How have you progressed through your career path to your current role?
I joined Morgan Stanley as an Analyst working in Operations. I worked for Institutional Client Service Operations covering the equity markets for 10 years. Working closely with our Sales and Trading, my team was responsible for allocating and reporting daily transactions to the Morgan Stanley’s clients. My responsibilities increased over the years in managing the day to day processing team and leading important projects. My time in Operations allowed me to develop a good understanding of our internal processes and to build a strong network across the different departments. I took an internal mobility opportunity to the Legal and Compliance Division in 2016. Leveraging my past experience, I am now responsible for conducting internal reviews to ensure Morgan Stanley follows the best practices and local regulations.
What motivates you at work?
The possibility of learning something new every day and sharing my knowledge.
The team that I work for is relatively small in Japan and since we cover the entire firm, there are frequent opportunities to work on new initiatives. We work closely with our Hong Kong colleagues leveraging everyone’s knowledge and past experiences. There is a constant exchange of ideas and opinions on how to best approach challenging situations which create plenty of opportunities for learning new things. This collaborative environment also allows me to contribute my knowledge from working in Operations whenever someone performs work related to the middle office function.
What is the most fulfilling aspect of your work?
The reviews that our team is performing are mostly executed on a risk based approach. I find my work the most rewarding when we complete an extensive review looking at the firm’s front to back processes on a specific subject and finding no deviance with our internal policies as well as with local rules and regulations. This highlights to robustness of Morgan Stanley’s processes and controls in place. In the other end, I also see value in the work we are doing when our reviews identify areas where the firm could do better. In such situations, our role will be to coordinate the various stakeholders in order to promptly remediate the gaps that were identified.
Tell us about your involvement in any volunteer activities at Morgan Stanley.
With colleagues from other departments, I manage the annual Charity Tennis Open sponsored by Morgan Stanley. This one day event gathers over 100 players from different financial companies and law firms and raise approximately USD15,000 annually which is donated to local charities. This event represents for me a great opportunity to “Giving back” which is one of Morgan Stanley’s four Core Values and to enjoy a day with colleagues from the industry who share common interest for tennis.
What advice would you give students who are job-hunting or are interested in a career at Morgan Stanley?
Explore the world and build on different experiences.
As I was an undergraduate university student in my home country, Canada, I participated in a 6 months exchange program to study in a different environment and a second language. For my master degree studies, I decided to go one step further and enrolled for a program in International Finance in Australia. While completing my degrees, I took my summer vacations as opportunities to gain work experience as intern in Japan. All these experiences allow me to better define myself and differentiate from the others.
