Aoifinn Devitt: This podcast was made possible by the kind support of Alvine Capital Management, a London-based specialist investment advisor and placement boutique, and the Guild of Investment Managers, which was founded in 2015 by a group of investment managers to combine the benefits of a modern, diverse, and dynamic network organization with the traditions of the livery world. Our next guest encourages colleagues to be color brave instead of color blind. Let’s hear why this matters. Why talking about Black matters and his ideas for where we go from here as an industry and as a society. 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 Justin Anekeze, who is Fund Manager, Head of Retail Multi-Asset Funds at Legal General Investment Management based in London. He started his career as an investment consultant in an actuarial consulting firm and moved to a research and portfolio management role where he has specialized in multi-asset fund management for some years. Welcome, Justin. Thank you for joining me today.
Justin: Thank you for having me.
Aoifinn Devitt: Let’s start with talking about your journey into the investment world. Where did it start? Maybe going right back to where you grew up.
Justin: Yeah, so I grew up in Manchester, inner city Manchester, in an area called Cheetham Hill. So I’d say the Crumpsall-Cheetham Hill area, because I originally grew up, I suppose, in Crumpsall, then moved to Cheetham Hill a bit later on in my life. And it’s an inner city area, very close to the city centre. My mother brought myself and my younger brother up. My younger brother was, what, 5 years younger than me. And I suppose growing up in Manchester at that time is quite strange. If you look at the difference between when I was born in the ’80s to when I eventually left Manchester at the start of the millennium, Manchester completely evolved. So in the ’80s, I would say as a kid growing up, there was a lack of ethnic diversity, which meant that as a child, you know, I saw a lot of probably overt racism. Then towards the end, you know, it was, I suppose it was a benefit of what was then termed multiculturalism, and you had essentially a multi-ethnic area where different ethnicities lived together and potentially thrived. But as I say, you know, the ’80s, there was enclaves of— it must have been the period where you were seeing, I suppose, the dying of the National Front and the British National Party, because there were enclaves of that. I remember in particular areas like Blakely, Collyhurst, Moston, and maybe we’ll come on to Collyhurst a little bit later because that’s where my grandmother lived at the time. And then by the time we got to the ’90s and the mid, early to mid-’90s, I suppose that had morphed into essentially enclaves of gangs where Cheetham Hill in particular seemed to be having a, almost a war. And the foundation of that war was drugs with Moss Side. And I suppose from my perspective, I always managed to stay out of that. And the ’90s obviously were a particular I mean, that’s almost my teenage years, or the start of my teenage years. And yeah, I always managed to stay out of that. And I suppose, what do I put that down to? Maybe my mum, who is fundamental and a real figurehead in my life, but also my friends network, I think, was probably just as important here because I found some like-minded friends who were really in the same type of environment, same type of background as me, but really focused on doing well from an educational perspective. And I think that’s what really drove me on, having that group there. Now, I always did well at school, so I did well at maths. I got the maths award, I remember, for secondary school. Then I went on to sixth form and got the economics award there. But I suppose what really drove me into the city was when I went to the sixth form open day and I was walking around the sixth form open day. I knew I wanted to do maths because I got the maths award at school. I knew I wanted to do politics because at the time politics was really interesting with the rise of New You Labour. Know, Manchester finally had the party that it voted for in power for the first time in 18 years, I think it was in 1997. So I always wanted to do politics and then economics kind of just sat in the middle of that really, because it was kind of a mixture of both. And I was walking around the open day and I remember the head of maths speaking to me about that I should do double maths. And this is like 2 A-levels in maths rather than 1 A-level. And I was all for doing that. And then he told me that double maths was on the Wednesday. And at that time I was a keen footballer. I’d just won the Bury and Radcliffe Footballer of the Year award, and football was something that I really enjoyed. So I rejected doing double maths. Well, I spoke to him about it. I said, I’m not going to do double maths. It was on the Wednesday because I need to play football. And he was pretty much shocked by that. And he said, well, if you don’t do double maths, you will never be an actuary. And at that point, I never knew what an actuary was. But he told me it’s this secret profession where, you know, he said the most lucrative profession in the world and hardly anybody knows about it and you get to use your maths. And I thought, wow, you know, maths and money. I’ve never really had money growing up, so that would be very interesting to actually earn some money. So I thought, right, I’m going to try and be an actuary, but I’m going to try and prove you wrong and do single maths and become an actuary that way. So then all throughout college, university, I used to go to these careers meetings, and used there to be a careers advisor who would take your algorithm, you would take, you know, what you like and put it into a computer and spit out, you know, a number of jobs. The actuarial profession was always in the top 5 of all the jobs ever spat out for me. So it kind of reconfirmed that I wanted to do this. I went to University of Warwick, did economics, and applied like crazy for actuarial jobs. And 60, 70 applications down the line, I eventually got into the Aon graduate scheme as a pension consultant. I remember they took on 8 of us and I started doing that and I realised very quickly that this is something that I actually really didn’t like. And it wasn’t that the— it was the pension consulting side that it just wasn’t for me and it is for some people. And some people make really good careers out of it and all credit to them, but it simply wasn’t for me. So within 6 months of doing that, starting to do that, I was really trying to find a way out. I was trying to get— I was trying to speak to my mum, trying to get back home to Manchester, thinking about how can I exit this trap that I’m in? And almost by coincidence, almost like a miracle, so to speak, We did a training course and one of the training, because part of the graduate program, you used to do lots of training. One of the training courses was on investment consulting. And, you know, straight away after hearing the two speak, I realized that that was what I really wanted to do. That was my passion. Understanding markets was something that, that just really attracted me. So straight after that, dropped an email to the head of investment consulting and simply said, you know, I want to move to investment consulting, what can you do? And, you know, within a month I’d interviewed with him and one of the team leaders, and then a month after that I was sat on the investment consulting floor and then dropped the actuarial exams, did, started doing CFA, and, you know, really never looked back and realized that investment was my passion. And you then, know, moved to Merrill Lynch to do fund research because I felt that after passing my CFA, I felt I needed a better grounding in investment. And then one of my colleagues at Merrill Lynch went to Aviva Investors to help establish a multi-asset fund team there and asked me to come with him. And yeah, I didn’t hesitate in saying yes to that and then built a multi-asset proposition there for the retail markets or financial advisors. And then in 2013, Elgin came knocking asking, you know, would I want to do that at Elgin? And, you know, 6, actually £10 billion later, I you think, know, I look back at that and say it was a really good decision because we’ve built, I think, a really strong franchise in that multi-asset retail market.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, that’s a great story of some twists and turns. Somebody should go back and find that teacher. He seems to have lost his calling in marketing. He seems to have really managed to oversell perhaps the actuarial profession. In terms of— you said 60 to 70 interviews to get a role as an actuary.
Justin: Is that typical?
Aoifinn Devitt: Oh, applications. Okay. Was that par for the course at that time, or do you think you were particularly unlucky maybe coming out, or was that what all your colleagues were going through?
Justin: I don’t know. So I don’t know anybody, at least in my network, or anybody who got the role on the actuarial graduate program that did that many applications. I think there are clearly a number of reasons for that. Some that are out in the open in terms of what your name looks like on a CV. Maybe the way my CV was written wasn’t appropriate. I’ve realized now just from being in the industry for a while, just how to write a much better CV that’s more attractive on the eye. But yeah, I struggle to look past the obvious to why I had to do that many applications because I was a straight-A student, right? I mean, from an area where, or from a postcode where you don’t get many straight-A students. So you do have to scratch your head and think why that was the case. But the one thing that I’ve been taught is that it’s important to If you’ve got a goal, you stick to it and you really drive yourself to get there.
Aoifinn Devitt: And I would usually ask about key people, and it seems like you did have, from a very early age, people who believed in you and recognized your talent, which not everybody can say, I suppose. It seems that that teacher, even if he was trying to get you into double math, at least saw your talent, wanted to ensure that you went far with that. And who were some of the other key people who influenced you along the way?
Justin: I can’t answer this question without mentioning my mum. You know, I saw her at times really struggle. You know, we got evicted from my house in my GCSE year, lived in temporary accommodation for 8 months in that GCSE year. House got repossessed in the early ’90s recession. At times, you know, it was very difficult to meet all expenses, but what I saw from her was somebody who was dedicated, driven, and worked hard, and that’s been passed on to me, I think. I mean, she did actually tell me that it’s so important to work hard. Also, she drummed into me at a very early age the importance of education and that education was the key to social mobility. And I think that is really important. And then finally, something she didn’t really drum into me, but it’s something that I saw from her example, was resilience. No matter how much or how hard she fell, she always got back up and she was always positive. Her outlook was always positive. So that, to me, that resilience being able to bounce back from drawbacks in your life, that has really stayed with me. On top of that, I mentioned my friends, my family network. I remember every Saturday going to my grandmother’s house. My grandmother had 9 children and they all had children. My grandmother had sisters who all had very similar number of children. So my cousin network in Manchester was pretty phenomenal and we all were like brothers and sisters. In that we always used to come together on that Saturday, there’d be rice and peas on the stove, chicken in the oven, and my grandma would basically feed typically about 30 people every Saturday. And that coming together as a family, I think, was really important. But I also think you mentioned about teachers, and in particular in my early years, the teachers, what drove me with teachers wasn’t necessarily the support. It was them telling me that I couldn’t do something for whatever reason. Maybe it’s the rebellious streak in me. When a teacher would say to me, you can’t be an actor if you don’t do double maths, or they’ll say to me initially I wanted to be a doctor and then a lawyer. But I remember vividly in year 9 when I wanted to be a lawyer, we did this again, one of these questionnaires and lots of different professions came up and my home economics teacher said to me, ‘With your attitude, you’re never going to be a lawyer.’ And, you know, it’s just things like that that have stayed with me, that have meant that, you know, I’ve always wanted to try and prove those doubters wrong. So I do think— don’t get me wrong, I’ve had supportive teachers, but I think the teachers that didn’t believe in me actually had a bigger impact on my life than those that did.
Aoifinn Devitt: And I’d like to take this segue into the blog, a very thoughtful blog post you wrote called ‘Where Do We Go From Here?’ And in that you describe some of your early experience of racism, as well as learning to code-switch as early as primary school. Can you just tell us a little bit about those experiences and also what code-switching meant to you then?
Justin: So, as I say, I grew up in a, at the time it was pretty much a white working-class area in the kind of Crumpsall, Cheetham Hill area. And I went to a white working-class school in a way. Because I went to a Catholic school and in that Catholic school there were a lot of Irish people, actually, a lot of people of Irish descent. I’d say it was probably 50-60% Irish. I was the only Black person in my year and that’s something that actually right through schooling from 5 to 16 I was very used to. So code switching is almost the need to have to change the way you speak, your mannerisms, your behaviours in certain environments. And look, we all do this, right? We all, when we’re at work, when we’re on the phone speaking formally to somebody, we all change the way we speak and change our mannerisms. But the more different you are from others in terms of culturally or mainly culturally, actually, the more typically you have to change. And what I realised very early on is that, well, I pretty much felt like an outsider, particularly through my primary school days. And what that meant is that I realized that I had to change the way I spoke at school versus at home versus when I was out with my friends and so on and so forth. When I got to secondary school, I simply got more used to it. But actually, the differences were probably more stark then because I had essentially had a group of friends in the community who were typically Black. Mostly Black, and the way I spoke and my mannerisms with them had to be different from the way I spoke to my white friends at school. So being able to adapt to that, I made mistakes, right? There’s times I said things, they were like, what are you talking about? I never heard you speak like that before, and so on and so forth. But I think taking that into the workplace has actually really helped me Because I do a lot of mentoring now with people who grew up in Black communities, went to schools that are predominantly Black or multiethnic, and then end up in a workplace where they are the only one, they are the only Black person, the only ethnic minority. I think it applies as well to if you’re the only gay person, et cetera, et cetera. The amount they have to adapt to fit in, I think, is really challenging. And I think what it does, it takes away some of their overall authenticity in the workplace and takes away from their personality. And it means that they never really feel themselves. And don’t get me wrong, when I first joined the pension consulting division, I felt like that, right? And this is the reason why, okay, it wasn’t— it was the role that was part of it, but I also felt like an outsider. And that’s one of the reasons that I wanted to go home. But it’s only really by finding a passion in the workplace that allowed me to be more authentic that I think really drove my decision or drove my happiness in the overall workplace. One last point I want to mention is that, yeah, in the early days, overt racism was, it was apparent, right? You know, I remember, you know, lots of incidences where there was lots of name-calling, and you almost got used to it, right? You became acclimatised to the name-calling. But my first experience of racism was probably my first experience of remembering anything. And it was just the other day I was speaking to my mum about it and she was shocked that I even remember. I never spoke to her about it before and she was shocked that I remembered. But my gran lived in Collyhurst and I mentioned Collyhurst a little bit earlier on and the fact that it did have enclaves of skinheads, as they were called then, National, maybe enclosed in National Front. And yeah, my gran was attacked by youths using, and I remember the instrument they used was a bicycle chain. And the reason why I remember that, I mean, I didn’t see it, but I remember that because I overheard my uncles. And I remember uncles in particularly talking about this in the kitchen or the living room. On my gran’s house when I was 3 years old, right? So it’s one of my earliest memories. I remember overhearing about my gran being attacked by a bicycle chain by youths. And it was only just the other day, you know, I said the other day, a few months ago, after the George Floyd incident, that I was saying to my mum that I was getting like flashbacks of this. And she was shocked because she was like, I didn’t even know that you even knew that. And I probably never spoke to her. I was 3 years old, right? But for some reason, that has stayed with me to this day.
Aoifinn Devitt: And how did your grandmother recover from that? Was she as resilient as your mother?
Justin: It seems I think so. I was very young, so I probably don’t remember the emotional impact on her. But there’s one thing my grandmother was always and that was— and it’s going to sound very strange— she was very forgiving. So I suspect that— and she’s very forgiving of people that had wronged her, you know. So I suspect, given her kind of strong religious nature, that, okay, she would have been very upset by that, but I do think she would have— yeah, I’m just assuming this— but I think she would have forgiven the perpetrators for what they did to us. So I do think that that’s the one aspect of my grandmother’s personality which was just so strong.
Aoifinn Devitt: It’s remarkable. One of the things I was going to say to you about the code switching is it seems that that would have a tremendous mental burden to have to be aware of that and do that, and that’s not something that everybody in the workplace experiences on a daily basis. Did you find that that mental burden came easier to bear as you moved throughout school, university, and the workplace? And do you observe that in the people that you mentor now?
Justin: Yeah, it’s a really good question. And this is where I think that almost I was lucky in a way that it happened to me so early on in my life, because it almost means that automatically I do this because I’m just almost wired to code switch very quickly. I do think from the mentoring that I do, And look, every month I sit down with people between 0 and 10 years experience in the corporate workplace, and I talk to them about— we do Q&A sessions. Typically there’s 2 mentors on one side of the table and 15 mentees on the other side of the table, and we simply discuss how to navigate the corporate landscape And it’s clear to me that when you take talented people and you simply just drop them into a foreign culture or drop them into an alien culture, it can be very difficult for people to navigate. But the issue is, the more different people are from the majority, I think it makes it harder. So The reason why I set up these mentoring circles is because I was doing one-on-ones with people and consistently telling me, particularly junior people, they started, started off in the workplace, just how hard it was for them to adapt. And a lot of the things they were talking about were themes that when they told me, it was like, I’ve been through that, I’ve been through that, I’ve seen that. So I just felt that given that I’ve managed to navigate it, that actually helping others to navigate that by example, by Q&A, and by getting other people that have navigated it as well, it’s a really strong way to help people.
Aoifinn Devitt: Absolutely. And that’s part of the reason for this podcast series is because I think that shared experiences really do help us all to cope because we see examples that we’re not alone. We see perhaps we’re not unusual in feeling, and we also get I think ideas for coping with some, whether it’s what to say or how to react. So thank you for sharing that. This relates also to, I think, creating a sense of belonging. And I think that a lot of what you’re doing with the, you could talk a little bit about the program Talk About Black and how that creates and reinforces a sense of belonging, but also, you know, start certain conversations that may be uncomfortable. Can you talk about the origins of that? Movement.
Justin: Yeah, I can do. I think you’re right. So this belonging is— I think it’s a particular challenge for the corporate sector, businesses that have strong cultures, because, you know, businesses tend to have cultures. And when people start in those businesses, people are effectively told to adapt and to adopt this culture. I do think the better businesses now, the businesses that are really on top of diversity and inclusion, they recognize that their culture has to be an amalgamation of the people they have in the business. So cultures are adapting to be more embracing of people within their business. I think that’s really important. Now, if you want to talk about Black, you know, how was that formed? So it’s formed as part of the Diversity Project, and the Diversity Project is a group of asset managers, a group of companies in the savings and investments industry that have come together to really try and drive better representation of people in the industry, but also a more inclusive culture. And I sat on the ethnicity workstream of the Diversity Project, and the ethnicity workstream was really trying to established why ethnic minorities are so underrepresented relative to the population in the savings and investments industry. And what we quickly realized is, first of all, the term BAME is actually— it didn’t really help the situation because different ethnicities have different experiences in the workplace. And actually what it was is if you look at the B of BAME, the B of BAME was actually the most underrepresented, or Black people were the most underrepresented ethnic group in the investment industry, particularly at senior levels. So taking this, we thought, you know, why is this the case? And we identified really 5 reasons. And these 5 reasons have now become suppose, the, I the famous kinks in the hosepipe which stops the talent from flowing through. And the first one is taboo. And this is that people are scared to talk about ethnicity or were scared to talk about ethnicity pre-2020. And this is because actually it can be career limiting if you get it wrong. Right. So people were scared to talk about it. So this is why we created #TalkAboutBlack to normalize conversations around ethnicity and to allow people to discuss it in a much safer space. Because if you go to a talk about Black event, you know what you’re going to be talking about, right? And that’s the first thing. Then the 4 other kinks, just very briefly, are community. And this is the situation that a number of particularly British-born Black people find themselves in, that they tend to be lower down from a socioeconomic perspective. So that means that you’re less likely to own a house. For example, the average Black person is less likely to own a house than other ethnicities. More likely to be a victim of violent crime. Then you come on to pipeline, and this kind of feeds into what I spoke about. When Black people and white people and other ethnicities start at school at, you know, 5 years old, typically the attainment is pretty similar. But as you get to kind of 16 years old, that kind of flips on its head a little bit. And in particular, Black Caribbeans, British-born Black Caribbeans, tend to bear the brunt of this. And whether it’s systematic bias from teachers, whether it’s bias within the educational system, not focusing enough on Black history, for example, whether it’s actually down to that socioeconomic perspective that I gave before, Black people tend to fall behind on average overall when you get to 16. Then you come on to entry, that even when Black people are getting the right grades, they’re simply not getting into those top jobs in our corporate sector. And this may be down to being the first generation of person in a white-collar job. So me, for example, you know, my granddad and my grandmother were part of the Windrush generation. My granddad, you know, one of the jobs he could have done was a bus driver. You know, he wasn’t really allowed to work as a white-collar worker in the services sector. Same with my mum. There was almost a ceiling that my mum could get to and, you know, teacher, nurse, or one of those roles.. But it’s only now, being a third, second generation, as some would call it, now that I can— the world is much more of an oyster to me, given that my mum has now got a degree, she’s passed that educational knowledge on to me, etc., etc. But when I came to do my CV, write letters of application, I had no one to ask, really, right? Okay, my mum could help me a little bit, but she’s never worked in a corporate environment. So I think that does act as a hindrance as well. The other thing about entry is that When we speak to students, they say, why would I apply for a job in the asset management industry when I look at the asset management industry and no one looks like me? So there’s a lack of role models as well. But I think the final kink, and I think it’s the most important kink, is progression. When Black people join these businesses, even when they get into the key roles, navigating that corporate sphere, navigating that corporate workplace, can be mentally draining due to microaggressions, due to code-switching, due to feeling like an outsider. And that has a huge impact on authenticity, being themselves, leadership skills, etc., etc. And it means that you’re simply typically around about the 7 to 10 year level, we find a lot of people kind of hit a glass ceiling and when they do that, they either leave the industry totally or, you know, stay in the industry but simply do not progress. And this is why in 2017, New Financial’s report on ethnicity in the asset management sector said they could only identify 12 Black fund managers out of thousands. Talk about Black, we can identify, I think it’s 2 or 3 Black people in the C-suite. Huge underrepresentation there, but it’s only by unkinking the hosepipe and unking each of those kinks that you can actually get the talent, I think, to flow through.
Aoifinn Devitt: And you speak about being color brave instead of color blind. I think this is tied to some of your desire to encourage more race fluency in the workplace. One of the questions I have is this is, you mentioned taboo, it is inherently uncomfortable and awkward. How do you create the psychological safety for, say, white colleagues to make mistakes as they go through this awkward process without judgment.
Justin: Yeah, I think this is really important, is society clearly doesn’t accept racism. I think that’s right. We’ve seen from high-profile job losses historically that if you get it wrong, it can be very costly. And I think this is why people really shy away from it, because they simply can’t bear the cost of being wrong I do think normalising conversations around race, allowing people to learn, allowing people to drive change is really important. I do think with that, and maybe this is controversial and maybe a lot of people won’t agree with me on this, I do think if somebody is trying to drive change, is trying to learn, the heart’s in the right place, I do think that you do have to be tolerant and educate, and it does take time to educate as well, right? So I do think mistakes can be made, and I think we should allow for mistakes to be made. The challenge with colourblindness is that it leads to phrases like, it’s all about the best person for the job, and I don’t care if you’re Black, white, green, yellow, I don’t look at that. But the big challenge with colourblindness is that if you don’t understand colour, you don’t understand culture, you’re really ignoring that person’s identity. You’re ignoring where they came from, you’re ignoring the privileges or the non-privileges that they may have had over time. So I do think it’s really important to be empathetic and really understand that person’s background, that person’s culture, and so on and so forth. And the big challenge with phrases like, “It’s about the best person for the job,” is that the best person for the job is always, always subjective. It’s never objective, it’s never factual. So I think that’s a challenge. But also, is it really about the best person for the job, or is it about the best person for the team? And we all work in teams and the team dynamic is really important and getting the best out of that team is really important. So actually it’s about finding a balance and finding the best person for the overall team, which can drive the overall team forward.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, there’s certainly a lot to digest there. Thank you. We are coming close to the end of our time. So I just have a few quick questions, if you don’t mind. We’ve been talking a lot about the investment world and some of its, the issues, these kinks in the hosepipe for Black entrants into the workplace, once they’re there. What is it you like most about it though? Because you’ve clearly carved a great career for yourself in it.
Justin: So I think the first thing is I’m passionate about managing money and the dynamics of the markets are really exciting to me. So even if I wasn’t doing this as a day job, I think I would be doing it you anyway, know, because it’s something that is definitely interesting and attractive to me. I also think being a multi-asset fund manager is something that is particularly attractive because there are just so many moving parts, whether it’s the news, whether it’s equity markets, bond markets, commodity markets, you know, the list goes on and on and on. Almost every single bit of news can be interesting, a driver to your portfolios. So I do think that being a multi-asset fund manager in particular is something that’s really attractive to me. But I think the last thing is that we are in a people business, and I do take real pleasure in some of the strong relationships that I’ve built in this industry over time, whether it’s clients, whether it’s colleagues. Each one of my managers that I’ve had, I still have really strong relationships with each one of them. And you actually, know, they mentor me, you could argue I mentor them as well. And we catch up regularly. So I do think I’ve really built strong relationships in this industry that will stay with me for the rest of my life.
Aoifinn Devitt: Absolutely. And no time have they been more important, I think, than during the past year when we we can, can all rely on them. In terms of— we talked about key people in your life. Were there key pieces of advice or any leading you to have any creed or motto now?
Justin: I wouldn’t say there’s necessarily a motto. I do think the resilience that my mum taught me was, or led by example, has really stayed with me all my life. But I suppose that there is one, it was a bit of advice, or was what I was told by one of my former managers, Joram Lustig, who I worked with at Viva Investors. He said to me, and it was a time you where, know, he’d given me responsibility of managing the multi-asset retail funds. And, you know, I didn’t really have any experience in managing multi-asset retail funds before, right? But he believed in And, me. You know, I used to come out of some meetings, and at a time where I doubt you myself, know, have that imposter syndrome the the way, way many people do. And a lot of the mentees that I speak to, you know, have you this, know, significant level of imposter syndrome. But he always used to say to me, you know, ‘Why are you intimidated? You know as much as them. You can do it.’ And the number of times he used to say that to me, maybe not that exact phrase, but in a different way every single time, that’s really stayed with me. And even when now I do have those tough days, I think it leads back to the resilience, right? When you do have those tough days, actually believing in yourself is really important. Believing that you can bounce back from drawbacks is really important. And I suppose what he said to me, that phrase paraphrased in a number of different ways, has really stayed with me.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, that kind of ties nicely to— I usually ask about advice to your younger self, but it seems like that might have been what it would be, believing in yourself.
Justin: I think so. I think so. The only other thing I’d say from my younger self is I’ve learned over time to be more empathetic. And I do think that 5 years into my career, I think the way I approach mentoring, the way I approach management, it would be completely different now. I try to walk in the other person’s shoes because I do think that is really important in really understanding where they came from, their culture, their privileges, and how they’re different from yours. And I think that’s something that I would definitely have done better with relationships in my early career if I’d known that.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, thank you, Justin. It’s been a pleasure speaking with you. I really do consider you a gift to our industry because of how you move the conversation along and how you take treat all of us, your Black colleagues, white colleagues in such a compassionate way. And thank you for starting and for really progressing the conversation. Thank you for sharing your insights here with us.
Justin: Thank you.
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 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 podcast was made possible by the kind support of Alvine Capital Management, a London-based specialist investment advisor and placement boutique, and the Guild of Investment Managers, which was founded in 2015 by a group of investment managers to combine the benefits of a modern, diverse, and dynamic network organization with the traditions of the livery world. Our next guest encourages colleagues to be color brave instead of color blind. Let’s hear why this matters. Why talking about Black matters and his ideas for where we go from here as an industry and as a society. 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 Justin Anekeze, who is Fund Manager, Head of Retail Multi-Asset Funds at Legal General Investment Management based in London. He started his career as an investment consultant in an actuarial consulting firm and moved to a research and portfolio management role where he has specialized in multi-asset fund management for some years. Welcome, Justin. Thank you for joining me today.
Justin: Thank you for having me.
Aoifinn Devitt: Let’s start with talking about your journey into the investment world. Where did it start? Maybe going right back to where you grew up.
Justin: Yeah, so I grew up in Manchester, inner city Manchester, in an area called Cheetham Hill. So I’d say the Crumpsall-Cheetham Hill area, because I originally grew up, I suppose, in Crumpsall, then moved to Cheetham Hill a bit later on in my life. And it’s an inner city area, very close to the city centre. My mother brought myself and my younger brother up. My younger brother was, what, 5 years younger than me. And I suppose growing up in Manchester at that time is quite strange. If you look at the difference between when I was born in the ’80s to when I eventually left Manchester at the start of the millennium, Manchester completely evolved. So in the ’80s, I would say as a kid growing up, there was a lack of ethnic diversity, which meant that as a child, you know, I saw a lot of probably overt racism. Then towards the end, you know, it was, I suppose it was a benefit of what was then termed multiculturalism, and you had essentially a multi-ethnic area where different ethnicities lived together and potentially thrived. But as I say, you know, the ’80s, there was enclaves of— it must have been the period where you were seeing, I suppose, the dying of the National Front and the British National Party, because there were enclaves of that. I remember in particular areas like Blakely, Collyhurst, Moston, and maybe we’ll come on to Collyhurst a little bit later because that’s where my grandmother lived at the time. And then by the time we got to the ’90s and the mid, early to mid-’90s, I suppose that had morphed into essentially enclaves of gangs where Cheetham Hill in particular seemed to be having a, almost a war. And the foundation of that war was drugs with Moss Side. And I suppose from my perspective, I always managed to stay out of that. And the ’90s obviously were a particular I mean, that’s almost my teenage years, or the start of my teenage years. And yeah, I always managed to stay out of that. And I suppose, what do I put that down to? Maybe my mum, who is fundamental and a real figurehead in my life, but also my friends network, I think, was probably just as important here because I found some like-minded friends who were really in the same type of environment, same type of background as me, but really focused on doing well from an educational perspective. And I think that’s what really drove me on, having that group there. Now, I always did well at school, so I did well at maths. I got the maths award, I remember, for secondary school. Then I went on to sixth form and got the economics award there. But I suppose what really drove me into the city was when I went to the sixth form open day and I was walking around the sixth form open day. I knew I wanted to do maths because I got the maths award at school. I knew I wanted to do politics because at the time politics was really interesting with the rise of New You Labour. Know, Manchester finally had the party that it voted for in power for the first time in 18 years, I think it was in 1997. So I always wanted to do politics and then economics kind of just sat in the middle of that really, because it was kind of a mixture of both. And I was walking around the open day and I remember the head of maths speaking to me about that I should do double maths. And this is like 2 A-levels in maths rather than 1 A-level. And I was all for doing that. And then he told me that double maths was on the Wednesday. And at that time I was a keen footballer. I’d just won the Bury and Radcliffe Footballer of the Year award, and football was something that I really enjoyed. So I rejected doing double maths. Well, I spoke to him about it. I said, I’m not going to do double maths. It was on the Wednesday because I need to play football. And he was pretty much shocked by that. And he said, well, if you don’t do double maths, you will never be an actuary. And at that point, I never knew what an actuary was. But he told me it’s this secret profession where, you know, he said the most lucrative profession in the world and hardly anybody knows about it and you get to use your maths. And I thought, wow, you know, maths and money. I’ve never really had money growing up, so that would be very interesting to actually earn some money. So I thought, right, I’m going to try and be an actuary, but I’m going to try and prove you wrong and do single maths and become an actuary that way. So then all throughout college, university, I used to go to these careers meetings, and used there to be a careers advisor who would take your algorithm, you would take, you know, what you like and put it into a computer and spit out, you know, a number of jobs. The actuarial profession was always in the top 5 of all the jobs ever spat out for me. So it kind of reconfirmed that I wanted to do this. I went to University of Warwick, did economics, and applied like crazy for actuarial jobs. And 60, 70 applications down the line, I eventually got into the Aon graduate scheme as a pension consultant. I remember they took on 8 of us and I started doing that and I realised very quickly that this is something that I actually really didn’t like. And it wasn’t that the— it was the pension consulting side that it just wasn’t for me and it is for some people. And some people make really good careers out of it and all credit to them, but it simply wasn’t for me. So within 6 months of doing that, starting to do that, I was really trying to find a way out. I was trying to get— I was trying to speak to my mum, trying to get back home to Manchester, thinking about how can I exit this trap that I’m in? And almost by coincidence, almost like a miracle, so to speak, We did a training course and one of the training, because part of the graduate program, you used to do lots of training. One of the training courses was on investment consulting. And, you know, straight away after hearing the two speak, I realized that that was what I really wanted to do. That was my passion. Understanding markets was something that, that just really attracted me. So straight after that, dropped an email to the head of investment consulting and simply said, you know, I want to move to investment consulting, what can you do? And, you know, within a month I’d interviewed with him and one of the team leaders, and then a month after that I was sat on the investment consulting floor and then dropped the actuarial exams, did, started doing CFA, and, you know, really never looked back and realized that investment was my passion. And you then, know, moved to Merrill Lynch to do fund research because I felt that after passing my CFA, I felt I needed a better grounding in investment. And then one of my colleagues at Merrill Lynch went to Aviva Investors to help establish a multi-asset fund team there and asked me to come with him. And yeah, I didn’t hesitate in saying yes to that and then built a multi-asset proposition there for the retail markets or financial advisors. And then in 2013, Elgin came knocking asking, you know, would I want to do that at Elgin? And, you know, 6, actually £10 billion later, I you think, know, I look back at that and say it was a really good decision because we’ve built, I think, a really strong franchise in that multi-asset retail market.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, that’s a great story of some twists and turns. Somebody should go back and find that teacher. He seems to have lost his calling in marketing. He seems to have really managed to oversell perhaps the actuarial profession. In terms of— you said 60 to 70 interviews to get a role as an actuary.
Justin: Is that typical?
Aoifinn Devitt: Oh, applications. Okay. Was that par for the course at that time, or do you think you were particularly unlucky maybe coming out, or was that what all your colleagues were going through?
Justin: I don’t know. So I don’t know anybody, at least in my network, or anybody who got the role on the actuarial graduate program that did that many applications. I think there are clearly a number of reasons for that. Some that are out in the open in terms of what your name looks like on a CV. Maybe the way my CV was written wasn’t appropriate. I’ve realized now just from being in the industry for a while, just how to write a much better CV that’s more attractive on the eye. But yeah, I struggle to look past the obvious to why I had to do that many applications because I was a straight-A student, right? I mean, from an area where, or from a postcode where you don’t get many straight-A students. So you do have to scratch your head and think why that was the case. But the one thing that I’ve been taught is that it’s important to If you’ve got a goal, you stick to it and you really drive yourself to get there.
Aoifinn Devitt: And I would usually ask about key people, and it seems like you did have, from a very early age, people who believed in you and recognized your talent, which not everybody can say, I suppose. It seems that that teacher, even if he was trying to get you into double math, at least saw your talent, wanted to ensure that you went far with that. And who were some of the other key people who influenced you along the way?
Justin: I can’t answer this question without mentioning my mum. You know, I saw her at times really struggle. You know, we got evicted from my house in my GCSE year, lived in temporary accommodation for 8 months in that GCSE year. House got repossessed in the early ’90s recession. At times, you know, it was very difficult to meet all expenses, but what I saw from her was somebody who was dedicated, driven, and worked hard, and that’s been passed on to me, I think. I mean, she did actually tell me that it’s so important to work hard. Also, she drummed into me at a very early age the importance of education and that education was the key to social mobility. And I think that is really important. And then finally, something she didn’t really drum into me, but it’s something that I saw from her example, was resilience. No matter how much or how hard she fell, she always got back up and she was always positive. Her outlook was always positive. So that, to me, that resilience being able to bounce back from drawbacks in your life, that has really stayed with me. On top of that, I mentioned my friends, my family network. I remember every Saturday going to my grandmother’s house. My grandmother had 9 children and they all had children. My grandmother had sisters who all had very similar number of children. So my cousin network in Manchester was pretty phenomenal and we all were like brothers and sisters. In that we always used to come together on that Saturday, there’d be rice and peas on the stove, chicken in the oven, and my grandma would basically feed typically about 30 people every Saturday. And that coming together as a family, I think, was really important. But I also think you mentioned about teachers, and in particular in my early years, the teachers, what drove me with teachers wasn’t necessarily the support. It was them telling me that I couldn’t do something for whatever reason. Maybe it’s the rebellious streak in me. When a teacher would say to me, you can’t be an actor if you don’t do double maths, or they’ll say to me initially I wanted to be a doctor and then a lawyer. But I remember vividly in year 9 when I wanted to be a lawyer, we did this again, one of these questionnaires and lots of different professions came up and my home economics teacher said to me, ‘With your attitude, you’re never going to be a lawyer.’ And, you know, it’s just things like that that have stayed with me, that have meant that, you know, I’ve always wanted to try and prove those doubters wrong. So I do think— don’t get me wrong, I’ve had supportive teachers, but I think the teachers that didn’t believe in me actually had a bigger impact on my life than those that did.
Aoifinn Devitt: And I’d like to take this segue into the blog, a very thoughtful blog post you wrote called ‘Where Do We Go From Here?’ And in that you describe some of your early experience of racism, as well as learning to code-switch as early as primary school. Can you just tell us a little bit about those experiences and also what code-switching meant to you then?
Justin: So, as I say, I grew up in a, at the time it was pretty much a white working-class area in the kind of Crumpsall, Cheetham Hill area. And I went to a white working-class school in a way. Because I went to a Catholic school and in that Catholic school there were a lot of Irish people, actually, a lot of people of Irish descent. I’d say it was probably 50-60% Irish. I was the only Black person in my year and that’s something that actually right through schooling from 5 to 16 I was very used to. So code switching is almost the need to have to change the way you speak, your mannerisms, your behaviours in certain environments. And look, we all do this, right? We all, when we’re at work, when we’re on the phone speaking formally to somebody, we all change the way we speak and change our mannerisms. But the more different you are from others in terms of culturally or mainly culturally, actually, the more typically you have to change. And what I realised very early on is that, well, I pretty much felt like an outsider, particularly through my primary school days. And what that meant is that I realized that I had to change the way I spoke at school versus at home versus when I was out with my friends and so on and so forth. When I got to secondary school, I simply got more used to it. But actually, the differences were probably more stark then because I had essentially had a group of friends in the community who were typically Black. Mostly Black, and the way I spoke and my mannerisms with them had to be different from the way I spoke to my white friends at school. So being able to adapt to that, I made mistakes, right? There’s times I said things, they were like, what are you talking about? I never heard you speak like that before, and so on and so forth. But I think taking that into the workplace has actually really helped me Because I do a lot of mentoring now with people who grew up in Black communities, went to schools that are predominantly Black or multiethnic, and then end up in a workplace where they are the only one, they are the only Black person, the only ethnic minority. I think it applies as well to if you’re the only gay person, et cetera, et cetera. The amount they have to adapt to fit in, I think, is really challenging. And I think what it does, it takes away some of their overall authenticity in the workplace and takes away from their personality. And it means that they never really feel themselves. And don’t get me wrong, when I first joined the pension consulting division, I felt like that, right? And this is the reason why, okay, it wasn’t— it was the role that was part of it, but I also felt like an outsider. And that’s one of the reasons that I wanted to go home. But it’s only really by finding a passion in the workplace that allowed me to be more authentic that I think really drove my decision or drove my happiness in the overall workplace. One last point I want to mention is that, yeah, in the early days, overt racism was, it was apparent, right? You know, I remember, you know, lots of incidences where there was lots of name-calling, and you almost got used to it, right? You became acclimatised to the name-calling. But my first experience of racism was probably my first experience of remembering anything. And it was just the other day I was speaking to my mum about it and she was shocked that I even remember. I never spoke to her about it before and she was shocked that I remembered. But my gran lived in Collyhurst and I mentioned Collyhurst a little bit earlier on and the fact that it did have enclaves of skinheads, as they were called then, National, maybe enclosed in National Front. And yeah, my gran was attacked by youths using, and I remember the instrument they used was a bicycle chain. And the reason why I remember that, I mean, I didn’t see it, but I remember that because I overheard my uncles. And I remember uncles in particularly talking about this in the kitchen or the living room. On my gran’s house when I was 3 years old, right? So it’s one of my earliest memories. I remember overhearing about my gran being attacked by a bicycle chain by youths. And it was only just the other day, you know, I said the other day, a few months ago, after the George Floyd incident, that I was saying to my mum that I was getting like flashbacks of this. And she was shocked because she was like, I didn’t even know that you even knew that. And I probably never spoke to her. I was 3 years old, right? But for some reason, that has stayed with me to this day.
Aoifinn Devitt: And how did your grandmother recover from that? Was she as resilient as your mother?
Justin: It seems I think so. I was very young, so I probably don’t remember the emotional impact on her. But there’s one thing my grandmother was always and that was— and it’s going to sound very strange— she was very forgiving. So I suspect that— and she’s very forgiving of people that had wronged her, you know. So I suspect, given her kind of strong religious nature, that, okay, she would have been very upset by that, but I do think she would have— yeah, I’m just assuming this— but I think she would have forgiven the perpetrators for what they did to us. So I do think that that’s the one aspect of my grandmother’s personality which was just so strong.
Aoifinn Devitt: It’s remarkable. One of the things I was going to say to you about the code switching is it seems that that would have a tremendous mental burden to have to be aware of that and do that, and that’s not something that everybody in the workplace experiences on a daily basis. Did you find that that mental burden came easier to bear as you moved throughout school, university, and the workplace? And do you observe that in the people that you mentor now?
Justin: Yeah, it’s a really good question. And this is where I think that almost I was lucky in a way that it happened to me so early on in my life, because it almost means that automatically I do this because I’m just almost wired to code switch very quickly. I do think from the mentoring that I do, And look, every month I sit down with people between 0 and 10 years experience in the corporate workplace, and I talk to them about— we do Q&A sessions. Typically there’s 2 mentors on one side of the table and 15 mentees on the other side of the table, and we simply discuss how to navigate the corporate landscape And it’s clear to me that when you take talented people and you simply just drop them into a foreign culture or drop them into an alien culture, it can be very difficult for people to navigate. But the issue is, the more different people are from the majority, I think it makes it harder. So The reason why I set up these mentoring circles is because I was doing one-on-ones with people and consistently telling me, particularly junior people, they started, started off in the workplace, just how hard it was for them to adapt. And a lot of the things they were talking about were themes that when they told me, it was like, I’ve been through that, I’ve been through that, I’ve seen that. So I just felt that given that I’ve managed to navigate it, that actually helping others to navigate that by example, by Q&A, and by getting other people that have navigated it as well, it’s a really strong way to help people.
Aoifinn Devitt: Absolutely. And that’s part of the reason for this podcast series is because I think that shared experiences really do help us all to cope because we see examples that we’re not alone. We see perhaps we’re not unusual in feeling, and we also get I think ideas for coping with some, whether it’s what to say or how to react. So thank you for sharing that. This relates also to, I think, creating a sense of belonging. And I think that a lot of what you’re doing with the, you could talk a little bit about the program Talk About Black and how that creates and reinforces a sense of belonging, but also, you know, start certain conversations that may be uncomfortable. Can you talk about the origins of that? Movement.
Justin: Yeah, I can do. I think you’re right. So this belonging is— I think it’s a particular challenge for the corporate sector, businesses that have strong cultures, because, you know, businesses tend to have cultures. And when people start in those businesses, people are effectively told to adapt and to adopt this culture. I do think the better businesses now, the businesses that are really on top of diversity and inclusion, they recognize that their culture has to be an amalgamation of the people they have in the business. So cultures are adapting to be more embracing of people within their business. I think that’s really important. Now, if you want to talk about Black, you know, how was that formed? So it’s formed as part of the Diversity Project, and the Diversity Project is a group of asset managers, a group of companies in the savings and investments industry that have come together to really try and drive better representation of people in the industry, but also a more inclusive culture. And I sat on the ethnicity workstream of the Diversity Project, and the ethnicity workstream was really trying to established why ethnic minorities are so underrepresented relative to the population in the savings and investments industry. And what we quickly realized is, first of all, the term BAME is actually— it didn’t really help the situation because different ethnicities have different experiences in the workplace. And actually what it was is if you look at the B of BAME, the B of BAME was actually the most underrepresented, or Black people were the most underrepresented ethnic group in the investment industry, particularly at senior levels. So taking this, we thought, you know, why is this the case? And we identified really 5 reasons. And these 5 reasons have now become suppose, the, I the famous kinks in the hosepipe which stops the talent from flowing through. And the first one is taboo. And this is that people are scared to talk about ethnicity or were scared to talk about ethnicity pre-2020. And this is because actually it can be career limiting if you get it wrong. Right. So people were scared to talk about it. So this is why we created #TalkAboutBlack to normalize conversations around ethnicity and to allow people to discuss it in a much safer space. Because if you go to a talk about Black event, you know what you’re going to be talking about, right? And that’s the first thing. Then the 4 other kinks, just very briefly, are community. And this is the situation that a number of particularly British-born Black people find themselves in, that they tend to be lower down from a socioeconomic perspective. So that means that you’re less likely to own a house. For example, the average Black person is less likely to own a house than other ethnicities. More likely to be a victim of violent crime. Then you come on to pipeline, and this kind of feeds into what I spoke about. When Black people and white people and other ethnicities start at school at, you know, 5 years old, typically the attainment is pretty similar. But as you get to kind of 16 years old, that kind of flips on its head a little bit. And in particular, Black Caribbeans, British-born Black Caribbeans, tend to bear the brunt of this. And whether it’s systematic bias from teachers, whether it’s bias within the educational system, not focusing enough on Black history, for example, whether it’s actually down to that socioeconomic perspective that I gave before, Black people tend to fall behind on average overall when you get to 16. Then you come on to entry, that even when Black people are getting the right grades, they’re simply not getting into those top jobs in our corporate sector. And this may be down to being the first generation of person in a white-collar job. So me, for example, you know, my granddad and my grandmother were part of the Windrush generation. My granddad, you know, one of the jobs he could have done was a bus driver. You know, he wasn’t really allowed to work as a white-collar worker in the services sector. Same with my mum. There was almost a ceiling that my mum could get to and, you know, teacher, nurse, or one of those roles.. But it’s only now, being a third, second generation, as some would call it, now that I can— the world is much more of an oyster to me, given that my mum has now got a degree, she’s passed that educational knowledge on to me, etc., etc. But when I came to do my CV, write letters of application, I had no one to ask, really, right? Okay, my mum could help me a little bit, but she’s never worked in a corporate environment. So I think that does act as a hindrance as well. The other thing about entry is that When we speak to students, they say, why would I apply for a job in the asset management industry when I look at the asset management industry and no one looks like me? So there’s a lack of role models as well. But I think the final kink, and I think it’s the most important kink, is progression. When Black people join these businesses, even when they get into the key roles, navigating that corporate sphere, navigating that corporate workplace, can be mentally draining due to microaggressions, due to code-switching, due to feeling like an outsider. And that has a huge impact on authenticity, being themselves, leadership skills, etc., etc. And it means that you’re simply typically around about the 7 to 10 year level, we find a lot of people kind of hit a glass ceiling and when they do that, they either leave the industry totally or, you know, stay in the industry but simply do not progress. And this is why in 2017, New Financial’s report on ethnicity in the asset management sector said they could only identify 12 Black fund managers out of thousands. Talk about Black, we can identify, I think it’s 2 or 3 Black people in the C-suite. Huge underrepresentation there, but it’s only by unkinking the hosepipe and unking each of those kinks that you can actually get the talent, I think, to flow through.
Aoifinn Devitt: And you speak about being color brave instead of color blind. I think this is tied to some of your desire to encourage more race fluency in the workplace. One of the questions I have is this is, you mentioned taboo, it is inherently uncomfortable and awkward. How do you create the psychological safety for, say, white colleagues to make mistakes as they go through this awkward process without judgment.
Justin: Yeah, I think this is really important, is society clearly doesn’t accept racism. I think that’s right. We’ve seen from high-profile job losses historically that if you get it wrong, it can be very costly. And I think this is why people really shy away from it, because they simply can’t bear the cost of being wrong I do think normalising conversations around race, allowing people to learn, allowing people to drive change is really important. I do think with that, and maybe this is controversial and maybe a lot of people won’t agree with me on this, I do think if somebody is trying to drive change, is trying to learn, the heart’s in the right place, I do think that you do have to be tolerant and educate, and it does take time to educate as well, right? So I do think mistakes can be made, and I think we should allow for mistakes to be made. The challenge with colourblindness is that it leads to phrases like, it’s all about the best person for the job, and I don’t care if you’re Black, white, green, yellow, I don’t look at that. But the big challenge with colourblindness is that if you don’t understand colour, you don’t understand culture, you’re really ignoring that person’s identity. You’re ignoring where they came from, you’re ignoring the privileges or the non-privileges that they may have had over time. So I do think it’s really important to be empathetic and really understand that person’s background, that person’s culture, and so on and so forth. And the big challenge with phrases like, “It’s about the best person for the job,” is that the best person for the job is always, always subjective. It’s never objective, it’s never factual. So I think that’s a challenge. But also, is it really about the best person for the job, or is it about the best person for the team? And we all work in teams and the team dynamic is really important and getting the best out of that team is really important. So actually it’s about finding a balance and finding the best person for the overall team, which can drive the overall team forward.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, there’s certainly a lot to digest there. Thank you. We are coming close to the end of our time. So I just have a few quick questions, if you don’t mind. We’ve been talking a lot about the investment world and some of its, the issues, these kinks in the hosepipe for Black entrants into the workplace, once they’re there. What is it you like most about it though? Because you’ve clearly carved a great career for yourself in it.
Justin: So I think the first thing is I’m passionate about managing money and the dynamics of the markets are really exciting to me. So even if I wasn’t doing this as a day job, I think I would be doing it you anyway, know, because it’s something that is definitely interesting and attractive to me. I also think being a multi-asset fund manager is something that is particularly attractive because there are just so many moving parts, whether it’s the news, whether it’s equity markets, bond markets, commodity markets, you know, the list goes on and on and on. Almost every single bit of news can be interesting, a driver to your portfolios. So I do think that being a multi-asset fund manager in particular is something that’s really attractive to me. But I think the last thing is that we are in a people business, and I do take real pleasure in some of the strong relationships that I’ve built in this industry over time, whether it’s clients, whether it’s colleagues. Each one of my managers that I’ve had, I still have really strong relationships with each one of them. And you actually, know, they mentor me, you could argue I mentor them as well. And we catch up regularly. So I do think I’ve really built strong relationships in this industry that will stay with me for the rest of my life.
Aoifinn Devitt: Absolutely. And no time have they been more important, I think, than during the past year when we we can, can all rely on them. In terms of— we talked about key people in your life. Were there key pieces of advice or any leading you to have any creed or motto now?
Justin: I wouldn’t say there’s necessarily a motto. I do think the resilience that my mum taught me was, or led by example, has really stayed with me all my life. But I suppose that there is one, it was a bit of advice, or was what I was told by one of my former managers, Joram Lustig, who I worked with at Viva Investors. He said to me, and it was a time you where, know, he’d given me responsibility of managing the multi-asset retail funds. And, you know, I didn’t really have any experience in managing multi-asset retail funds before, right? But he believed in And, me. You know, I used to come out of some meetings, and at a time where I doubt you myself, know, have that imposter syndrome the the way, way many people do. And a lot of the mentees that I speak to, you know, have you this, know, significant level of imposter syndrome. But he always used to say to me, you know, ‘Why are you intimidated? You know as much as them. You can do it.’ And the number of times he used to say that to me, maybe not that exact phrase, but in a different way every single time, that’s really stayed with me. And even when now I do have those tough days, I think it leads back to the resilience, right? When you do have those tough days, actually believing in yourself is really important. Believing that you can bounce back from drawbacks is really important. And I suppose what he said to me, that phrase paraphrased in a number of different ways, has really stayed with me.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, that kind of ties nicely to— I usually ask about advice to your younger self, but it seems like that might have been what it would be, believing in yourself.
Justin: I think so. I think so. The only other thing I’d say from my younger self is I’ve learned over time to be more empathetic. And I do think that 5 years into my career, I think the way I approach mentoring, the way I approach management, it would be completely different now. I try to walk in the other person’s shoes because I do think that is really important in really understanding where they came from, their culture, their privileges, and how they’re different from yours. And I think that’s something that I would definitely have done better with relationships in my early career if I’d known that.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, thank you, Justin. It’s been a pleasure speaking with you. I really do consider you a gift to our industry because of how you move the conversation along and how you take treat all of us, your Black colleagues, white colleagues in such a compassionate way. And thank you for starting and for really progressing the conversation. Thank you for sharing your insights here with us.
Justin: Thank you.
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 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.
