Rowing to success at J.P. Morgan

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David Rawlings: Hi, you're listening to What's the Deal?, our investment banking series here on J.P. Morgan's Making Sense podcast. I'm your host, David Rawlings, country head for J.P. Morgan in Canada. Usually, our podcast focuses on investment banking market trends and industry news, but with the Paris Olympics approaching, we're hosting a special episode. This episode is a spotlight of our own J.P. Morgan employees who lead interesting lives and have great stories to share. I'm joined by Mohamed Sbihi, also known as Moe, and Jessica Eddie. Moe and Jess are incredible athletes who participated in past Olympic Games and have now transitioned to successful careers at J.P. Morgan through our EMEA Military and Athlete Transition Program. This program is part of our firm-wide Military and Veterans Affairs, which offers a unique opportunity for military personnel and elite athletes to transition into a career in financial services in EMEA. Mohamed and Jessica, welcome to the podcast.

Jessica Eddie: Thanks for having us.

Mohamed Sbihi: Thank you for having me as well.

David: So let's talk about your Olympics experience. The thing I thought was so interesting is you both had very long careers as athletes, and I think you participated in multiple Olympic games and world championships. But just walk us through your journey and maybe get a couple of highlights, Moe, along the way, and then we'll transition to Jess.

Mohamed: Yes, of course. So my story in rowing is a little bit of a fairy tale to myself. I was 15 years old way back in 2003. Rowing is traditionally a private school or a university. That's how it's traditionally seen within this country. I went to a normal state secondary school, and I did every sport under the sun. And then a special physical education lesson took place where they wanted all the tall kids to go to the assembly hall, basically run for a couple of tests. And I was actually on the school bus to go to our fields to go and play football or soccer because all my friends were short. Then, lo and behold, didn't physically get pulled off the bus, but I got accosted off the bus by my teacher and said, "You need to go and take part in this lesson,' because I was 6 foot 5 at the time, was the tallest kid in the year, did the day of testing, and it changed the rest of my life. I got picked up by the program to say that I had all the raw parameters to win an Olympic medal, having never set foot or sat in a rowing boat before. And it was a long journey to get there. So that was way back in 2003. Then in 2010, I finally made the senior team, of which Jess was already involved in, having already been to Olympic Games without stealing her thunder. And we both had the joys of competing at home Olympic Games in 2012, where I was quite young and naive and didn't really appreciate how special that would be. And then won a bronze medal, which was really you know very, very lucky. It was a massive disappointment. There's no smiling faces on the podium of our photos, which I'm sure we'll go into more detail later. And then it culminated in two amazing feats within my career, winning gold in the men's coxless four in Rio and continuing that legacy of five continuous Olympic Games that we had won that event, which is fantastic. And then becoming the first Muslim flag bearer at the opening ceremony in the Tokyo Olympic Games, which, when I look back on, that's why I call it a fairy tale, because there are so many sliding door moments, serendipitous that I'm sat here even today talking about my career as a rower because, without that one day of testing, I wouldn't be sat here, I'd probably be a barber at my dad's barbershop not too far down from these offices. That's where my life was heading until rowing came along and changed the course of my life.

David: It's incredible. All right, we're going to come back to it in a few minutes, but Jess, let's transition to you and maybe you can share a couple of your highlights too.

Jessica: Yes so I started at quite young age, I was 8 years old and from a city called Durham in the Northeast of England. We're quite an old city and we have a river flowing through the middle of our city. There wasn't a time that I didn't not know about rowing. We're a big university city. All these colleges and all these boats would always be around. I was lucky because I had a twin sister. So I always had someone to drag along and play sports with. We played every sport under the sun. We used to play rugby quite a lot as children. And then as I got into it in my teens, rowing really rewards hard work. And I found out that the more training you do, you can suddenly become a lot better than people around you. I think that really spoke to me and I started doing that and really similar to Moe, started doing it and got better and better and got asked to go to the national trials, made junior national teams, went to the world championships when I was 16. And it kind of snowballed from there. I went to my first games in Beijing in 2008. Then in that Olympiad, met this giant man called Moe and became quite good friends with him. And then went to London 2012 and Rio 2016.

David: Wow and Rio, also, you guys had fabulous performances. Just talk about that for a second.

Jessica:  Yes I raced in the women's eight at three Olympic games, which actually has nine people in it because we carry a coxswain, which is a little person right at the end of the boat that steers and shouts and tells us what to do, which is a bit of dead weight, but it's fun to go in a straight line. I became fifth in the Beijing games in 2008, became fifth in my home games in London 2012. And despite my parents saying, "Go and get a real job," I carried on to Rio in 2016 and we got a silver medal in the eight, which was huge for us, it was historical. We had an incredible race where we were actually coming last the entire course and managed to get through to the front of the field. Annoyingly, the Americans beat me at all three of my Olympic games. I raced at a time when USA were very strong in women's eights racing, but finishing my career with Olympic silver was everything.

David: And here you are at an American bank, global bank, but US-based global bank. No, good stuff. Just talk about the fact that you actually both had real longevity in this sport. Is it reflective of the sport or is it reflective of your own experience in the sport? And Jess, let's start with you.

Jessica: Yes, in rowing, you can go on for quite a long time. So I went to three Olympic games, Moe went to three Olympic games. We're a power endurance sport. So anyone that's out there that does marathons or does these kinds of crazy ultra-marathons or big physiological tests, you will probably notice that the more training you do, the better you do. And you can go on for a very long time. Certainly true for us. We'll probably lose some of that sprinting ability as we get a bit older, but that diesel engine can keep ticking along. The things that would hold you back in a sport like rowing are injury and illness. A lot of the time we are living in that red zone of injury, pushing our body to the absolute limit. We train three times a day. We get every third Sunday off. You're not really resting all that much. So the biggest kind of threat to your career is probably injury. As long as you can look after your body, yourself, and your mind, you can keep on going.

David: Wow So Moe, let's talk about that. It obviously is a sport that requires incredible discipline. You tell the story as if you were preordained to be an Olympian when you were 15, pulled off that bus, but we all know that's not the case. So just walk me through a little bit of what Jess just talked about. What was the mindset and the training that was required to go from A to B?

Mohamed: Yes so I think Jess has spoken about it really well, but I raced with an Olympian in 2012 that had raced at the '92, and '96, and 2000 Olympic Games. He then retired for 10 years and then came back as a 40-year-old to try and compete at home games. And I think that is testament to the sport. I think something that you got to also think about is we sat down and went backwards for a living. It's actually quite low-impact sport on your joints in terms of if you’re a runner. You wouldn't definitely not be able to train and have a long career. And then I think, especially, in a sport like rowing, you would need the first Olympic Games to get under your belt before things start to click into place. So there needs to be a little bit more experience around knowing what it's like, how to train, what you're training for, what you're training towards. In my own career, I bookmark it as three different chapters. The first chapter is trying to figure out what I am doing. So that's a mindset as well as a physiological attitude towards training. So you're not just training to complete the program, you're training to be the best in the world. You're training to be the best within that room or within the training centre, and that then propels you forward. Then there's this golden period where you spoke about the athlete peak, where all of a sudden, just personal bests, records, gold medal-winning performances. Then you've got the third bit, which is you're trying to hang on to those numbers. I had the privilege of being an Olympic champion and then also losing pretty much every single race I raced after that point. We never won a world championship, so I didn't follow up. My mindset going in was always, once I became an Olympic champion-- I'd seen these dominant characters within our sport. I spoke about the legacy of the men's four. That goes all the way back to Sir Steve Redgrave, Sir Matt Pinsent, and that started in 2000, and they were multiple world champions, multiple Olympic champions. And I'd always assumed that would happen for me after Rio, but it didn't. Then there was a reassessment needed again, and a lot of people retired after Rio. And one of the reasons why was because they were done. They had their one medal and their one gold medal, and they felt like that was them done. They'd reached the pinnacle. And I had a coach tell me that it's easy to do it once, it's much harder to do it twice. And I think that is the mindset in rowing. Jess spoke about the number of times that we train, and I think it's one of the key factors that allows us to go on for so long is we have this belligerent attitude to wanting to improve and wanting to be better. And once you understand rowing, and the training program, you start to thrive, and you really want to keep pushing. I think the early stages of—I'm sure Jess will attest to this—is a lot about getting onto the team is great, but then you're learning how to survive. You go into this program that is so intense, you feel like you're being judged in your performance. You're going week on week just to survive, not get ill, not get injured, and try to perform in an Olympic Games. Then it all clicks and makes sense. I'm sure, for Jess, it clicked in Rio where she had one of her best seasons across the board. But like she said, she was last place for a long part of that race. I remember watching it going, "What the hell are you doing?" Then they almost run out of track because they would look like they were about to beat the Americans if the track was a little bit longer. So yes, a lot of it is about learning, and a lot of it is about the stars aligning in sports as well. And we faced some really challenging periods.

David: Let's actually take a thread of what you said, Moe, where you talked about getting in is the first difficult part, but then staying in is also a difficult part. And I would say that the same is actually true in the corporate world. A firm like J.P. Morgan has high standards. It's hard work. Let's talk about your own transition from being an elite athlete. So, why don't we start with a little bit about what you do here at J.P. Morgan.

Mohamed: So I joined the bank in 2022 and I joined a team within the digital platform services area based out of London. My team is a payment operations team that specializes in transformation. We're currently taking clients off of vendor platforms or legacy platforms that are in-house, and moving them to a strategic new platform called Graphite, which is spanning across the world and multiple payment processing platforms. Within the role that I am in, spacing, I am looking at the client's data and client behaviors and building out a migration plan accordingly.

David: Awesome. Jess, how about you?

Jessica: I joined the private bank when I first came here in the product office, and I moved halfway through my program. I moved to asset management. I'm currently sitting in the data science team as a strategist. And fundamentally, my team look at how to help our investors using AI and machine learning. I guess, simply put it, my team do the product ownership, we do the in-between bit, we do the client engagement part of that role, and also we translate from our data scientists to our portfolio managers, investors, roadmaps, and anything that we need to know going back to our technical team. So yes, it's a really exciting role to be in.

David: What attracted you to J.P. Morgan? Why was that the right time for you to make that transition?

Jessica: Yeah good question. How did I start my transition? So I raced at the Olympic Games. I certainly wasn't done in my head. I took a break and I went and studied art and design. And I had a period of time I worked at a big museum here in London, the Victorian Art Museum. I became a curator. I was still rowing. I was still doing quite a lot of the training program. I had my mind half on going to Tokyo, and COVID happened. So things changed a little bit there. And Moe actually joined this program and he's also a very good friend of mine. I was looking for something to stretch me a bit more than what I was being stretched in the arts. I think I realised I'd missed that team environment. I missed being put under pressure a bit more and the idea of having goals and delivery. I missed it. So Moe actually rang me up and said, "Look, you can only apply for this position in this program a certain amount of time after retirement. You've got about 20 minutes till the window shuts on this for the rest of your life." And I just thought, I might as well try this. I'd never thought about finance. I'd never thought about J.P. Morgan. I put it in and it kicked off from there. I had an interview, different teams interviewed me, and I started in the role about six months later.

David: So how's it going? You've been here 18 months. Do you want to talk about the initial stages of the journey?

Jessica: Yeah, I've been at J.P. Morgan 18 months now and I find the place absolutely fascinating. I'm surrounded by some of the most elite performers in the world. I think the parallels between working here in the bank and Olympic rowing are really similar. I have this hugely motivated, dynamic global team around me. And beyond that, the wider bank and the wider team of asset management is incredible to be part of. I think the differences are you go from being one of the very best people in the world at your job to being a brand-new intern. That transition is really hard, knowing that you've got to be humble and have an appetite to learn the things that I've brought across from sport. Learning how the small steps I put in place will get me to a position of understanding and being useful in a team is all I can ask for. So the transition has been incredible and I'm really excited to see what the future holds here.

David: Great. Moe, we were talking about this a little bit earlier, just this transition where you've already had a career in some ways and now you start a new career. So it's like a rebirth, but it's a rebirth, generally, in your 30s. A lot of people would have started 10 years prior. How'd you think through that and what have you done to ensure you could be successful?

Mohamed: Yeah, so similar to what Jess has said, when I stopped rowing-- I don't like using the word retiring. Jess does use it a little bit more frequently than myself. When I stopped rowing, I just had the view that I needed a break from the sport. It is intense. I knew that I needed to get some work experience for the CV. I applied, weirdly, because I had another friend—there is a good rowing link within the military and athlete transition program, and he found it incredibly rewarding. So I met him at a function after the Tokyo Olympic Games, and he said, you should apply. But every step of the way, I had imposter syndrome and and never imagined I would get an offer. And when I joined, I left being third best in the world, best in this country, and almost overnight, joined at the same time as an apprentice. It was a challenge. The things that I took away and that I have implemented in myself, I had a great support network around me. So I had a mentor, he was an ex-rower. He knew of me, he'd followed my career, and we were about the same age. And there were some small things, so always be available, always be ready to help. Make sure you're doing the program as such. And always be keen and young. Like Jess said, even though you're 33-plus, you're young, you're ready to learn, you're ready to get involved in any way, shape or form. There are always small jobs that people maybe don't want to do.  So you start to add value and just be belligerent in everything that you're doing. That doesn't come very easily because it was slightly frustrating because you keep making mistakes because you're new in an industry, you had no previous experience. And then I used to get frustrated, but then I would remember that I used to fall in all the time when I was beginning as a rower. And because I remember leaving the sport at this pinnacle and forgetting all the steps that got me to that place and actually looking back on my own rowing career, because that's something that I personally can lean on, I didn't all of a sudden become an Olympic champion on the first day of rowing. And I found it really hard and I found my learning growth-- I used to be called slow-mo. That was my nickname because I was quite slow and also slow to learn the new skills. The program itself and the program leads are fantastic. They support you throughout the journey. This is not a, "welcome to the program. Now go and learn the role." There are so many things that they put in place. And the thing that I really liked about the program is that it is very much like your Olympic journey. So Jess and I both started at clubs, we never were in the team. There are different steps along the way that can get you to the Olympics. And your Olympics could be becoming an MD within J.P. Morgan, where the realms of possibility is there, it's for you to go and hunt down in the athlete mindset to, "I want to get promotion to the next level. I want to start delivering and achieve. I want to be responsible for a team." All of those targets  are very much, like, "I want to go to junior worlds. I want to go to under 23 world championships, and then want to make the Olympic team. And I then want to become an Olympic medalist."

David: So Moe, you said it twice and I just want to make sure we dig a little deeper on it because we don't generally tell people at J.P. Morgan, "Be belligerent." So, let's talk through that. What does that mean for you and why do you say that?

Mohamed: Yes – so I mean if I look at my rowing program, there were sessions that were really tough and brutal, and there are ways that you can cut corners as an athlete. So If it's 20,000 meters on the water and there's no coach following you, you could just do 18,000 if you wanted to and then come in and say you did 20. Not only are you lying to yourself, and it's not within the realm. Everybody thinks of Olympic athletes as being these hardcore people. Now, I know of Olympians that have won, but they did snip corners in their training program and that was because they were either tired or frustrated or just wanted to get home. I was never one of those. So being belligerent in the sense that you are making sure that your work is being done to the correct level and those around you, you're holding them to account too. Just because we're new within this bank, not being afraid to ask why are things done in a certain way? And coming in from a different perspective when you're new, especially, how can you improve on processes. Are there areas that we can improve within the bank? I'm in an operations role, so therefore, I probably have a little bit more freedom to be able to ask those questions and investigate why we've been doing processes.

David: Jess, let's just turn to you and maybe you can share a few of your own thoughts on the transition to corporate world and maybe some of the transferable skills that come along with it. I mean Moe talked about hard work and discipline and being willing to ask questions and challenge. Now, what else has been the key ingredient for you?

Jessica: I think some of those transferable skills are, we are resilient. I think I love that word that Moe used, belligerent. You know as rowers, you don't trip up and win the Olympics overnight. You have to put in the work. And I think, sometimes, we watch the television or we hear about superstars in different areas of the world and, "Oh, they've won an award or they've got a million followers and something or other," and no one necessarily understands the hard work it takes to get there. So having the building blocks and having the guts to do the hard work. Actually, the Olympics is fairly easy because you've done the work. You just go there and perform under pressure. But when you're there, you've done the years, you've done the months, the miles, the strokes, you've lifted the weights in the gym. It's winning when no one's watching. How are you acting as a person? Are you recovering well? Are you sleeping well? Are you looking after your body? Are you doing the whole training program? If you can look at yourself in the mirror and know you've done that to the best of your ability, then that's what we're talking about. I think that's transferable to the workplace and what we do now. We don't have a headmaster watching every single email we write, every single thing we do. You're here because you're trusted to be good at your job. And you have to put in the work. You have to put in the miles. And I believe we're in an environment where if you do put the work in, you will excel, and your team will benefit from that. It's exactly the same as a sports team. So I found that part of transitioning into the corporate world fairly easy. I can do that bit. I can also do the teamwork bit. We're one giant team, really, aren't we? We're this big team, and we should be proud of who we are. When I tell people who I work for, there is a gasp. People know the brand. They know J.P. Morgan. I am proud to say who I work for. The same pride I had of wearing the British flag on my chest, we can wear our company. A motto we kind of had in our team was, you're going to cross that finish line together. I was in eight. Moe was quite a lot of his career as well. I was in a big boat.  I didn't go from the start line to the finish line by myself. I had to rely on people around me, and I had to get the most out of those people around me as well to get across the finish line. I think about that every day, and I think I do that in my job here every single day. Fundamentally, I think we're both the same, just with a few less weights lifted and strokes on the water.

David: Fair enough. I heard you actually do a recap of the 2016 performance. I think the commentator said something like, "You just squeaked it out." I think your comment was what you just said, it was 20 years of work. It wasn't just that moment. It was 20 years of work coming into that moment.

Jessica: Exactly. It's not by accident these things happen. We were getting beaten most of the way down the course in 2016. But my crew and I stuck to our race pattern. We knew how fast we were. We stuck to our execution and we executed it. You have to really have all your team pulling together. That's a great metaphor, in rowing isn't it? But we have to be doing the same thing at the same time and trusting that each other's going to do that as well.

David: Yes, I think trust is a big deal. And as we wrap up today's episode, and with the Paris Olympics approaching, what events or athletes are you most looking forward to watching?

Jessica: Well definitely the rowing. We are getting really strong in Great Britain in the rowing. It's really exciting for us to see. We have probably three or four, you never said definite Olympic gold medals, but gold medals probably coming our way for Great Britain with many more of other colours I think coming. So I'll be really excited to watch that. That's the first week of the Olympics. I think one thing that I love all my entire life, my family are huge rugby fans. The Rugby Sevens is a game and that came in only two Olympics ago actually. I love seeing the speed of that and Team GB should be pretty good at rugby because of our home nation. I'm really looking forward to watching some of that as well.

David: Amazing. And Moe, how about you?

Mohamed: Yes. Actually, I just want to touch on too, both Jess and I will be working commentating during the Olympics. I'll be commentating in location, Jess will be commentating in a studio booth for somewhere in London. And we'll have the pleasure and also the pain of watching the rowing athletes compete. And I think Jess has summed it up, there are some fantastic achievements to be done. And the best way that I can talk about the pain in these funny little bracket commas is imagine if you work so hard on a project and it didn't get delivered and then you leave. And then you see the project get delivered and all the success, you feel some great happiness that your team or ex-team have done it, but then you'll also feel like you've just missed out on this wonderful project being delivered and executed. And then the two athletes I'm really looking forward to is Noah Lyles, he is threatening to become the new or the next Usain Bolt and emulate and become three or four-time gold medalists at one Olympic Games in track and field. And then Steph Curry is also representing Team USA for the first time in basketball, and Jess is another basketball fan. It will be epic to see him because I'm Curry over LeBron. So that's where I stand in that argument. I'm really excited to see the dream team, they're fantastic superstars, and to add in Steph with LeBron and KD is just going to be formidable.

David: Amazing. Listen I've really enjoyed the conversation. To recap, today, we talked about the incredible journeys of Moe Sbihi and Jessica Eddie, from their Olympic experiences to the roles of J.P. Morgan and how our EMEA Military and Athlete Transition program helped facilitate their transition to corporate life. Moe and Jess, we wish you continued success here at J.P. Morgan, and to all the athletes competing in the Paris Olympics, we wish you all the best. Thank you to our listeners for tuning in to another What's The Deal? episode. We hope this conversation was enjoyable and helpful. I'm your host, David Rawlings. Until next time, goodbye.

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