A partner at Goldman Sachs shares what it was like to rise the ranks of Wall Street as an openly gay man
Early on, the intimidation of"loud, masculine" trading floors made it difficult to be himself.Michael Broadbery received a phone call in November that most Wall Street financiers can only dream of: the Goldman Sachs CEO, David Solomon, personally telling him that he had been. That same day, Broadbery achieved a different, but equally momentous, milestone in his Wall Street career.
Broadbery says he has known he was gay since he was a teen. But in a traditionally conservative and sometimes macho industry, it took a decades-long journey for him to be unabashedly himself both at home and at work. He began his career in the finance division at Intel in Dublin. But it wasn't until he moved to London in 1998 for a compliance role at a small private bank, Guinness Mahon, that Broadbery felt he finally had the space between his teen life and young adult life to come to terms with his identity, he said.
Broadbery remembers worrying that the trading floor, a"loud, masculine environment," was perhaps not the right fit for a gay man. "He told me he was gay," said Broadbery."He said 'There's lots of us on Wall Street, and there's lots of us who are very successful, and it's not something you need to worry about.'"
That changed, he said, when he moved to the firm's Hong Kong office in 2006. Upon arriving, said Broadbery, he was asked to lead the organization for the firm's Asia division. For example, Broadbery added, Singapore didn't allow gay pride celebrations or marches at that time. So in an initiative called Pink Fridays, employees wore pink shirts one Friday during Pride Month to show solidarity with the community. The Asia LGBTQ+ Network went from six people to more than 200 while he was there. And by the time he left the Hong Kong office in 2017, the co-heads of the markets divisions who he sat on the trading floor with both had pride flags in their offices.
There's also much less stigma now around being"too gay" for Wall Street, he added. When he was coming up the ranks, he said, femininity in gay men was not very much on display. tooBut now, Broadbery said, people are more comfortable being truly themselves.
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