Jefferey Dagbo graduated from DePaul University in 2012 with a Bachelor of Science in Finance. While Dagbo was a student at DePaul, he held several leadership positions including President of the Investment Banking Society, Co-founder of the Capital Markets Group, and the Vice President of the Student Finance Association. After graduating from DePaul, Dagbo went to work for Goldman Sachs as an Analyst in the Investment Management division. In 2016, he became an Associate with Goldman and in June of 2019 he accepted a position at Gallup as a Consultant. Along with his work experience, Dagbo also has served as a board member at organizations such as iMentor, Guitars Over Guns, Goldman Sachs’ Firmwide Black Network, and Art on Sedgwick. In 2015, Jefferey founded Find Your Voice, an organization that gives back to nonprofits by creating art-based events. So far, they have put on 11 events with total ticket sales of $50,000.
Dagbo decided to attend DePaul because he wanted to pursue the internship opportunities that accompanied attending a university in an urban setting. Having been born in Chicago, DePaul was an especially intriguing option for him. Two of his most memorable experiences at DePaul were starting the Capital Markets Group and his time interning at multiple companies. While at DePaul, Dagbo interned with Merrill Lynch, UBS, DBRS, G Squared, and Goldman Sachs. It was during his time interning that he began to fully apply himself and understand the fundamentals of finance that he was learning in his courses.
At the end of the day, everything originates with relationships. Who you are is reflected by the relationships you have built with people. The ability to continue to network and meet new people is crucial if you want to develop great interpersonal relationships.”
Dagbo described his transition from college to the work world as “fun but hard.” Although he enjoyed his time working at Goldman Sachs, there was a learning curve that accompanied this transition. In college, professors often desired long, dense presentations or research papers, while at Goldman this was not the case. Rather, his managers wanted him to condense complex topics into a handful of bullet points. This is a skill that Dagbo recommends all finance students work on perfecting.
At Goldman Sachs, Dagbo worked in the liquidity solutions space, which is the asset management arm of the company, dealing with corporations and institutions that deals with intermediary bank clients by investing in money markets and mutual fund products. His role is people oriented as they are servicing and managing client relationships to ensure that they are investing in products that produce solutions. He explained that understanding people management is important and a perfect fit in terms of his ability to connect and communicate with others.
One of Dagbo’s challenges he shared with us is his inclination to take on too many projects at once. This has led to struggling with prioritization, and he explained, “It is important to find a balance between working hard and pushing yourself to do too much. When you do too much, deadlines get missed.” He learned that even out of school it is important to continue to manage your time well.
After putting his primary focus on Goldman Sachs for the first three years after graduation, Dagbo realized he wanted to create an impact through his other strengths and talents. His goal in year three was to join three nonprofits and to be in leadership positions with each of the respective organizations. As he attained those positions, he started to notice challenges these nonprofits were having. There were not nearly enough volunteers and some of these nonprofits were not using their resources well.
Growing up, Dagbo was a creative kid, playing the violin, piano and writing songs. In his recent years in the corporate world, he found an outlet to release his creativity by writing poetry. When looking at the nonprofit industry and his creative skills, he thought to himself that he could create an organization that helps nonprofits by raising capital for them through leveraging his network and passion for the arts. He brought on two partners to help him build an organization called Find Your Voice. Find Your Voice puts on an event that showcases talented poets, public speakers and musicians with the purpose of raising awareness for a nonprofit. An event charges sticker prices and a portion of the ticket sales goes back to the nonprofit and the rest goes to cover the expenses. Since 2015, the organization has been slowly growing and by today they’ve raised $15,000 through 11 events for 10 non profits in the Chicagoland area in 4 years of work.
Their most recent event was at DePaul’s School of Music for the Covenant House. An event they are especially proud of was the partnership they established with Havos, a marketing agency in Chicago, to put on a poetry lounge event with Chance the Rapper’s production group where they were able to raise a lot of money and awareness. Their goal is to file as a private corporation and continue to grow.
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By Anastasiya Kadukov and Andrew Krueger