Jes Staley's eldest daughter quit trading for drones

Jes Staley, the American-born CEO of Barclays Bank has been to Yorkshire in the north of England. Twitter is alive with photos of Staley, pint in hand, standing  in front of some pork pies as he fraternizes with the bank's commercial clients. Staley's eldest daughter, however, will not be found doing such things. Although her father has made a success of banking, Alex Staley has opted for something far more interesting instead.

Alexa, who has a PhD in physics from Columbia University, is currently between jobs. She left her most recent role in April. It involved testing software used to fly drones. - Staley worked for Airware, a San Francisco company that offers "drone solutions" to companies in the insurance, mining and construction companies for sixteen months. Before that, she spent 25 months at LIGO Hanford Observatory working on a gravitational wave detector and made (according to her LI profile), "The first direct detection of a gravitational wave from a binary black hole merger." It's M&A, but not as you know it.

This isn't to say that Staley didn't try finance first. While still at Bowdoin College studying physics in 2008, she interned for six months at two hedge funds: Spinnaker Capital and Tudor Investment Corporation.  It seems that neither made much of an impression: Alexa Staley's trading career ended there.

Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman's daughter, Caroline wants to be a singer, but not all senior bankers' progeny are averse to following their in fathers' footsteps. As we reported last November, Lloyd Blankfein's eldest son Alex is an associate at private equity fund Carlyle Group. We can also reveal that his younger son, Jonathan, has joined New York credit fund, Taconic Capital Advisors. Taconic co-founder Frank Brosens was a partner at Goldman Sachs until 1994.

Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

Photo credit: P1140969 by Peter Linehan is licensed under CC BY 2.0.