Where do you work (or where have you worked) and what is (or was) your position? Tell us a little bit about your career path or intended career path.

I was in the College, and I actually was an Echols Scholar. I don’t know if you still call it this but at the time we called it “Echoling Out” so I have a pure Bachelor of Arts degree. I graduated (I don’t like to admit this) in 1989, so a long time ago. I have been in New York ever since. I did get an MBA in finance and management at night at NYU. I’m not sure that an MBA is [as] necessary now as it was for me at the time, but it certainly is valuable having made this career switch as a banker. People are skeptical when they hear I was an operator and then “oh, okay you have an MBA in finance from NYU, you do have some more traditional credentials”. And I ran, built, and transacted media companies as an operator for a couple decades and then in 2019 moved over and initially joined a small boutique bank, where I did 12 transactions in 20 months there (which is a significant volume). I joined DC Advisory December of last year with the thought that it’s a more established, definitively middle market bank, which I liked. It’s not huge and there’s a lot of focus on culture in a positive way, but you’ve got enough people that you have full teams on projects which was important to me to be able to provide that level of service to my clients. And the other thing that I really liked about DC Advisory is we truly are an international firm. The last thing I did before jumping on this call was working with a gentleman named Satoshi who is part of our Asia Access Team on a presentation we’re going to give to a Japanese company next week - we truly are working cross-border. I focus on media, but I think this is true across most industries; you really need to be cross-border and have an international perspective for business today.

What does (or did) your position entail? What, essentially, do you do on a daily basis?

Well I think for me (and I’ll be really brief) a big chunk of what I am doing is business development and being out there. Being present, knowing what’s going on, knowing where the opportunities are. For me, you should always be looking at how do you put deals together for your current clients but also who is going to be your client list next year, who is going to be my client three years from now. And it might be even more important who is going to be my client three years from now.

When and how did you know you were interested in pursuing a career in investment banking?

Well, it kind of pursued me. Mine is a funny story because I got a call saying “your old company is going to be for sale again, why don’t you come help us pitch for the business and if we get the engagement, you get to sell your old company again and see if you like being a banker?” That is not a typical story on any level, but that’s how I became a banker. I realized that I was accustomed to much of what you need to do to succeed as a banker. Because I’d been building businesses and asking questions like what should we buy or what part of this company should we sell - even doing cap raises as an operator. As a banker, you are either helping people buy more companies, sell their company, or raise money to grow their company. I have done it, all three, but on the other side.

How do you recommend preparing for a career in investment banking during your undergraduate years?

There definitely is, as part of the interview process, technical questions [that are] analytical in how you approach [them]. When I talk to people, I’m much more judging intellectual curiosity, the ability to be a self-starter, to know when to ask for help but also to be self sufficient. So the intellectual curiosity and, to me, any leadership that you have shown on Grounds (through organizations, sports, community service, whatever it may be); these are important to me because it shows a more well-rounded individual which I have a bias towards – as does UVA.

Do you recommend attending graduate school? If you did attend graduate school, was it a useful experience? If you did not, do you wish you had?​

Well I talked about it a little bit. I think, for me, I was just a couple years out of school and had advanced pretty quickly. I was [picking up] on a lot of perception that I shouldn’t have a seat at the table, once it was literally said to me. I felt that I needed that additional credential. I went at night, [which is] not something I would necessarily recommend, because I do think that if you go back to business school, part of the experience for people that I know have had a great experience, is that class cohort - the comradery and the network that you build there. And as a night student, that’s just not how it’s structured or how it worked (no offense to NYU). I do think [it could be useful] if you’re making a career shift. So say you come out of UVA and you do Teach for America for 2 years, or the Peace Corps, or the like and then you say, that’s been great, but now I want to be a banker or a consultant. Then, getting an MBA is very valuable and it opens the doors that would be very difficult for you [to open] making a shift like that. If you have a banking job, and you want a change, I’m not sure that the path Haider took isn’t better – where you go into private equity or VC or something similar for a couple of years and then decide you want to come back.

Given that these careers are often very demanding, what is lifestyle like? How do you balance personal and professional life?

I do think one of the positives of COVID (and there are not a lot) is it has taught us all how to adapt more to working wherever. I have not made a secret of this, my mother has been very ill this year. I talked to two of the senior people; I asked, would it be okay if I worked from Florida for a period of time? And the response was “If you need to be in Florida, be in Florida” – and it wasn’t flippant. We have all figured out that, while there is a benefit of being able to be together and in person, you don’t have to be sitting at a desk all day, every day to be effective. I think we work very hard to have this be a hybrid environment but when you have to be here, you’re here.

Any other advice or recommendations?

One [piece of advice is] just to be thoughtful when you’re talking to firms and to pick up as much as possible [about] the culture, the team dynamic. Particularly if you’re at an information session or you’re at an interview where there’s a couple people, watch how they’re interacting with each other. The second is just enjoy your time at UVA and make sure you are not so focused on what that internship and what that job is afterwards, that you miss the experience. I’m biased, we’re both biased, as we’re both very involved as alums. And most of my best friends are on a 15-person text chain and we were all undergrad together, all these years later we know each other’s kids and our parents and what’s going on in each other’s lives. Don’t get so focused on [how] you have to have the perfect internship that you miss out on all of that, because that is part of what makes UVA extraordinary. And don’t think that the student self-governance and the intellectual curiosity and the diversity of thought and opportunity is something that you’re going to get every place else you are in your life because it is extraordinary.