YouSaid · the spoken record

Kweku Adoboli

lines on the record: 30
first: 2020-06-05
most recent: 2020-06-05
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Here at Goldman Sachs, they won't necessarily have them in their actual communities where they go back. Like several of the buildings that I lived in in Manhattan, I have been the only black resident of that building, or there have been more black doormen in the building than residents living in that building. Buildings with hundreds of people living in them. And so I think until people are having these genuine relationships and until people are feeling that this is a fight that belongs to them as well, I think it's going to be very difficult for us to cease change. I'm very positive based on what I've seen and based on the responses that I've gotten from the firm and the hundreds of emails and messages and notes and encouragement and people saying that they are having these conversations on their teams.”
2020-06-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · To Everyone Who’s Asked, ‘How’s It Going?’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the two most impactful things would be giving of time and money and having genuine relationships with people of different backgrounds. When you think about racial inequity in this country, there's a long history of it, not just in terms of policing and not just in terms of which institutions people have access to, but also when you think about the way that our country is structured and where people live. So many areas in the United States are either predominantly white or predominantly something else. And there isn't really that much integration. And that's part of the reason why it's very easy for people to depersonalize the experiences of other people. I imagine there are a number of my colleagues who don't have meaningful relationships with people of color. They don't have meaningful relationships with black people. Or even if they do have them,”
2020-06-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · To Everyone Who’s Asked, ‘How’s It Going?’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, you close the email by saying instead of reaching out to you directly, people could best use their effort and their initiation in other ways. What are some of the ways that you think people outside the black community can really help as true allies, not just today when it's sort of fashionable to do so, but in the months and years ahead”
2020-06-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · To Everyone Who’s Asked, ‘How’s It Going?’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then I have this moment of realization where I am an extremely casual clothing in a neighborhood in Chicago that doesn't have a lot of black people. And I understand that the way that I view myself and the way that my colleagues and friends from college view me is not the way that these two law enforcement officers view me in that moment. And there wasn't the same level of, oh, well, this person is smart, we will give them the benefit of the doubt. There was the, we have reports of a black male in this area who is stealing from homes. You are a blackmail in this area. Clearly, you are the person who has perpetrated this crime.”
2020-06-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · To Everyone Who’s Asked, ‘How’s It Going?’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“An extremely difficult experience for me, not because it was my worst interaction with law enforcement, but because it was Experience that hit me in a moment when I was just starting to feel good about myself and my professional prospects and my position in my community and just like my starting to feel like a big deal, right? And obviously that was my lack of humility. I was like, oh yeah, like I went to the school and I have this job and I'm a trader and I get paid a certain amount of money. people who know me respect me and think that I'm smart and Obviously, that should transfer into all of the interactions that I have.”
2020-06-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · To Everyone Who’s Asked, ‘How’s It Going?’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you talked about encounters with the police. You had your own encounter with the police. You wrote about this in the note 2011. You leave in a ballgame in Chicago. Talk a little bit about what that was like someone who gets stopped a professional just going home”
2020-06-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · To Everyone Who’s Asked, ‘How’s It Going?’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Very hard for us to make progress because the people who are suffering for this don't have the ability to fix it because if they had the ability to fix it, then they wouldn't be suffering from it by construction.”
2020-06-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · To Everyone Who’s Asked, ‘How’s It Going?’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Am a black person living in the United States, but I am also a managing director at Goldman Sachs living in New York City in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. There are so many ways that my life could have gone differently and there are so many people who have different experiences than I have. And so I could just say, oh, well, most of the time I'm not going to have these negative interactions with law enforcement anymore. And most of the time I'll dress in a particular way. And most of the time I'll be around people and kind of feel safe. And so this isn't really my problem. And I think when our society doesn't treat it as a problem for everyone in our society that a citizen can be killed extrajudiciously.”
2020-06-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · To Everyone Who’s Asked, ‘How’s It Going?’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so until more people who are not members of that group are also involved in this fight and view those people as people and see these injustices and get as angry and upset and saddened by them and have their hearts break. We're not going to be able to move forward as a country because it is quite easy as an individual in this country to separate your well-being from the well-being of other people.”
2020-06-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · To Everyone Who’s Asked, ‘How’s It Going?’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we're all just processing that. And on the one hand, it builds a certain resiliency and it makes us the people that we are, but on the other hand, it just gives you this. Almost pit inside you in this anger and this sadness that you don't really know how to deal with sometimes.”
2020-06-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · To Everyone Who’s Asked, ‘How’s It Going?’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think it all just Comes together in this pot of When I think about the black experience in the United States, I think about a lot of my friends, a lot of my colleagues. I feel like a lot of us carry this racial trauma that we don't necessarily know how to deal with. And so sometimes we end up getting cracked open and we're like sobbing our eyes out about it. Sometimes we make extremely dark jokes about the terrible things that happen to people who look like us. But there's just this long painful catalog of things that have happened, things that we've seen happen to our friends, things that have happened in near recent history in this country and in other countries that we hail from.”
2020-06-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · To Everyone Who’s Asked, ‘How’s It Going?’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What is it about these events that has been triggered in me and what is it about the path that I have taken in my life that caused me to process these events in the way that I did and how can I get people to feel and understand that, at least on some level?”
2020-06-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · To Everyone Who’s Asked, ‘How’s It Going?’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Depth of emotion and to show that to my colleagues and to be vulnerable in this way. This isn't a thing that I do necessarily even with my very close friends, unfortunately, which I think was probably part of the reason why I felt so terrible because you're living at home in isolation and you feel like all of these things are happening around you and you don't really know how to deal with them. And so it was within that backdrop that I just felt that I had to say something and I didn't really know what to say. It's an email that I started at least six times in six different ways. And then I thought,”
2020-06-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · To Everyone Who’s Asked, ‘How’s It Going?’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is not, I think if it were not this particular moment in time with the current political climate and administration, if it were not the particular moment in time within Goldman Sachs with our leadership both making bold stances on diversity and also challenging us to hold them accountable and if I hadn't seen leadership from other people both at the analyst level and at the partner level within the firm just speaking to what it was that they were feeling at the time, like I don't think that I would have been able to send that email. Certainly not this like extremely personal soul-bearing crack yourself open sort of missive to my colleagues, right? Because one of the things that was going through my mind is my job is to be a manager of risk. And so the thing that people need to be able to do is to trust my judgment. And so I need to be quantitative and I need to be data driven and I need to be solid. And so for me to have this”
2020-06-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · To Everyone Who’s Asked, ‘How’s It Going?’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And there are a number of people who reached out to me afterwards who had asked me how it was going that very day who were not expecting the response that they ended up receiving, but who then still thanked me for being honest about it.”
2020-06-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · To Everyone Who’s Asked, ‘How’s It Going?’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I think. Part of it was me needing to process my feelings about the situation. I was a wreck this past weekend. I spent most of it in bed. I kept thinking, oh, I want to go out. And then I kept thinking, I can't. I don't know where I would go. I don't know what I would do. I don't know how to process this feeling that I have But one, I felt that someone needed to say something in a way that would speak to the actual experience of the people of color here at Goldman Sachs and the black experience of people here at Goldman Sachs. And I also for myself needed to figure out How to articulate this whole that I had been feeling inside.”
2020-06-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · To Everyone Who’s Asked, ‘How’s It Going?’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You drop in a conversation and then everyone goes quiet, right? Like it's not, oh, hey, how's it going? Yeah, like I'm just coping with the fact that people are being murdered for no reason. Like, that's not. That's not an easy conversation to have, but it is a critical conversation to have if people really are going to bring their whole selves to work and if we are actually going to build a community that supports all of the people coming from all of the different places that they come in order to be here at OpenSense.”
2020-06-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · To Everyone Who’s Asked, ‘How’s It Going?’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then also, I think, on a slightly selfish note Because so many of the conversations that I begin with, because I have like a fairly good relationship with my colleagues, begin with them checking in. Not always clear how to have the real conversation, right? Like someone can say, hey, how's it going? And you say, yeah, it's fine, or it's okay. It's not always clear that that's an invitation to have a real conversation, and it's not always clear that that's an invitation to have as weighty of a conversation as systemic racism and inequality and violence in the United States. That conversation is a bummer. That's not a conversation that I get excited to talk about, except to the extent that it gets other people excited about fighting this injustice with me. It's one of those things that”
2020-06-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · To Everyone Who’s Asked, ‘How’s It Going?’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At the end of the day, I did a thing that I found to be profoundly uncomfortable, not because I wanted to do this thing, but because I was hearing from so many analysts and associates across our organization that they wanted to be able to have these conversations, but they didn't feel that they were able to do that. They didn't know how to bring up the fact that they cried for several hours and then tried to show up for work or sat in a room while their siblings cried thinking about the fact that any of these people that died could have been them and trying to have these conversations with their family members trying to make sense of it themselves and trying to get the people around them to understand why they are upset or angry or how much it would mean to them if other people within the firm were to just reach out and ask them how they were doing it.”
2020-06-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · To Everyone Who’s Asked, ‘How’s It Going?’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So Try to be an ally and advocate. I am not necessarily a feelings person, and so many of my experiences are so personal for me and so emotional for me that I don't necessarily feel comfortable having that conversation, or at least I did not until fairly recently. And to answer the related question as to why I wrote the email that I did.”
2020-06-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · To Everyone Who’s Asked, ‘How’s It Going?’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then you have to figure out am I going to turn that off and do my job and be my best self at Goldman Sachs or am I going to let myself feel this thing that potentially means that my productivity is going to just be non-existent because I'm just going to be sitting looking at an email that I'm trying to write and thinking about the fact that someone was on a man's throat for eight minutes and 46 seconds and thinking about all of the people who saw that happen and did nothing, like at least three police officers. But if you think about it, then the fact that this happened in a very public space, how many people watched this person die? And that is a very difficult thought to have in a Zoom conversation with your team when someone is talking about something that is clearly important to your business, but not necessarily a thing that you can focus on in that moment in time.”
2020-06-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · To Everyone Who’s Asked, ‘How’s It Going?’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The other hand, it's extremely difficult to watch all of these things. And there's just this. Heaviness to it that is extremely difficult to cope with. And so it's in the context of all of these things that you're seeing on Instagram and all of the news that you read before you log in and the log in and start work every day.”
2020-06-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · To Everyone Who’s Asked, ‘How’s It Going?’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Other people who look like you. And so even if you personally are not being affected by these things because you're sitting in your comfortable home in Manhattan or in whatever part of the world you happen to be in, these things are still happening to people who look like you, people who look like your brothers and sisters and colleagues and friends and family members. And seeing this is just hard. And on the one hand, I think that media is fantastic in that it allows people to appreciate these things in a way that they otherwise would not. Like I don't think that the US civil rights movement would have happened if it weren't for the evening news segments showing black peaceful protesters being beaten and hosed in the middle of the street and having dogs set on them. On the one hand, I think it's extremely powerful and extremely vital that we are able to see these things and share these things as they happen.”
2020-06-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · To Everyone Who’s Asked, ‘How’s It Going?’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sometimes in my life, it feels like the thing that makes sense and the place where I have control and can be my best, most effective self. And so one of the things, particularly with the work from home situation where you don't have to deal with commuting and you don't have friends that you're meeting in the evening, it becomes very easy to either throw yourself completely into your work and then burn out or on the other end you feel like you can't really focus on your job because there are so many other things that are happening that touch you personally and also touch the other members of your community. And the other thing that is difficult obviously like working in the financial services industry where one of the things that we work on is wealth creation for our clients. It's very difficult to deal with that and square your particular privilege and experiences with the things that are happening.”
2020-06-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · To Everyone Who’s Asked, ‘How’s It Going?’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's tricky. So, like, on the one hand, and obviously this is unhealthy, and I'm trying to do better about this, I think there was a point in time during all of this where Personally, I love the work that I do. I find it fascinating. I find it fulfilling.”
2020-06-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · To Everyone Who’s Asked, ‘How’s It Going?’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Talk about bringing your whole self to work, but the two problems with that statement these days, one is we're not going to the office. And two, bringing your whole self to work with the anguish and the pain that you're describing almost makes it impossible to work. So how do you have you tried to get through and sort of survive, bring your A-game in the middle of that environment? Or is it impossible?”
2020-06-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · To Everyone Who’s Asked, ‘How’s It Going?’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think for me personally and for a lot of the members of the black community here at Goldman Sachs, these things are just extremely difficult for us to process. And so you'll be here trying to show up, trying to be your best work self. And then at times you don't even know if it matters, right? You're sitting in a Zoom call and you're talking about the thing that you're talking about. You're trying to service your clients, but then there is this backdrop and this like cloud hanging over you about all of the other things that are happening in the world. And you just don't know if you really care about bonds at that moment in time.”
2020-06-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · To Everyone Who’s Asked, ‘How’s It Going?’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Number of tragic events happening in the United States where African Americans are being killed for under completely avoidable circumstances. So you have the killing of Ahmad Arbury in Georgia where he's running through a nearby neighborhood and two members of that community kill him. And then you have the killing of Breonna Taylor where police officers are serving a no-knock warrant. her boyfriend thinks that it's a home invasion. He fires on these police officers and then calls 911 as his partner is bleeding out and police officers stand outside of his home. And then you also have obviously the killing of George Floyd. Just on the”
2020-06-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · To Everyone Who’s Asked, ‘How’s It Going?’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In and of themselves would have been a fairly noteworthy event in financial markets, but all of them kind of happened one after another after another, and it kind of just felt like this unending barrage of the world falling apart. And so it's like within this backdrop that all the people in global markets are trying to do their jobs, trying to service their clients. And then on top of that, as we are dealing with and navigating through all of these delicate situations,”
2020-06-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · To Everyone Who’s Asked, ‘How’s It Going?’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think for me personally and for a lot of the members of the black community here at Goldman Sachs, these things are just extremely difficult for us to process. And so you'll be here trying to show up, trying to be your best work self. And then at times you don't even know if it matters, right? You're sitting in a Zoom call and you're talking about the thing that you're talking about. You're trying to service your clients. But then there's this backdrop and this like cloud hanging over you about all of the other things that are happening in the world. And you just don't know if you really care about bonds at that moment in time.”
2020-06-05 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · To Everyone Who’s Asked, ‘How’s It Going?’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT