JPMorgan trader suffered "dehumanising travel experiences" as a result of her disability

One of the benefits of working at a bank like JPMorgan is that it's a global institution, and you have the opportunity to move to a new city for work. When you suffer from a disability, this benefit comes with a lot of costs; Julie Andrieu, an exotics trader at JPMorgan, said she experiences "dehumanising travel experiences several times a year" as a result of poor accomodation for her spinal muscular atrophy. 

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Andrieu works in JPMorgan's London office, having moved there from France after completing a masters in financial engineering (MFE) in 2022. She "travel[s] regularly between London and the South of France to see [her] family" but said that she has had to raise formal complaints with Heathrow Airport multiple times over her treatment. This week, she said she took a British Airways flight back to London and had to wait in the plane for an hour "because no ramp had been organised to retrieve my wheelchair from the hold, despite the cabin crew proactively alerting ground staff in advance." When she got off the plane, the assistance staff "were so poorly trained that they nearly dropped me."

Andrieu said she now dreads flying, "not because of turbulence, but because of systems that consistently fail disabled passengers." This isn't just problematic for her personal life; Andrieu said that disabled people "want to travel for business. We want to lead companies. We want to contribute to economic growth." A lack of accommodation for their needs obstructs this. British Airways did not respond to a request for comment.

In 2024, Andrieu was named a disability champion by JPMorgan and praised for her efforts to help hire disabled students. The bank has been quietly distancing itself from DEI practices in recent years, but this has usually been in relation to gender or ethnic diversity criteria. The bank's decision to bring staff into the office 5 days per week has been criticised for its lack of inclusiveness for disabled staff, but in Jamie Dimon's famous rant against hybrid work, he did admit that the bank had learned "flexibility" over covid. "Particularly for, it’s usually women, caregivers, we understand there will be flexibility," he said.

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