at some of these is we have an opportunity to get in very early. Pre any sort of listing in the market for some of these companies. And we believe that this is one area that is emerging as an area where Nigeria can build competitive advantage. And so we’re investing in the infrastructure necessary for technology. We’re also investing in venture capital. We’re looking at making direct investments in some of the technology companies that we see coming up in Nigeria. And this is not for today. This is investments you’re making for the next 4 or 5 years, particularly because of the growth element of this sectors in Nigeria. Of course, my valuation story for public equities, especially in tech, remains intact, but here you’re looking at venture because of the competitive edge we see and the opportunities we see in Nigeria for venture capital, as well as areas such as technology locally.

Aoifinn Devitt: And I’d love to ask also about investing outside Nigeria but within Africa. Do you see a lot of opportunities in other, say, African private equity opportunities, maybe other themes of growth? There in maybe in that future generations fund?

Uche Orji: Correct, we do actually, we do. And one of the things we are working on lately is partnering with other African sovereign wealth funds and looking at cross-country investments. The opportunities we see are driven by a number of factors. The first is the advent of the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement, which actually starts to open up many other African countries. The second opportunity we see is what we believe is a low-hanging fruit. The intra-Africa trade at the moment stands at 17%, whereas intra-European trade is about 67%. And so we see an opportunity there. And one of the things you’ve seen us do is actually make direct collaborative investments. So 2 weeks ago, we signed an agreement with the OCP of Morocco to develop a basic chemical factory in Nigeria, and this is a factory that will produce ammonia and produce diammonium phosphate. Morocco, as you know, is the biggest exporter of phosphate in the world, and Nigeria has the biggest natural gas reserves in Africa. We believe that combining those two, we can actually use Nigeria’s natural gas reserves to make ammonia to export to Morocco, and then Morocco sends us phosphate rock, which is used as fertilizer in Nigeria, which again we mix with ammonia to produce a product that Nigerian farmers need. Now this type of cross-Africa direct investments is going to be very interesting in the future. Look for that to happen not just in industrials, look for that to happen in technology as well. Because I have explored the idea of building an Africa cloud system. Why not? In technology, especially if you look across certain countries, South Africa, Nigeria, Morocco, we’re building several, you know, megawatts of data center capacity and you have cables running around Africa at the moment by Google that is giving us higher capacity internet access. So these are things that are creating significant opportunities. So I believe that you’re going to see a lot of cross-country co-investments between certain countries in Africa. I look forward to Nigeria, South Africa collaborating on industrialization. There is that opportunity. Secondly, the equity market opportunity across Africa is looking more and more interesting, although the markets are not as deep yet, but we see more in private equity. So I will look forward to collaborations between Nigeria, Egypt, Morocco, Kenya, South Africa, Gabon, Ghana. These are countries that we have worked with in the past. And so more and more of this is what you’ll expect to see happen, especially as each of these African countries are beginning to create their own sovereign wealth funds. At least it gives you an investment entity with whom you can actually discuss on a purely commercial basis. Thirdly, and this is probably my last point that I think is compelling for me, it is this: in Africa, There’s a huge amount said about the human resources. There’s a huge amount said about the young age of African countries, but the real underlying story is how much of that is reflecting in technology. I’m looking at Africa that becomes the next home of business process outsourcing. We’re seeing a lot of that, a lot of programmers out of Nigeria, out of Egypt, out of Kenya who are competing on an international stage. So we expect to invest a lot in our youth across the continent. Especially as we see them take advantage of the tech revolution that is happening in Africa as a real area of interest. We have many companies today who are set up in Nigeria who are writing programs for Silicon Valley companies. We want to encourage that, and I believe that could be a trend across all of Africa.

Aoifinn Devitt: And just two other points I want to ask about on that front. One is the external capital from outside Africa coming in. How do you see that in terms of that level of interest, level of appetite? And secondly, ESG, it seems that given that so many of these industries are really at their initial stages, there is an opportunity to incorporate ESG risks and principles at the initial stage so that when investors start to demand an ESG integrated approach, you will already be there. Could you just comment on those two points?

Uche Orji: Let’s start with the external capital coming into Africa. We, I think, approached it very differently at the beginning, and we made mistakes. And the first mistake we made was to go for external capital co-investments without having actually mobilized our own internal capital to show some real progress. And so we didn’t make a lot of progress getting external capital to co-invest with us. Most of the external investors came in and spotted a few sectors, select sectors. They came in with debt instruments. They didn’t really come in with a lot of equity, and they all come in as portfolio investors who bought Eurobonds. So you never actually saw a lot of direct co-investments in certain areas in Africa, and part of that was because we hadn’t actually shown the way. So one of the things we decided to do at the NSIA was to spend more time mobilizing domestic capital, build out the necessary infrastructure that will make it easy for external capital to come in, mobilize domestic capital, show some traction ourselves, and then external capital will come. And that has been a terrific experience for us because that’s exactly what is playing out. So let me describe this in detail. When I arrived, I realized that we had a lot of voids in the financial services sector. These were things that we take for granted in Europe or in America, but they didn’t really exist. So for investments in infrastructure, we realized that you needed a company that could provide a wrap for infrastructure bonds. Some sort of credit enhancement. It didn’t exist in Nigeria. The only company that played that role was Garantco out of the UK, and their capital allocation was very small. So what did we do? We partnered with Garantco and created a company called InfraCredit. InfraCredit’s role is now to provide credit wraps around infrastructure bond investments. And once we did that, we unlocked a significant potential for domestic pension funds who had hitherto had a lot of their cash in low-yielding government bonds. They were now able to start investing in infrastructure, again, mobilizing domestic capital. We realized that there was gaps in efficient credit allocation for small businesses. We couldn’t lend directly to them, so what did we do? We partnered with some agencies and created Development Bank of Nigeria. We also realized that there was an issue with housing, and the issue with housing was there was no mortgage refinancing company. Again, the NSIA working with partners created the Nigeria Mortgage Refinancing Company. We went, we created so many things, so many companies. I mean, about 6 different entities we have played a role in creating or initiated that we believe are now making, creating the right environment for capital to come in from externally and also from internally. The first thing I observed that I found really fascinating was that there was a lot of capital in country that had not been rightly mobilized, rightly channeled. So we’re now working towards creating some of that level of capital. And the moment we started to do that, to some extent with some success, we are now starting to see interest from outside to invest equity alongside us. And one of them is, for example, what I have done in healthcare. The NSIA invested in healthcare to some extent successfully in the last 2 years, and then suddenly I’m getting requests from international funds to create a healthcare fund with the NSIA to invest in healthcare assets. So these are encouraging signs, but the real lesson here is this: First, you must do something for it by yourself, show some track record. Secondly, you must work to mobilize domestic capital. And then once you do that and show some success and track record of investing directly by yourself, people will come. The same happened in agriculture. We tried to raise a fund for agriculture finance with limited success. Then we invested directly ourselves with some partner, and then it’s a Dutch-based partner. We invested together. Now we have interest in people that want to create a fund and invest alongside us. So there is interest. For capital to come into Africa. But I think to a large extent, what African countries need to do, and particularly Nigeria, what we’ve done successfully to some extent at the NSIE, is to try and show some track record ourselves, create the right environment, make some investments by ourselves actually, and then domestic international investments are coming in. So right now I’m creating a fund for agriculture that’s had a lot of interest. We are programmed for co-investment with Morocco on basic chemicals of ammonia and stuff like that. The equity is already oversubscribed. We are doing some stuff also in healthcare, like I mentioned. So seeing funds wanting now to partner with us, and that has been really, really exciting for me. Now let’s speak about ESG. I’m not one for a lot of acronyms because I think it is easier to describe it to people in a manner that makes sense. We incorporate ESG principles in the way we invest. And, you know, environmental issues for me are very, very important. Sustainability and the right level of governance. So let me start from the bottom of governance. For us, governance is very important. It’s everything for from the way the management is appointed. It has to be done transparently and competently. Two, you have to have the right board, the right board committees, the right competent people on the board. You have to be transparent, you have to be accountable. These are all things for us that are very important, and I think in many places you can check that box very easily. And at the NSIA, which is the organization I lead, we make sure that we rank very highly on governance, very highly. International Sovereign Wealth Fund Association ranks us in the top quartile for governance, transparency, and accountability. In terms of environmental factors, for us it’s very important, but I think when you come to Africa, you need to define environmental factors in a bit more specific manner. So I’ll give an example. Deforestation for me has been the biggest devastating impact on the environment that I have seen in Nigeria, and it is quite sad actually when you realize that these trees are cut and exported to countries that profess to stop deforestation. And that for me is a little bit challenging, honestly. So we must work not just as Africans to deal with all these environmental factors, but companies working in our environment need to also adhere to the same standards as that they’re in their home countries. If you’re an oil company, it is not okay to spill oil and not clean it. You will not do that in Europe. You will not do that in America. But for us, more importantly, specifically for the NSIA, we are addressing it through 3 ways. The first is the use of waste gas. Nigeria flares about 2.4 billion standard cubic feet of gas every day. We believe that this could be turned into productive use. So for example, the ammonia plant we’re building is going to use some of this waste gas. We’re working on a project to turn waste gas to LPG, and this has a very interesting interconnected effect in Africa. Where do we have deforestation? Beyond the fact that some of the trees are exported, it is also because people use the trees to cook. They cook, use firewood. Now, how can you have firewood in a country as a way of means of cooking in a country that flares gas? The reason is because we have not been able to find a way to cost-effectively deliver cooking gas to people so it stops them from deforesting. And so one of the things we’re working on at the moment is to see a way to use some of the flare gas, turn it into LPG, send low-cost LPG cylinders to the rural areas so that people can stop cutting down trees to use that for cooking. I think this is something that is really, really quite exciting for me. And then the final thing that we’re looking at environmental area is we’re investing in land degradation neutrality. What does that mean? We are taking plots of land, vast plots of land, several thousands of hectares of land in various parts of the country that have been deforested and turning them into productive use. So we will not be looking to invest in palm trees if you’re going to have to cut down fresh trees. But if you’re going to turn one of these deforested places into a palm plantation, why the hell not? We’ll invest, right? So it’s all about these things, how we look at environmental factors and sustainability factors. So when I speak about this in international fora, people look at gas in a funny way. The reality is for us, gas is intricately tied into environmental issues for us and intricately tied into sustainability factors for us. We are involved in solar. We’re building the single biggest solar plant in Nigeria at the NSIA. Small by international standards, but is the single biggest one in Nigeria. We’re building it, and hopefully we can use that as a platform to roll out solar across the rest of the country. So these factors are very important for us. And then finally, we will not make any investment that does not pass the Equator Principles of the IFC. Those principles are principles that check a lot of the ESG boxes. So for us, it is really intricate in the way we invest. And it’s actually quite interestingly for us, one of the key areas that we are looking to champion because the survival of several parts of Nigeria depends actually on how well we do on some of these ESG factors. For us, it’s not just a nice to have, it is actually in some cases a matter of life and death.

Aoifinn Devitt: That’s very interesting. And I think it’s also very interesting that you’re looking at, I think, accounting for this, being transparent, providing metrics. At the outset, because ultimately it’s easier when you start providing these at the outset because you can see progress. And also that’s what investors are starting to demand. Very encouraging to hear what you’re doing in that arena. Just want to step back to your personal career a little bit here. One of the themes of this podcast series is diversity in the world of finance, and you’ve had a very successful career outside Nigeria, in the UK and the US. You have been promoted quickly through the ranks and reached a very senior position. During that journey, did you experience any discrimination or any setbacks, maybe what you might term today microaggressions?

Uche Orji: Sincerely, hard to say. And I say that only because I think the— and I’m going to be very careful with my words here. It may have happened and I didn’t really pay attention to it, but I don’t think so. Let me start with the firms where I worked. I didn’t notice it at Harvard Business School. I didn’t notice it at Goldman Sachs Asset Management. At all. In fact, if anything, I think I was fairly promoted quickly, as you may call it. But also note the fact that the fund that I was part of was perhaps the best performing fund in the Goldman Sachs stable back then. I could be wrong, but it’s hard to say. But I also think I acquitted myself well as an analyst, so I didn’t really notice it. Across most of Europe because being an analyst at JPMorgan, I traveled everywhere, right? Within my first full year as an analyst, I was ranked number 1 by Thomson-Reuters poll of investors, and the next year the Institutional Investor ranked me number 1. And so to be ranked number 1 across Europe, which meant on average you were top 3 across almost every country from Sweden to Norway to Germany to France to the UK to Spain, for me, perhaps reflected the fact that I did my job well. But on a social level, I never really experienced it in Europe, not at all. In the United States, I spent time between New York, San Francisco a lot because of the technology companies that I covered. Texas, yes. Chicago and all the— I don’t think I noticed it, not at work, not at work. And if anything, I had— so I may have been very lucky, I may have had a very privileged career, but that was my experience. I’m aware that these issues exist, but I cannot speak to any personal experience of it at all. If anything, I had a terrific experience across all the firms that I worked in— Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, UBS. And so yes, and I think also maybe because I was in a slightly exclusive sector, technology is really a little bit— semiconductors in particular, I like to think it’s a little bit challenging, but I don’t know that that had any effect, to be honest. I couldn’t really explain it. So I hear about it, I know it exists, but I never had any experience myself at all. I had highly supportive bosses, highly supportive colleagues, and I was treated like an equal, and I enjoyed being there. I believe I sat at the table because I earned my place there as well.

Aoifinn Devitt: So yeah, I think actually your experience is probably one that most professionals would share. The issue may be just that there simply isn’t enough diversity in finance, that there simply isn’t enough examples of people from bringing different perspectives, um, to it. I don’t know whether you are hopeful for maybe the levels of diversity improving over the next, say, 10 years.

Uche Orji: I hope so. I hope so. But I also think that, and again, I have to be very careful with my words, and that’s just to say that this was in the ’90s when I started my career in the City of London, and the level of sensitivity to these factors were not as high as they are today, but not to say it didn’t exist then. I was always pleased to see diversity— women, ethnic minorities, Africans— and there were opportunities given to loads of us. I actually remember when I was at Goldman, I was actually part of the recruitment team, and I also did work in a committee at Goldman back in 1999, uh, 2000, with a role to force and drive diversity. And I remember being in that committee along with big Blod, who was then the head of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, who’s now the senior partner at Generation Investment Management, and Lloyd Blankfein, who was the past CEO of Goldman Sachs. So there was a committee set up back in ’99, 2000, and part of the role of that committee was to see how we can make the place more diverse and more interesting. I have to remember this again because this was almost more than 20 years ago that this effort was being made at Goldman. And of course, JPMorgan, you know, I don’t think anybody really noticed. There’s a lot of effort at JPMorgan to get as many people of minority in the group. And coming to JPMorgan, women had very senior positions and ethnic minority people also had. That was my time. I don’t know what it is like today, but I don’t think it’s changed. And so there could be more. And I think in addressing it, we need to address a number of building blocks. The first building block is training, and the training starts from high school to university, to the right university, to places that suddenly Subject secondly is awareness and mentorship. We need to create a lot of awareness among our people. I grew up in a rural part of Nigeria, and it took an uncle of mine to tell me that growing up here should not stop you from going to Harvard Business School when you finish studying engineering. It was the first time I heard about Harvard University. I was 17 years old when he told me, so look, this is the place to go. Everybody goes there. They this and that. And so that seed was planted in my mind. And growing up in a town called Umuahia in Nigeria, you never heard of it. I don’t think anybody’s heard of it. It’s a really small town. And someone mentored me to start to aspire. So we need to really do that well. And then thirdly, obviously biases exist. They exist. It’s everywhere. I know, but I haven’t experienced it. But I think from everything I’ve heard, it does exist. There must be some level of work done also on the other side to make sure people people are open-minded and accepting because the world is not— there’s no one-size-fits-all formula anymore to development. And so some of these things need to be done. We need to do a lot more work in coaching, mentoring, and among ourselves. And then I think on the other side also, companies need to do more to ensure that they deal with all these unconscious biases that do exist. I know, even though, like I keep saying, I never experienced it myself.

Aoifinn Devitt: That’s very good to hear and some very good pointers there in terms of building blocks Staying on your personal journey, were there some key people, you mentioned your uncle, maybe others like him who influenced you along your way?

Uche Orji: At a Texan village in my case, quite a number of people did of course, but this uncle of mine, Uncle Henry’s his name, and actually two of them, Uncle Michael and Uncle Henry, these were the two men who helped me a lot. I think my first Uncle Henry was one who told me about forging a career in finance, and he was a first-class chemical engineer, and actually I studied chemical engineering because I studied chemical engineering, so he mentored me a lot. And then my other uncle actually introduced me to programming and computing in 1988. And actually, because of that inspiration from Uncle Michael, I ended up writing my research thesis in a subsector of mathematics called nonlinear regression techniques. So I studied chemical engineering, but then I also ended up having to write a lot of programs to model real-life situations in a nonlinear— it’s a part of math called nonlinear regression techniques, actually. So I did a lot of work there for my undergraduate research. So these were very important milestones for me in terms of my career journey. Then along the line, I met a number of really, really inspiring people. First, my first boss, a gentleman called Richard Kramer, who was the head of Andersen back in Nigeria. And then there was Pascal Dozier and Ken Oggi. These were two men. Ken Oggi literally forced me to apply to go to Harvard Business School one day. He’s like, look, young man, you need to— he told me you’re going to apply, and you’ve been here now 3 years at Diamond Bank, you must apply. Apply today. And then Pascal Dozier stood up for me. He made sure I got the funding and backed me all the way through to go to school. And he actually inspired me personally a lot because I worked very closely with him. He gave me the first shot, actually. I was 23 years old, and I was 26 years old when he— I was made acting financial controller. 25, actually, when I was made acting financial controller for Diamond Bank, which was one of the fastest-growing banks in Nigeria in those days. These men were very, very important in my life journey. And then of course, going on to business school and then meeting David Blood at Goldman Sachs Asset Management was also a very important point in my life. And of course, you cannot tell the stories without talking about your parents. My father always is a guy that I’ll come home and say, hey, I had an A. He’s like, what about the guy that had an A*, what’s wrong with you? So there was that push in the family to try and drive you to do better. The only time my father was happy with my result was if I came first in class. You know, if I came second in class, a class of 45 maybe, and I came second, my father is like, not good enough. You know, what about the guy who came first? So that level of drive came from the family, you know. So along the line, many people have inspired my career in terms of driving me to where I am today. And then of course, I was very lucky also to have a very supportive spouse when I got married. And so the rest of the journey was also very important in terms of the support you get from home. In terms of helping you to aspire.

Aoifinn Devitt: It seems like your father and my paternal grandfather must have been two peas in a pod. We would have had exactly the same message. Luckily, because he was my grandfather, it was more my aunts and uncles that got that pressure to be first in the class. In terms of any pieces of advice, words of wisdom, or any creed or motto that you live by, is there anything you can share there?

Uche Orji: I will say a number of things that helped me a lot in my own career journey. This is probably something somebody somewhere may find very inspiring. I left Nigeria in 1996 to go to Harvard Business School. When I left Nigeria, the equity market really didn’t really exist as a market. There was a stock exchange, but it wasn’t really a highly traded stock exchange, so there was no such real concept of a highly liquid equity market. I had never heard of derivatives before then. I’d never heard of various instruments, and 2 years later, I find myself at Goldman Sachs Asset Management and having to deal with some of these instruments. You could never learn enough of them about them in school. And what did I do? I studied. This is one thing they don’t tell you working on Wall Street— you are going to have to do a lot of learning by yourself. So I found myself in the office at weekends studying and working and trying many things, and I actually in that process built my own approach to investing. I remember spending a 2-month period every weekend, Saturday and Sunday, running so many correlations of various data. Back then, the data set that was really available to me was something called DataStream. DataStream was very clunky and difficult, but I was able to pull all sorts of data and then started running correlations across various data sets to see what is really an important lead indicator for equities or for investing in technology. And so along those lines, I developed my own proprietary 10-point process for investing in semiconductors, investing in technology. And I did this by myself. I actually, of course, I read all sorts of materials, but I had to develop my own model. And when I left for the buy-sell side, went to JPMorgan as a sell-side analyst, the first research I published was based on the proprietary model I had developed working on the buy side. And this was several weekends of spending time running various data correlations, and it’s just asking some random questions. What is the correlation between consumer confidence semiconductor index, right? Now today it all seems very sensible, but the truth about it is you also needed to know at what point does it turn, when you have the point of inflection, which is one of these datasets. And I think my personal proprietary model had something in the order of more than 200 different correlations of data leading to different things. And I enjoyed that work. I really enjoyed that work. So the first point here is you need to study, you need to do your own work independently and work a lot, work really hard. The second is what I said earlier, there is just no shortcut to these things. You have to really put in the hours and put in the work and read a lot of stuff. Personally, and that’s one of the things that helps me a lot now in my career, is just being able to draw stories from different random sectors and putting them together. So one of the things I spend a lot of time reading is the history of finance, and I read a lot of materials on history and literature, and I read a lot of random stuff that is normally connected. To the work that I do, because at the end of the day, they all pull together. And the third is, you know, make an effort to acquire different new skills. And I know they all sound the same, but they’re just different variants to it. And I give an example. I thought one day that I needed to really understand how commodity traders worked. So when I was in New York, every weekend I’ll go spend some time with a friend of mine who traded commodities. Show me your Bloomberg screen, what you look at, what makes you decide to buy copper today, what makes you decide to buy What makes you buy gold the next day? What makes you buy silver? Of course, I never thought there was going to be any reason for me to use the knowledge, but I wanted to acquire that knowledge. And so this guy took time and walked me through it 3, 4, 5 weekends, and I began to feel like I acquired that knowledge. And I think for me, the summary of this whole thing is you need to make an effort to acquire new skills. You need to work hard. You need to read diverse materials. But just know that no knowledge is wasted in investing. No knowledge is wasted. You will find it someday useful somewhere. The other thing I’ll probably speak to is when I moved from this buy side to the sell side, everyone said to me, no one does that, why would you do that? You know, people move from the sell side to the buy side, why are you going from the buy side to the sell side? And this is probably where it gets a little bit selfish. I wanted to make a name for myself, right? In the buy side, you’re part of a big team, especially in a firm that doesn’t really push for star analyst. I thought that, you know, I needed to have a name by myself, and the only way was for me to go to the sell side. Well, this was one of the— was not on the top 3 or 4 reasons why I moved to the sell side, but it helped that when I came out to the sell side, I became the brand. I needed to create a name for myself, and I did create a name for myself. So Uche Oji, Semiconductor Analyst, JP Morgan. Uche Semiconductor Oji, Analyst, UBS. Stood out. And I think quite frankly, you must have the courage to do something that stands you out, not something crazy, but something that stands you out. And I think for me being an African on Wall Street and quite frankly in the semiconductor sector, I think in my time I was probably the only one. It helps and I actually turned it to an advantage actually because I was easily recognizable. But beyond that, actually it was the fact that I had to work very hard to make a name for myself. So no knowledge is wasted. Make an effort to learn new skills and then do something to try and send yourself out. I did that at least for myself. It may not necessarily be what everybody else would like to do, but I found it particularly very helpful and very rewarding personally.

Aoifinn Devitt: I completely agree. And also, I think also one thing I try to impress upon my children is there is a particularly incredible feeling of working hard, that really digging deeper and really doing your best and to dig into a topic. And I think that that feeling really, you can’t buy it. It’s really priceless. So I think it’s really important that you reinforce that here. Well, thank you, Uche. This has been a wonderfully rich discussion. I particularly enjoyed you walking us through the opportunities in the Nigerian infrastructure arena, as well as in Africa more generally. You gave us a great deal of richness there. And also I loved your reference back to the village that it took to put you on the course that you have been on and a very successful one at that. So thank you very much for sharing your insights here with us.

Uche Orji: Thank you very much, Aoifinn. Really appreciate the time.

Aoifinn Devitt: I’m Aoifinn Devitt. Thank you for listening to the 50 Faces Podcast. If you liked what you heard and would like to tune in to hear more inspiring investors on their personal journeys, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice, and all views are personal and should not be attributed to to the organizations and affiliations of the host or any guest.

Aoifinn Devitt: Don’t focus on no, focus on earning your yes.

Andrew Osayemi: Let’s hear how our next guest faced his fair share of nos but earned his yes over and over again in both the financial trading and TV production worlds. I’m Aoifinn Devitt, and welcome to the 50 Faces Podcast, a podcast committed to revealing the richness and diversity of the world of investment by focusing on its people and their stories. I’m joined today by Andrew Osayemi, who is a specialist diversity recruiter at Rare Recruitment and the creator of the Netflix TV show Meet the Adebanyos. He started his career as a Citi trader and then took the plunge into starting a TV production company MTA Productions, although as he claims, he did not know anything about TV. He’s the author of the book, How My Disastrous Teenage Love Life Will Get You Your Dream Job. Welcome, Andrew. Thanks for joining me today.

Aoifinn Devitt: Well, thank you for having me. It’s an absolute pleasure.

Andrew Osayemi: I think we have to start by talking about your background, where you grew up and how you came to enter the world of trading in the city. Let’s start there.

Aoifinn Devitt: Yeah, no, I have like very humble, humble beginnings, born and raised in a place in London, Southeast London called Peckham, to Nigerian immigrants. And I say immigrants because, you know, they came to the UK as students and didn’t leave. Set up a whole new life, a whole new world in the UK. It was really tough for them. So didn’t have much growing up, lived in council estates in Peckham while we were really young. But just the vibe, the community, just the opportunities that life gave us, you know, I’m always forever grateful. How I ended up in trading was just through like different things that happened in my life. So like taking you back, I was at like one of the worst probably primary schools in London, and I remember one day my mom gets a phone call and says, Andrew, headmaster says you need to come into the school. And you can imagine like this is like the ’80s or even ’90s, I think late ’80s, early ’90s. And when you get a phone call at home, you know something bad has happened. So I was disciplined before the meeting even happened the next day. So we come into the meeting, we sit down, and the teacher says to my mom that, look, Andrew scored one of the highest marks in a maths competition in the whole of London. And my mom was like, what, are you kidding me? And I was sitting there thinking, wow, I’ve been disciplined for nothing. But it was that day, what the teacher said to my mum was, “Andrew has potential. He just needs to figure out how to make it count.” And I think that was something, and I always give credit to my mum, she held on to that saying that someone saw something in her son, that he had potential. So she got me to apply to different social ability schemes, which eventually helped me to get a full-paid private school scholarship, and that then helped me to go to university, to an amazing university, Warwick University. And that’s how I ended up in trading. So a roundabout way of saying that through seizing on life’s opportunities, I was able to, to get to where I was in trading.

Andrew Osayemi: And when you moved into the city, what impressions did you have at that time of the city, of the level of diversity in it, maybe in the trading sector?

Aoifinn Devitt: Yeah, I, I mean, I’ll be completely honest, I thought it was— I was going into a majority white male world. Let’s call a spade a spade. And this was mainly for a couple of reasons. One, I was lucky enough to get an internship. And again, story of my internship, I had no clue what investment banking was, absolutely no clue. I remember one of my friends telling me that these investment banks at Warwick have the best like food at their Insight events. So we had no clue, but we were hungry, we’re students, so we turn up for these events just to eat the food. Like, lovely spread, as you can imagine, you know, all different types of food, food that as students we weren’t even privileged to have. And I just remember seeing someone on the stage, a white British guy who sounded just like me. So that’s what caught my attention because, you know, I’ve been to many events where people didn’t sound like me. So white guy who sounded like me and he talked about this thing called trading. And what attracted me to it, I mean, despite the fact that I knew and felt that there may not be anyone that looked like me, was he said that, you know, in trading, numbers don’t lie. And that for me was like, okay, whether there’s going to be discrimination or not, like, you’re going to be judged by your numbers. And that was something that was really appealing to me, that you’re going to— you have your chance to create your own success based on the numbers. That you bring in. And that’s how I ended up in the internship and then in trading, picking trading as opposed to anything else.

Andrew Osayemi: And did you encounter any particular obstacles? And what I’m thinking, I know you know Justin Anekesu, who is also a guest on this podcast. He spoke a little bit about code switching, basically just having to speak differently, maybe just consciously make an effort to fit in. Did you encounter any obstacles like that?

Aoifinn Devitt: Yes, at the beginning. At the beginning, and it was to my detriment. I remember it was in my internship, maybe the first week. I sat down, I was so excited, I’ve got this internship. I go to my mom and dad, and obviously they have no clue. They have absolutely no clue what investment banks are like. They don’t know anyone who’s worked at an investment bank. None of their friends work in investment. We have no clue. So they literally just said, look, go in there, don’t say a word, just say yes sir, yes ma’am, and almost be like a mouse. Like, just do all you can just to not bring attention to yourself. So for the first, like, 3 or 4 days of me being in internship, that’s what I did. I went in, you know, I was very, very polite, no expression of who I was. It’s yes sir, yes ma’am, got on with my work. And it was only until one of my line managers pulled me to the side and he said, look, Andrew, I’m gonna be honest with you, you’re not gonna last. On this desk if you don’t talk. And I said— and I was like, what do you mean? Like, I am talking, I’m being polite. He said, no, we need to know who you are, or if not, we’re not going to be able to go forward with you. And that sparked something in me where— and this happens many times through my— throughout my life. I said, what’s the worst that can happen? I said, you know what, I’m going to show the desk who I am. So I started to tell people about the fact that I’m a DJ, I like to play poker, I like to travel, go to clubs, go to raves and parties. And through that experience, people got to be more invested in me. And that was my first lesson of you need to be who you are. And also, I was lucky to find a division in trading where being a little bit rough around the edges was okay. Whereas I think if I’d gone into something a bit more corporate, like asset management or corporate finance, I may have found it more difficult. But being in trading, it was actually encouraged to be who you are. And I think by being who I was, I was able to flourish and get the graduate job.

Andrew Osayemi: That’s a really interesting point, actually. I think we often speak about authenticity and bringing ourselves to work because it benefits us, it liberates us, the individual. But I think the point you’re making, which is really interesting, is that it also very much improves inclusion and very much improves one’s success in an organization when they’re authentic, because it ultimately invites more relationships and more bonding.

Aoifinn Devitt: Yeah, absolutely. And I think there’s like— I remember going to meet my father-in-law and he said, to me, and I was very quiet. Same thing, very quiet. And he says to me, I don’t trust a man who doesn’t speak. I was like, oh, okay, let— I just started to speak. And it’s the same at work sometimes, on both sides, and the people who are majority or the people who are the minority. If people don’t speak to each other, people don’t share their different experiences and feel comfortable doing that, I think the inclusion suffers. So, by me being who I was and being, like, not afraid and being proud of who I was, that really helped.

Andrew Osayemi: So, on that point of authenticity, how do you find— so many people have different accents, say, whether it be from the north of England, south of London, and that may cause them to sound different from other people in the city. Do you think that that is a barrier still?

Aoifinn Devitt: I absolutely do think it’s a barrier. I mean, mostly, It’s an internal barrier for the person. Again, like I said earlier, I was almost struck with fear when I first got into my first internship. Like my mom and dad said, you know, don’t say anything, just say yes, sir, yes, ma’am. And I know I felt comfortable doing that because I was also scared of what my voice would sound like. Everyone sounded different. I had a South London accent. So I was struck with fear. And I think many people I speak to, whether they come from, you know, north of England, it could be come like in America when I was in New York, it could be people who come from the south of America, anywhere where accent is different from the norm. Yeah, you know, you could have, you know, an international accent. He— you’re struggling with it internally. It affects you when you maybe want to do public speaking at meetings, when you want to stand up, maybe when you want to go for leadership positions. Everything in your brain is telling you, people are judging me, um, people are laughing at me, uh, people don’t think I belong. So that internal battle is what a lot of people struggle with. And I think this is why it’s important for firms, especially when they’re going, they’re doing recruiting at different universities or trying to encourage to have different, um, types of speakers on panels, you know. I mean, it could be that it’s one thing if everyone looks the same, but then if everyone sounds the same, like, you’re really, really eliminating people or, or making it difficult for people to feel like they belong just because people come from different backgrounds. And I think I’ve spoken to people who have gone to accent coaches trying to either enhance a particular accent or to kind of like, you know, decrease the tonality of an accent. You know, even— I’ve I even looked at that. I looked at that once. I remember I went to one acting— to one coach, accent coach, and, you know, I did a session and he just said, look, Andrew, just focus on being authentically you in a professional way. I said, okay, what does that mean? He said, just focus, you know, you know, pronounce your T’s and your I’s and your ing’s, and, and that’s it, because you’re overthinking it and that’s holding you back. So yeah, so absolutely, I think it does hold people back. I think there needs to be more diversity of voices or accents, and people need to encourage, um, people that come from a different area or uh, to, background, to, to be themselves And I think most people know, you know, if you’re professional and you— it shouldn’t really matter what you sound like, um, as long as obviously you’re not using slang or anything like that. But it definitely is a hindrance, and it’s something that many people struggle with overcoming.

Andrew Osayemi: I’d love to then move from that discussion into discussing your move into TV production. Can you walk us through that move?

Aoifinn Devitt: Yeah, I’m gonna share something which, I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever really shared or gone into the depth on a podcast before, but I essentially moved into TV production because of love. And I know it’s gonna sound weird, but it got to a stage I was in New York doing really, really well for myself. So you think about this, a young boy who’d come from living in council estate flat with 2 bedrooms, and there’s about 8 adults and many kids living in one tiny flat 2, I’m now living in New York in like what would be classed as like a penthouse you apartment, like, know, overlooking the East River in Manhattan, and fully paid for by the bank I worked for. And I was one of the FX forward traders representing the bank in New York. And it got to a stage— and this is financial crisis time, so this is like 2008, 2009— and it got to a stage where I get the phone call from the head of FX in London, and he says to me, Andrew, we want to offer you 2-year contract to stay in New York. Everything’s going to be the same, fully paid, more money. This is fantastic. Everyone else in London is losing their job. Andrew, stay in New York. This is a great deal. I get off the phone and I call my girlfriend who’s in London at the time and says, look, honey, I think I’m going to stay here for another 2 years. And she said, if you stay for another 2 years, we’re were over. So I had that decision to make. Ah, do I go for love? Do I go for the money? Do I go for love? Do I go for money? And eventually I said, look, I’m going to come back to London and I’ll go for love. And that decision didn’t go quite well, didn’t go down well with my bosses. They weren’t happy. They warned me multiple times to say there’s no position in London, there’s no desk for you, there’s no seat, there’s no trading seat. But I still came back. And within 6 months, I was let go. So that decision cost me my job. But what it did do is allow me to dig deep and then go back and look at what was some of the dreams I had before I came into banking. And some of these dreams were you like, know, things like I’ve done— write a book. Know, You I used to love books and create a TV show. I grew up in a house where I didn’t have a TV. My parents were really religious. So I always was fascinated around telling your story, but creating it, visualizing it on TV. So I said to myself, okay, let me try and go and do something of— something I’m passionate about for 6 months. And 6 months turned into about 9 years. So that’s how I got into TV production.

Andrew Osayemi: What kind of an experience was that? And I’m sure there were some highs and lows, obviously breaking in and ultimately getting a series onto Netflix as you have, there must have been a fairly interesting journey with lots of obstacles.

Aoifinn Devitt: Yeah, the great thing I had was naivety. That’s the absolutely great thing I had. And I think for anyone who’s gone into business, they could probably relate to what I’m saying. Being naive is probably your biggest weapon. So I went into TV thinking within 6 months I’m going to be able to create an idea, I’m going to be able to pitch an idea, I’m going to be able to sell the idea, and I’m going to become a millionaire. That’s the naivety I had. And it’s because I had— I knew nothing about TV. Luckily, my cousin was a TV producer, so she— we kind of came together as a combination where she said, okay, I’ll handle the creative side, you handle the business side. And then what I found was that it’s very difficult, one, to pitch ideas without any name recognition. Like, we were unknown. No one knew who we were. And then also to get money. So what I did, I leveraged my relationships with people I knew from the banking, banking world. And essentially, friends I knew in banking invested in me. I wouldn’t even say they invested in my idea. I think they invested in me because I’d been good to people. I’ve always been a networker. Always help people. So I think people either felt sorry and felt, wow, Angie must be going through some type of crisis, let’s just help him out with his dream, and maybe he’s going to come back to his senses and come back to trading. So yeah, so friends, friends, family in the community had really helped me out and invested. And because of that investment, I talk about over £100,000, I made a vow that despite whatever happens, I’m going to make it a success. So some of the lows were trying to figure out a business model. So we essentially made the first season with £100,000, which when you look at broadcast TV at the moment, typically a sitcom probably cost about one episode, probably cost around 3 to 4 times that. But we made the whole season with £100,000. And then I literally went around the world. I wasn’t able to sell it in the UK. I would literally jump on a plane and go to Ghana, to Tanzania, to Nigeria, to South Africa, trying to sell my show. And the reason I was able to sell it in that environment, because the show was about— it was almost about my family. It was about a comedy about my family almost. The concept was you have two parents who are immigrants and you have their kids. And the whole comedy was about the cultural clash between old-school parents and obviously modern British kids. And that’s where the comedy and the humor came. So we were able to sell it across Africa. And it was through that journey of just selling directly from TV station to TV station that allowed us to build a global audience of fans that then allowed us to go on to make season 2 and season 3.

Andrew Osayemi: It’s a fantastic achievement. Do you think there’s anything about your trading mentality that helped you kind of, I suppose, steel yourself for that process? I’m thinking maybe a thick skin or a short memory in terms of what happened yesterday and being able to get up the next day with a fresh start.

Aoifinn Devitt: Do you know what, you make a really good point. I think, I think yes, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, like you say, the best traders are able to bounce back. We were trained, or I was trained, to not let a loss, a big loss, affect you the next day, to stay calm, cool under pressure, be able to deal with very stressful situations. I mean, I remember, so I worked for RBS. So RBS was going through intense pressure in the financial crisis, and I was on the desks where we had to trade forward FX, which is basically finding funds to keep the bank going from day to day. It was like either overnight funds, tomorrow, next funds. So dealing with that intense pressure, I think you’re right, gave me that resilience. Because as any entrepreneur would know, anyone who wants to start their own business would know, is you’re going to go through tough times. You’re going to go through times— I mean, and not just business-wise, it could be with your personal relationships. Some of the stresses, like, gave on my personal relationships. Because fast forward, luckily for me, the girlfriend who I came back for became my fiancée and then became my wife. So at least I won in that regard. But it did put a massive strain on our relationships because I’m putting all my energy trying to make it work, but then also having a young family, trying to make that work at the same time as well. And as well as just— I think this is something that many entrepreneurs go through, is just sometimes it’s, it’s a very lonely existence because not many people can relate to what you’re going through. Many entrepreneurs I know suffer extreme depression. You have to go to these conferences and events and put on, you know, your best foot forward. You have to be smiling even if things are going terribly bad, and who gets the brunt of that when you’re at the the low, low points is normally your family. So yeah, being a free trader, I think, definitely helped me and made me more resilient.

Andrew Osayemi: And I think also the fact that entrepreneurs work so hard, and that is the other point, is that there really is no immediate reward and often very little time to take a break in there. So I totally hear that. I’m very glad to hear that your disastrous teenage love life had a happy ending. Can you tell us how maybe you suggest it could help someone get their dream job?

Aoifinn Devitt: Yeah, and do you know what, that book was all derived from a time when I went to a school and they asked me, they said, Andrew, come and speak. It was two experiences. First time they asked me to come to school, they said, Andrew, come and speak about how to get into banking, how to do well at interviews, how to get your dream job. And I came in and I talked about investment banking. I talked about interviews. And if you could see the look on people’s faces, people were bored out of their mind. It was like silence. You know when you get that kind of like dry clap at the end and then you leave? Let’s be honest, talking about interviewing is not what young people want to listen to. So I thought, when they invited me, or another school invited me, I thought, how do I make this interesting and fun? And I came with the realization that Getting into any profession is like trying to get into a relationship. And, you know, as the title of the book suggests, My Disastrous Teenage Love Life, I didn’t have the best success as a young teenager trying to get into relationships. So I had to develop some resilience, some skills, some ways of how to improve myself so that I could have more success. And, and I think that’s the same with getting into professions. Whatever profession you want to get into. One, you have to do your research. You have to research yourself. You have to research what your potential love of your life is into. You have to work on your appearance. You have to work on how you present yourself, make sure you’re interesting, how you come across. And also you have to be able to be resilient. So these are some of the stories, like loads of fun stories I pulled into a book. And now I’m on a mission really just to go to schools and share stories around how the students can get their dream job through an entertaining way. And my goal is, even if I just help one person in that audience, one teenager in that audience, that’s giving back like someone helped me back in the day.

Andrew Osayemi: I absolutely love that analogy. And I’d even take it a little bit further to say, well, if you want the relationship to last and to be a good one, you have to keep working on it, right? It doesn’t just stop the minute you get into it.

Aoifinn Devitt: Absolutely, and that’s a good one, and I’m gonna steal that one from you as well.

Andrew Osayemi: But as far as your work at Rare Recruitment, a topic of this podcast is diversity in the city in particular, but in finance in general. And there’s a lot of discussion around ethnic diversity, but equally, I think a problem the city is struggling to crack is socioeconomic diversity and mobility through the ladder. Can you tell us a little bit about what you perceive to be the challenges of socioeconomic mobility in prestigious roles or professions now? And what have you seen that helps?

Aoifinn Devitt: Yeah, it’s a really good question. It’s something I’m really, really passionate about, like based on like what I do, helping people from underrepresented backgrounds, whether that’s social mobility backgrounds, whether it’s ethnicity backgrounds. My, what I do now is I work with the world’s biggest and brightest firms to help with that. What the key thing is, this is one is your family circle and your network, when you don’t have anyone who is from that environment, who knows what that environment is like, what you go on is typically the wrong misconceptions. So like I said in the beginning, I went on the misconceptions from my parents who said, just say sir and yes ma’am and be— sounds bad, but almost be in servitude, be like grateful for the fact that you’ve got this job rather than go and excel. I think many people from, especially from social ability and lower social backgrounds, they do not rise as fast in these professions or do as well because their attitude is of gratitude. When you’re grateful for something, you’re so concerned about not making a mistake, you’re almost struck with fear. To do something wrong, which hinders you. I think that’s what the main thing that when we do our coaching programs for social mobility students, especially around how to convert their internship or how to excel when they get into the early stage at the graduate level, is around having that confidence to not be struck down by fear, using our networks or finding some networks of people who are like you. You could be a young guy from Hull or like, you know, the north of England where it’s quite underrepresented in the city, look for someone in the city. Find someone maybe who’s come from that background. Try and find them to help you, even if it’s not to be a mentor, just to have a quick chat. That like will— goes so much further. And you wouldn’t believe that the confidence it brings really helps. So I think that gratitude, I think the curse of the gratitude. Is sometimes what affects sociability students.

Andrew Osayemi: I think we have to make a whole podcast on that curse of the gratitude because this is something I’ve really been focused on recently because it’s something I feel as a woman. I think not only does it make you struck with fear, I think it makes people paralyzed and mute in an interview setting. It stops them from asking for the terms that they need. And I think the interesting part of gratitude is on one side of our life, we’re all being told to practice it more. That gratitude is a sign of happiness. So we should every day write down 10 things we’re thankful for. And I think that maybe that’s true to a point, or that’s true to the point of knowing your worth as well. And I think it is an interesting tension.

Aoifinn Devitt: And you know what, I’ll tell you a funny story, right? And this is where it really hit me. And I couldn’t believe this happened. So it was bonus day, bonus day, my first ever bonus day at RBS. And different people on the trading floor went in and got their bonus. I remember one guy, he went in. I think he was one of the top traders. He went in and got his bonus and then slammed the door and then left for the day. And I was like, what happened? Like, what the hell? Did he, did he get sacked? Like, what, what’s going on? He was— he not like thankful that he got a bonus? And then someone said, no, he’s probably got one of the biggest bonuses on the floor, but he doesn’t want to let the bosses know that he’s happy with it, so he’s putting up ‘a show.’ And I was like, ‘Wow, I would never ever have the audacity to even challenge my superiors for my bonus.’ I thought what you get is what you should be grateful for. And the person said to me, ‘No, like, I guarantee next year he’s going to get a bigger bonus because they’re going to think we need to keep him happy.’ And again, me coming from a lower socioeconomic background, I’m not privy to that type of information. I mean, no, nor would I even suggest or advise anyone to do that. But like, I came from the attitude of, oh my God, like, just be thankful you’re getting a bonus, versus someone else who felt, no, I need to fight for whatever like bit or scrap or of money I can get. And again, like, there’s better ways of doing it rather than slamming the door, but I didn’t even think that was even possible. We can go into the deeper ramifications of, okay, what— I mean, me as a Black guy, do I feel like I had the confidence to do that? But it did allow me to learn a lesson that I shouldn’t be grateful for my bonus, I should fight for it. And that’s something I learned on that day.

Andrew Osayemi: That’s such an interesting observation because it may not seem important at the time, but I think every little conversation like that, every little increment, it all adds to the wealth gap. Yeah, this wealth gap happens after the effect of compounding. So I think it is important to instill an awareness, at least in young people as they enter the city, because these disparities will happen and they’re gonna start to widen. So was that a fascinating discussion there. I just wanna turn back a little bit at the end here to some of your own personal journey and maybe ask you about any key people who influenced you over the course of your career and in what way.

Aoifinn Devitt: Yeah, no, sure. There’s definitely been a few. One, like, I can’t go without ever doing an interview without thanking my mother. Again, like I said, my teacher said I had potential. And sometimes people are told that people have potential and they do nothing about it. But my mom actually took those words to heart and said, look, even though opportunities for me haven’t been that great, but people believe my son have potential. So I’m going to do the best I can to help him. So she’s always been the— that driven me, pushed me, and she never let me away from that saying. Even when I wanted to give up, she’s like, no, you know, you have potential. You can do it. And that’s pushed me throughout my life. And also another person is like some of the mentors I had when I first joined in banking. I remember one of my bosses, I think it was Vic. One of my bosses was called Vic. I got offered the opportunity to go to New York. Like I said earlier. And me being from, again, that background of never been really outside Southeast London— I think at that point I’d never traveled or been on an airplane or anything like that— I turned it down. I remember he kept just pulling me to the side and said, Andrew, you need to be able to get out of your comfort zone. Your life is bigger than just Southeast London. You need to get away from your— because I was like, oh my God, I don’t know anyone in New York. What am I going to I’m do? Going to leave all my friends behind. I’m comfortable right now. But he said, look, you need to get uncomfortable. And through his guidance and his words, I eventually took up that role and going to New York, man, that changed my life from like living in like Manhattan to meeting all these creative people who would come back and influence me to go into production and follow my dreams. So yeah, so my mom and one of my bosses.

Andrew Osayemi: And it sounds like they’ve given you some great pieces of advice. Is there any creed or motto that you live by now?

Aoifinn Devitt: Yeah, I have one which I use like throughout my life, and it’s this. It’s a short saying. It’s, “Don’t focus on no, focus on earning your yes.” And the saying, why it resonates with me, because it’s not about— I mean, we’re going to be told many no many times. You’re going to have an idea, people are going to tell you no. You’re going to want to do something. You’re going to maybe— like, if you’re an investment or investing, you’re going to try and raise money. People are going to scoff at your idea. You’re going to have a dream. People are going to tell you that’s not possible. But don’t focus on the negativity. Focus on what do you have to do to earn the yes. And through my experiences in trading, trying to advance my career and get to New York, I was always constantly focused on earning the yes. And then when I switched to TV, even though BBC, ITV, all the big broadcasters in the UK told me no, I didn’t let that stop me. I kept focusing on what am I going to do to earn that yes. And ultimately, I was able to sell it to Netflix. So for anyone else listening out there today, don’t focus on no. Focus on how you earn your yes.

Andrew Osayemi: That’s so powerful. Now, looking back to your younger self, is there anything that you know now that you wish you had known perhaps as you came out of Warwick university and looked forward to a career in the city?

Aoifinn Devitt: Yes, absolutely. Buy property. You know, I wish I’d bought. My mom and dad were like, buy property, buy property. I was like, no, no, no, no, I want to go spend, I want to have fun. Yeah, so definitely investing, like buying property. And all jokes aside, just being myself, being myself, because every time I’ve been myself I’ve been more comfortable. I’ve been able to do things, build better relationships, deeper relationships, and just feel more uplifted in life. So yeah, so definitely investing in property, but yeah, being myself.

Andrew Osayemi: Well, Andrew, it’s been such a pleasure speaking with you here. I have loved your endorsement to follow— make a career decision based on love. I think probably more people do that than speak about it, but that was a very refreshing thing to hear. And then, as I said before, you are living the dream to most of us, at least those of us who, who are now entering media for the first time. So congratulations on that. And thank you for sharing your story with us.

Aoifinn Devitt: No, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

Andrew Osayemi: I’m Aoifinn Hindevidd. Thank you for listening to the 50 Faces podcast. If you liked what you heard and would like to tune in to hear more inspiring investors and their personal journeys, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice, and all views are personal and should not be attributed to the organizations and affiliations of the host or any guest.