Goldman Sachs convened top black bankers beneath some challenging sculptures
Like most banks, Goldman Sachs is trying to diversify away from the white men who comprise most of its employees, particularly at senior levels. In the process, it's proven willing to be unusually frank in confronting difficult issues.
Get Morning Coffee ☕ in your inbox. Sign up here.
Last night, Goldman gathered over 500 black financial services professionals at London's Tate Modern for its third annual Black Voices in Finance event. Attendees included, Kene Ejikeme, Goldman's head of Multi Asset Platform Sales and high touch Execution in EMEA and Darren Allaway, who leads the Goldman Sachs Apex family office platform in EMEA.
The group convened at the Tate Modern, at an exhibition by Mire Lee, a Korean artist, who's created sculptures made out of membranous fabric that look like pieces of skin. The Tate says the exhibition explores, "emotion, precarity, and human desire." Leev reportedly created the sculptures with the intention of, "evoking a range of contradictory emotions including feelings of tenderness and empathy, as well as melancholy, awe and disgust," and of, considering "our fears, vulnerabilities, hopes and desires as we stand together on the brink of an uncertain future."
As well as the hanging skin, the exhibition includes an evocation of "regeneration and decay" in the form of a turbine, "pumping dark pink viscous liquid through dangling vein-like silicone tubes, collecting in a large sloping tray underneath." Goldman's attendees were also given access to an exhibition by Zanele Muholi, a non-binary South African artist whose work explores racism and sexuality.
Goldman aspires for 7% of its VPs in America and for 7% of its VPs in the UK to be black. In 2023, those figures were 4% and 5% respectively.
Black partners like Darren Dixon, Margaret Anadu and Fred Baba have left Goldman Sachs in the past few years.
In 2020 Baba spoke frankly about how he'd been subject to police violence. Being a black man means pre-empting violence, said Baba: "I've learned how to prove I’m intelligent, to prove I’m not threatening, to prove I’m innocent after being assumed guilty."
Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: +44 7537 182250 (SMS, WhatsApp or voicemail). Telegram: @SarahButcher. Click here to fill in our anonymous form, or email editortips@efinancialcareers.com. Signal also available.
Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: all our comments are moderated by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. Eventually it will – unless it’s offensive or libelous (in which case it won’t.)
