Meet Eddie Sanchez, a DePaul alum from Naperville, IL, who majored in management honors and finance at DePaul and graduated in 2020.
Eddie attended the College of DuPage before transferring to DePaul during his junior year. Initially, Eddie began his time at DePaul as a finance student, and after proving how serious he was with his studies and maintaining a 4.0 GPA he also elected to join the honors cohort in management and became a double-major. During his time at DePaul, Eddie joined the Coleman Entrepreneurship Center and was matched with an incredible mentor, clinical professor and executive director of the Coleman Center, Bruce Leech. Professor Leech played an integral part in helping Eddie discover his career journey, assisting in guiding him with advice, providing office space for Eddie to work on projects, and opening up doors for a large variety of networking opportunities.
Another interesting fact about Eddie is that he is half Ecuadorian and half Mexican and over the years has made many trips back to his home country. On one of his visits to Ecuador, he noticed community residents standing outside in the rain at various Western Union locations. Due to the lack of electronic transfer methods available, residents were forced to wait for physical paper copies of monetary services. This event was the catalyst for Eddie to launch PagoPay, a company that helps facilitate electronic transfers in Ecuador. Eddie is extremely grateful to have the opportunity and flexibility to handle his own private clients at PagoPay while also working as a financial analyst at Affinity Health. His attraction to the position with Affinity as a financial analyst stemmed from his background in finance, his exposure to real estate, interests in equity real estate and equity trading, and most importantly his desire to find a way to help and give back during the Covid-19 pandemic. Eddie described one of the most rewarding aspects of his job as being able to develop new tools and processes that the company will adopt for future use.
Being Ecuadorian and Mexican, Eddie has faced numerous challenges in the workplace, and noticed that often hiring managers tend to hire people that they consider to be similar to themselves. Eddie believes that when firms have hiring teams as opposed to a single hiring manager, that it can potentially work towards eliminating bias in the hiring process. One tip that Eddie shared, is a reminder that no matter what your minority status is, anyone can work to advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace. He believes that sharing unique perspectives and working with people from all different backgrounds helps bring co-workers closer together.
Looking back, if Eddie could give his freshman self advice for when he first started out at the College of Dupage, he would tell his younger self not to worry so much and follow any opportunity available in terms of growing on a professional level. Eddie is a strong believer that anyone can learn anything if they put their mind to it. In the future, Eddie would like to build tools that can help people in their everyday life, while also aiming to be financially independent before the age of forty. He also strives to help the next generation of entrepreneurs make a lasting impact on the world. Eddie’s greatest personal and professional accomplishment so far, is that he has been able to maintain a strong connection with his family, friends, and girlfriend, while also meeting people from all backgrounds throughout his journey.