Career conversations: Make the small opportunities count

Everywhere you find yourself, ensure that you put in your best. Because when that opportunity for the bigger one comes tomorrow, it is those experiences in those small opportunities that would really determine how well you do on that bigger one. My name is Emmanuel Egyam and I’m associate with Adenia Partners.

So I studied Bachelor of Commerce at the University of Cape Coast. After my internship I discovered private equity. This is what I've been looking out for. That career that marries my two strong interests, which is basically finance and entrepreneurship.  

The CFA® Program is the mother of all finance programs. Every finance profession finds something in there that they can learn from. No matter where you sit across the finance spectrum, you find something in the CFA® curriculum that is quite relevant for your careers.

I typically tell people that I would divide the CFA® curriculum into three parts. Things like understanding financial statement, analyzing them. So that is the directly applicable part of the CFA Program.  

The second part for me, which is understanding of the macro environment, interest rate, inflation, unemployment and how all of these things can affect the businesses that I am looking at.

One of the things that CFA (Program) does for you is, it introduces you to the diverse perspectives versus very narrow thinking perspective. For instance, you do behavioral finance in CFA (Program). The first thing that I did was to speak to people who have done the CFA® curriculum.  

The second advice I got, which was quite helpful, was practice, practice, practice. It's very important to understand how you study. So for me, I like visual content. I had to leverage on third-party training providers that have visual content that I could use. I use that throughout all the levels and it was quite helpful in understanding the concepts quickly. 

So the CFA Program is very well respected across the globe. It's recognition, I mean everyone sees this as their top most finance certification you can get. It opens doors, I think they looked upon me more favorably than before because of the CFA® Charter. At the end of the day, these are the networks that will bring you opportunities.