Instead of focusing on race in the workplace, Gene R. Todd believes one’s energy is better spent on being better than the competition.
Todd, managing director of Wealth Management at First Bank, is a finance professional with more than 20 years of experience. He is also a black man who said he has not encountered racial challenges in the workplace — at least none he’s aware of.
Todd’s career gained momentum in 1995, when he went to work on Wall Street at Morgan Stanley as a trader. Getting in, he said, “was very, very difficult. I think I had more rounds of interviews than anybody in the history of Wall Street.”
Morgan Stanley was known to be one of the elite “white shoe firms.” Todd said the percentage of people of color who worked there during that time was “very low. No more than 5 percent.”
“They put me through the ringer, I believe, not because I was black, but because I didn’t go to a traditional Wall Street school,” he said.
“I went to Michigan, which was ranked No. 5 in the country that year in terms of business schools. However, it was never a traditional hunting ground for Wall Street in general, Morgan Stanley in particular. Morgan Stanley liked Harvard; they liked Wharton; they liked Columbia. Those were the schools, the hunting grounds, for them.”
After a few years at Morgan Stanley, Todd continued moving up the ranks to management after he took a position with PNC Bank and then Key Bank. He said he refuses to focus on race at work.
“I will honestly tell you five days a week, 10 hours a day, sometimes longer, race has no bearing on who I am,” Todd said. “I put on my uniform, which is a suit, and it’s game time. I’m focused on the game.”
He said he doesn’t “live in a bubble” and acknowledges the reality of discrimination.
“I’m certainly aware that people are not getting jobs because of the color of their skin, or their sexuality. I’m aware that people are sometimes mistreated by law enforcement because of the way they look,” Todd said.
“But I’ve been very fortunate and very blessed that I’ve had a life that’s had very little of that impact my personal situation. I pretty much have had an entire life where I’ve had very little in the way of racial issues happen to me. And I realize I’m lucky. But that impacts how I think.”
His line of work helps, he said.
“Wall Street is one of the last true meritocracies in the world,” Todd said.
“If the name of the game is to generate revenue and get paid millions and millions of dollars for your firm — and ultimately for yourself — you want the strongest, the smartest, the best, most creative people doing it. So, coming of age in business, in that sort of environment, you don’t think about race.”
Even with this perspective, Todd admitted it’s harder for black men to succeed in corporate America than white men.
“Of course it’s harder,” he said. “But everything is hard. And the fact that it’s 10 percent harder, 50 percent harder, 200 percent harder … why spend time and energy worrying about that? You need to spend your time and energy trying to make yourself better.”
He said he has been described with veiled terms, like being called “aggressive.” But in business, he said, “you have to not back down. You can’t be afraid to fight.” So, he took being called aggressive as a compliment.
“You’ve got to have your big-boy pants on if you want to be successful in business. You have to be tough,” he said. “And I think that transcends sex, and I think that transcends color. And so in the board room, when you’re perceived as tough and aggressive for the right reasons, in the right moments, that’s an asset.”
Though Todd has been fortunate to experience a career that has not been hampered by racism, his feelings about companies that don’t value diversity are very clear.
“For companies that don’t get it, they’re not going to get my business,” he said. “For companies that don’t get it, and I compete with them, I’m going to clean their clocks, and I’m going to focus on cleaning their clocks, and that’s how I’m going to spend my energy.”
Asked how he feels overall about being a black man in America, he said, ““I still think that this is the greatest country in the world to live in. I can live anywhere, and I chose to live here. … Not that it’s utopia, but I don’t think there’s a better place on the planet for someone who is black and wants an opportunity to succeed.”
The first of a three-part series exploring African Americans in corporate America.
Edited for length and reprinted with permission from news.stlpublicradio.org.
