Career conversations: Find out what is important to you and your career

The CFA® Program really helped me shape my career. It helped me find what I was really passionate about, I'm really thankful for it. I am Jose Segarra, Managing Director of SetGo and I’m the President of the CFA® Society Mexico.

It was very early on in my career that I thought about going through the CFA Program. When I graduated and I started working in portfolio management as an analyst for fixed income, I went right on to study the CFA Program. I ended school in May in 2012 and immediately the next year I went through the first two levels of the program and then next year I have completed the third level. So, it was in two years that I completed.

It was very good for me because it helped me find out what was more important to me was to study equity, was to work in equity instead of fixed income. After being a portfolio manager for fixed income in government funds, managing more than USD12 billion, I went back to being an analyst. I am sure that the CFA Program helped me get a better track in what my career was like, ending up as an asset allocation director, managing a pension fund.

Nowadays I focus more on investment banking, switching away from the public markets to the private markets I believe that when you participate in the public markets, in the end you're a price taker, you can only get what the market is offering at that time. But in the private markets, you can help establish what is the win-win deal between the parties.

That's what I really like about those opportunities that allows more collaboration instead of a mere transaction. So the private markets right now is my focus because of the opportunity to enable collaboration there.

You know, I think early on in my career, I was much more focused on competition. I believe and I still believe in working hard and being the best. But right now,I think that the focus changes more to collaboration. Empathy, knowing how to sell. You have to sell your strategy if you're on the buy side, you have to get everyone to come and do what you want to get done. And when you're doing private transactions, you need to know how to sell.  

I think that is the biggest requirement if you're working in finance or if you're working in whatever field, you have to know what moves people. So I think that is a big driver, how we can work together, and that's why I believe it's so important to just helping out and in the end it comes back to you. It helps you.

The CFA Program means a lot to me  and that's why I set my nomination for the role as President of the CFA® Society here in Mexico. Thankfully I got picked. It's a huge challenge, but it's something that I believe in truly. I really believe that the program and the community is not only here in Mexico, but in the rest of the world, this almost 200,000 CFA® Charterholders are adding a lot of value.

And that is why I'm convinced of creating more value for all of those members that are already part of the Society, as well as bringing in more candidates, to be a driver of change, to have a better economy, a better world.