Career conversations: Understand where to focus your efforts

The CFA Program sets you apart, people see your value. I rose from being an Associate, now I am the Principal of Investments at my current firm. My name is Isaac Asomani. I'm the Investment Principal of Wangara Green Ventures.

I have a solid background in finance. I started off by doing a degree in banking and finance at the university. Right after the degree, I went on to work with an investment banking firm. So we did things in private equity, a bit of venture capital and then brokerage and then mutual funds as well.

Throughout this journey, I had a passion for finance. I had the passion to excel in this field, but I thought that I needed to have a global certification to be able to break boundaries and to be able to help me further my understanding of finance. And that led me to want to pursue the CFA Program.

The CFA Program is the gold standard in certifications when it comes to finance. At the time, I had read about how the CFA Program equips you with the needed financial skills. So, it was a no brainer. I needed to get to the CFA (Program) and to excel and push my career to the next step.

The CFA Program is a challenging program. When I failed the Level I, I didn’t relent I learned about patience, you need to put in the work, countless number of hours and then having the dedication to continue through with it. It also taught me about humility. I mean, the vastness of finance, even though I had the experience, I realized that there was more to finance, and the CFA (Program) really equipped me in that aspect as well.

In the ecosystem in Ghana, we face a demand and supply problem. So the demand for capital by these entrepreneurs is so high, whereas the supply of the capital is low. And so from the onset, you need to do rigorous investment analysis, you need to do rigorous due diligence, and the CFA Program prepared me for that.

How do I allocate scarce financial resources to the right entrepreneurs and to the right areas where we can have the proper impact, and then helping these companies to grow. And when they grow, they contribute to the climate change mitigation, they contribute to climate change adaptation as well, and then they contribute to social impact, which is job creation, improving the income and the livelihood of poor people. And these sort of tie in to their sustainable development goals.

So the transition from asset management into impact investing and venture capital was a pivotal one for me. In asset management, I did a lot of investment analysis. The whole idea was how do you maximize return. In impact investing, the whole idea is to be able to do all this, have a base of ethics. And this is what some of the things that the CFA Program equipped me with.

In my line of duty on a daily basis, I apply a lot of ethical principles when I'm doing due diligence, when I'm analyzing a company, an individual, an entrepreneur, these are things that I really apply a lot.

I would really encourage aspiring CFA® candidates to never give up, embrace failure as part of the journey. It is difficult, but the question is, what do you do after the failure. Pick up yourself, identify areas where you can improve and then you continue and just keep going. And you're going to make it and you will see the impact.