Letters to My Younger Self: Alex Chi, Asset & Wealth Management

Alex Chi is co-head of Americas Direct Lending, and co-chief executive officer and co-president of the Goldman Sachs BDC complex. Here, Alex shares five pieces of advice he wishes he had received earlier in his career.

Dear Alex,

As you read this letter, you are completing your summer internship at Goldman Sachs, eagerly awaiting what opportunities will follow your graduation from MIT. Little do you know, you will receive a full-time offer to return to the firm and will spend the first three years of your career as an analyst across the Information Technology, Fixed Income Capital Markets and Leveraged Finance groups. Early on, you will have a diverse set of experiences and networks, as you will help develop the first electronic trading system as a fixed income coder and work on the trading floor – this experience, while challenging, will set you up for unique opportunities.

Later on, you made the decision not to go to business school. Instead, you took a chance and accepted a position to work in Asia and become part of the first banking team in Korea, when the Seoul office only had two people. You also lived in Hong Kong, working in Mergers & Acquisitions for three years, then became homesick and made your way back to New York, where you spent the next two decades in Leveraged Finance and the Financial and Strategic Investors Group. You then accepted an opportunity to move to Asset & Wealth Management where you now help lead our private credit investing platform in the Americas.

As you move from city to city and team to team over the next 30 years, I am sharing five pieces of advice to help you along the way:

1. Change accelerates growth. Learning how to pivot from strategies that may have been successful in the past as you orient yourself toward the future might be the key differentiator to advance your career. Being able to execute deliverables brings opportunities and the trust of senior stakeholders early on. After that, you need to learn how to self advocate and communicate your impact and remain open to changing your mindset for what comes next. It’s a steep learning curve, but will help propel you to the next phase of your career.

2. Developing strong judgment requires experience and effort. At Goldman Sachs, it is easy to move from one project to the next and become absorbed into the volume of information that you come across each day. However, taking the time to process and reflect on wins and areas of improvement from completed projects will play to your advantage and sharpen your skills over time. It’s also important to continuously seek feedback along the way.

3. Embrace your identity. I have had the opportunity to serve as a leader for the Asian Network at the firm, and strongly believe that having a community is important for personal and career growth. Value your unique traits and interests since you never know how they might serve you in your relationships. For example, I was able to build rapport with clients by bonding over karaoke and Korean BBQ, something my competitors at other firms could not do.

4. Stay nimble, and incorporate feedback to evolve your approach with time. For all my life, it was ingrained in me that if I kept my head down and worked hard, opportunities would follow. One day, I realized this mindset was no longer serving me, so I set a goal to prepare ahead of every meeting and to contribute at least one salient point to the conversation. I may have received feedback the following year to listen more than I talk, but I took this over-correction from previously rarely speaking up as a win, and shared this achievement with my then mentor.

5. Keys to career longevity: challenge, passion and people. First, taking risks, such as transitioning from being a coder to a client-facing role or uprooting my life to Asia or transitioning from a banker to an investor, are a few examples of how I built the chapters of my career at the firm. Second, burnout is dangerous and real. You will find that exceling in your role will come easier if you are finding joy in your day-to-day tasks. Third, it might feel like you are investing a lot of energy to build your network, but investing in the people around you may one day lead to opportunities knocking at your door.