Meet the blind trader

My friend, Heari, sent me this article about Ashish Goyal, a 30-year-old trader at JPMorganChase's London office. A graduate from Wharton, Goyal did not come upon this job easily. After receiving his first business degree from an accredited university in India, he had made the short list of candidates for several firms. But upon learning that he was blind, most companies turned Goyal away. By the time he reached the ING interview, he blurted, "I'm blind. Do you still want to talk?"

Years later when he applied to Wharton, the Director of Admissions signed off on his application, saying that there had yet to be a blind trader on Wall Street, but either way, Goyal would be better off with a degree from Wharton.

After Wharton, he interviewed with JPMorganChase, his interviewers were impressed that he was only one of few who had excellent risk management skills and the knowledge of Asian interest rates and foreign exchange. The company decided to take a risk and hire Goyal.

"You can put me on the spot trading desk," he said, "but I'd be too slow...You need to realize where I would add value and where I don't. You need to find your niche."

With full awareness of his limitations, Goyal uses screen reading softwares and headsets to do his work, that is, to manage banks' billions of dollars in their exposure to risks such as foreign exchange fluctuations. When he has to read graphs, which the software cannot do, Goyal scrolls through the data and forms the graph in his head.

Kudos to JPMorganChase for taking a risk on Goyal and hiring a blind man to handle big-time client accounts. The vocational playing field for the blind (and for the disabled, for that matter) is still highly uneven, but it's stories like this that give us hope.