Vincent Ibia
Vincent Ibia was born in California, in the USA. He studied Applied Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was also an NCAA Division I Track & Field (aka Athletics) Athlete. After graduating from UC Berkeley he worked as a tutor and eventually pursued a Master of Arts in Education at Pepperdine University – where he also earned a teaching credential for high school Mathematics.
Wanting to use Mathematics more than to teach it, he went to work in the corporate world as a Risk Analyst for a subprime lender in the auto industry. His next role was as a Business Intelligence Analyst for Criteo, a publicly-traded French AdTech company. From there he went on to become a Systems Analyst at Revinate, a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) start-up in San Francisco.
He decided to leave the corporate world (and the USA) to study something that had first piqued his interest as an undergraduate – financial markets. Due to the high cost of post-secondary education in the USA, he chose to study in Europe, and enroll in PUEBs 1st English-instructed cohort of the Financial Engineering program.
After graduating from PUEB he got an offer with a financial research and advisory firm before succeeding in getting an offer from Credit Suisse to be a Quantitative Analyst. Around 2 years later, due to the macro environment at the time, Credit Suisse began a global headcount reduction of 15%. As such he transitioned to UBS. (Not long after changing companies, the macro situation turned, exacerbated by increased interest rates in the USA, took a toll on many banks – Credit Suisse included, and UBS was forced to merge with Credit Suisse). At UBS, Vincent was part of the Combined Stress Testing group working on regulatory reporting with responsibilities related to model development amongst other things.
1. What was the most breakthrough moment in your career?
The breakthrough moment in my career was getting the Quantitative Analyst role at Credit Suisse. Since I came to Poland to study Financial Engineering so that I could qualify for such positions, it was confirmation of my plan succeeding.
2. What has been your biggest professional success?
My biggest professional success was being an integral part of advancing an ambitious client onboarding plan at a start-up. These potential client businesses constituted 50% of our target market, and we critically needed several hundred to be integrated with technical launches in order to reduce the burn rate of the start-ups remaining fund towards break-even. I used my programming and analytic skills to streamline processes for quality assurance, and fully document implementation procedures, as well as train internal staff.
3. If you could go back to the starting point of your career, but with all the knowledge and experience you’ve gained, what would you do differently?
I would study for a specific financial certification, and then enroll in the same or similar program several years earlier.
4. What’s your recipe for success? How to achieve it? What to focus on? What to avoid? What competencies gained from your studies at PUEB turned out to be the most important?
Success, in the plainest terms, is just doing what you intend. It requires ignoring and saying no to many other similar things, and having a handful of goals you consistently believe in. My motto when studying at PUEB was that “It is not about maximizing your GPA during the program. It is about how much you remember on the day that you graduate.” It’s not your GPA that they ask you to explain in interviews, and it’s not your GPA you draw upon to do the job. Ignore your score. Remember what you’ve learned.
5. What advice would you give current students who are at the beginning of their careers?
My advice is to start and be ready to switch. No one has one job for their entire life. You also will not be able to settle upon what job tasks you’d really enjoy, until you’ve experienced some of the work involved.