My first experience in international finance
By Cédric Pierre-Louis on Thursday 28 October 2010, 01:23 - Professional Area - Permalink
Life never fails to surprise me. After working as an event and project manager at Capital Games, I was hired as a back office officer in the 3rd largest Corporate and Investment bank in the Eurozone; SGCIB (Société Générale Corporate and Investment Banking). I would have never imagined I will work one day in finance, but here we are.
I am part of the FOREX (foreign exchange) back office department, and I am in charge of the E2K area : Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Italy and Spain. At the beginning, I have to admit that I was quite intimidated by the position. Indeed, any little mistake can have costly and tragic consequences, so I did my best to perfectly understand all the process and master the set of internal softwares daily used. I feel lucky for meeting with this professional opportunity. It is a very interesting and formative job, but even if I got awesome advantages, and work with very nice people, I am not sure I will stay as enthusiastic as I am right now...
As you may know, I am passionate by IT and innovation. What attracts me the more in technology it is its ability to improve people life. That's the reason why I decided to focus my master thesis on ICT or more precisely, on how they can boost the development of sub-Saharan Africa.
I'll be frank with you, my dream is to work in the ICT sector in Africa, that will be the ideal situation for me. I am not interested in money, but in a job which makes sense according to my convictions. Though it is possible (I will even say compulsory) to contribute to the development of emerging countries thanks to finance (not only microfinance), private and public investments, I can not help myself thinking that innovation, IT and (computer) sciences can bring very positive things to Africa. Anyway, I will always feel much more comfortable when it is about technology. Besides, I need traveling and meeting new people all the time, so once again, I am not sure I really made for this B.O officer position.
Anyway, for the moment I am getting all the experience, all the knowledge and all the competencies I can get from my current job. Everyday I learn something new and it is very heady to have some of the largest international companies as clients...