Welcome and thank you for coming to my blog!
My name is Sofia and I am passionate about diversity, money, pay, and women’s issues. We should all talk more freely about these topics, and this blog is my attempt at normalizing them.
I set to start this blog to talk about money and financial matters from a female point of view, as well as other women’s issues and diversity.
I think everybody should embrace diversity, but my background and upbringing has made me acutely aware of this subject. I am the fruit of a mixed marriage, and I have been told I was different ever since I was born. I love it and I hate it all at once. One thing that I have come to understand since I was a child is that the majority can be overbearing and impose its views and thoughts on others. This is not Okay!
I left my native Morocco at the age of 18 to go and study in Paris. I graduated with a Master’s degree in Applied Mathematics. I then got a banking job in London in 2007. My timing was impeccable: the financial crisis hit and the industry shrank. But I somehow managed to keep my job all these years. It was interesting, exciting, challenging and unexpected. It was a cosmopolitan and relatively diverse environment, full of smart, driven and sometimes even inspiring people. I enjoyed working there and made many friends. It was also hard and I spent very long hours in the office. So, after much thinking, I decided to take a year-long sabbatical to focus on Sofia. I was fortunate that my employer was offering this possibility. Since then, I haven’t gone back to working in financial markets.
Throughout my professional life, I was struck by the type of diversity in the industry. People were coming from all over the world, but really from a small number of elite universities. There were very few women, openly gay or Black people, or people from poorer socio-economic backgrounds.
The loudest voices calling for diversity in London came from women. But most men looked at it suspiciously, as though diversity in the workplace was a chore instead of something to aspire to.
I couldn’t help but wonder: How can we cater for a diverse society when the world’s banking wholesalers are lacking in diversity?
BLM showed us all that if you don’t experience another person’s life, you have no idea what they’re going through.
Everybody needs financial products, yet the creators of financial products are not a diverse crowd and they just cannot create products for needs and lives they can’t imagine.
Let’s all work towards a more inclusive society and world! I hope this blog will be a small contribution towards that goal.
I will aim to publish a post per week, and I would love to read your thoughts and comments!
