This file contains a description of a current Citi employee and description of the employee experience through a set of questions and answers. A constant balancing act – between work and personal, between highly competitive and incredibly team oriented, between constant learning and constant teaching, between striving to get to that comfort zone where you finally really know what you’re talking about and taking on new challenges that bring you right back out of the comfort zone, between the glamorous life of international travel and very unglamorous life of checking thru a spreadsheet in the office at 2 in the morning. And somewhere in the middle of all of this, there’s a bit of finance and numbers…

]]> Hard to say…I’ve had many. One of the more memorable experiences was probably my first trip to Bandung, a town in the valleys of West Java, Indonesia, where one of our clients was headquartered. We had a morning meeting with the Board and had the choice of taking a five hour drive or a one hour flight – a flight route which, due to the strong valley winds, had the highest crash record in the world… Needless to say, we chose to drive. We left the office at about 1am. I fell asleep in the car to avoid an anxiety attack from watching our driver doge oncoming trucks in the winding single-lane mountain roads. At around 3:30am, my Director woke me up and said it was time to eat! We stopped into this road side restaurant – this was apparently one of the best places on Java for nasi padang, a traditional Indonesian cuisine. The “restaurant” consisted of a tattered roof, a few plastic benches and tables, one cook, one waitress / hostess / manager, one sink and no utensils. The “clientele” consisted of about a dozen truckers sporting various forms of threadbare white T-shirts, our driver, my director and myself...in a full work suit. I sat down, pulled out a tissue from my purse, placed it on my lap like a napkin, then dug into with my bare hands and had some of the best tasting food ever…although not once did I dare to ask what I was actually eating.

This is the part of my glamorous life of international travel that I leave out of dinner party conversations…

]]> Driven, intelligent, tough, demanding, serious, competitive….

Generous, supportive, team oriented, funny…and at times, outright silly

]]> Outside of the traditional interaction between investment banking product, industry and country partners, I constantly find myself reaching out to non-traditional product groups and businesses to service the growing needs of my clients. For example, in one of my most recent M&A deals, we brought in our leveraged finance team to help structure and evaluation acquisition financing alternatives, global transaction services to provide escrow services, fixed income trading colleagues to help value a securities portfolio, tapped into our Taiwan corporate banking colleagues to provide some industry insight, FX hedging and financial institutions corporate banking colleagues to provide solutions to minimize FX risk and asked our securitization team to work with the client post-acquisition to de-risk part of its balance sheet. In addition, we also worked with our Global Special Situations Group and Citi Alternative Investments to evaluate a potential co-investment alongside our client and we also tapped into our Citi Private Bank to find high net worth clients for co-investment as well. This level of interaction used to be something that was singled out and put in a “Best Practice” case study – but these days, its quickly becoming the normal way we conduct our business.

]]> I’m not sure if it’s really a skill – Curiosity.

It keeps me interested in the work I’m doing. It keeps me motivated to find out more. It makes me want to learn and understand how we did and why we did what we did when we did for our clients…it makes me ask what else we could have done.

]]> I participate in a non-profit program call Sponsors for Educational Opportunity (SEO). It’s a non-profit organization for that is comprised of a mentoring program for at risk inner city youth (from elementary through high school) as well as an internship program that places exceptional undergraduate students of color in a broad range of internship programs from investment banking to philanthropy. The SEO program is built on and supported by alumni giving back. SEO’s board of directors and the trainers and mentors for the Career Program are 100% comprised of alumni volunteers – which include every level from analysts to managing directors to CEOs. SEO strives to bring not only diversity but also a culture of community service and mentoring to the corporate workplace.

Citi has been a long-time supporter of SEO and (through Salomon Brothers and Smith Barney) was a founding member of the career program in 1980. In the summer of 2000, I helped pilot the SEO Career Program in Hong Kong along with two of my fellow SEO alumni – and once again Citi was a founding member. In the summer of 2007, Citi had 46 SEO interns working in its New York, London and Hong Kong offices.

Working with SEO has been incredibly rewarding for me and having the continued support of Citi has been extraordinary.

]]> I’ve attended Citi’s analyst, associate and VP training.

Analyst training provided a good transition from school to the workplace. Associate and VP training was also very useful in that it helped to take a step back away from the constant demands of your Analyst or Associate daily workload in order to understand how to transition into the next phase of your career.

At every level, there was a good mix of hard skills (ie, accounting/finance concepts, valuation, advanced merger accounting, understanding derivatives products, etc.) and the more practical/soft skills (eg, presentation skills, negotiation training, team management, etc.). There was also always the social/networking side to training – I still keep in contact with many of people from my analyst training class. My training classmates are now colleagues across the firm that I can call for help when I need something from London, New York, San Francisco, on the capital markets side, on the GTS side, etc. They are friendly competitors who I can call to ask about a deal. They are my clients. They are some of my closest friends.

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Name: Sharon Ren

Title: Vice President

Education: BA Business Economics, University of California

Program: Investment Banking

Level: analyst

Region: Greater China

If asked about your career at a dinner party, how would you describe it?: A constant balancing act – between work and personal, between highly competitive and incredibly team oriented, between constant learning and constant teaching, between striving to get to that comfort zone where you finally really know what you’re talking about and taking on new challenges that bring you right back out of the comfort zone, between the glamorous life of international travel and very unglamorous life of checking thru a spreadsheet in the office at 2 in the morning. And somewhere in the middle of all of this, there’s a bit of finance and numbers…
Describe the most memorable experience you've ever had at Citi.: Hard to say…I’ve had many. One of the more memorable experiences was probably my first trip to Bandung, a town in the valleys of West Java, Indonesia, where one of our clients was headquartered. We had a morning meeting with the Board and had the choice of taking a five hour drive or a one hour flight – a flight route which, due to the strong valley winds, had the highest crash record in the world… Needless to say, we chose to drive. We left the office at about 1am. I fell asleep in the car to avoid an anxiety attack from watching our driver doge oncoming trucks in the winding single-lane mountain roads. At around 3:30am, my Director woke me up and said it was time to eat! We stopped into this road side restaurant – this was apparently one of the best places on Java for nasi padang, a traditional Indonesian cuisine. The “restaurant” consisted of a tattered roof, a few plastic benches and tables, one cook, one waitress / hostess / manager, one sink and no utensils. The “clientele” consisted of about a dozen truckers sporting various forms of threadbare white T-shirts, our driver, my director and myself...in a full work suit. I sat down, pulled out a tissue from my purse, placed it on my lap like a napkin, then dug into with my bare hands and had some of the best tasting food ever…although not once did I dare to ask what I was actually eating.

This is the part of my glamorous life of international travel that I leave out of dinner party conversations…
How would you describe your team and the people you work with?: Driven, intelligent, tough, demanding, serious, competitive….

Generous, supportive, team oriented, funny…and at times, outright silly
What other groups do you liaise with regularly within the Firm?: Outside of the traditional interaction between investment banking product, industry and country partners, I constantly find myself reaching out to non-traditional product groups and businesses to service the growing needs of my clients. For example, in one of my most recent M&A deals, we brought in our leveraged finance team to help structure and evaluation acquisition financing alternatives, global transaction services to provide escrow services, fixed income trading colleagues to help value a securities portfolio, tapped into our Taiwan corporate banking colleagues to provide some industry insight, FX hedging and financial institutions corporate banking colleagues to provide solutions to minimize FX risk and asked our securitization team to work with the client post-acquisition to de-risk part of its balance sheet. In addition, we also worked with our Global Special Situations Group and Citi Alternative Investments to evaluate a potential co-investment alongside our client and we also tapped into our Citi Private Bank to find high net worth clients for co-investment as well. This level of interaction used to be something that was singled out and put in a “Best Practice” case study – but these days, its quickly becoming the normal way we conduct our business.
What skills have you found to be the most useful in your position?: I’m not sure if it’s really a skill – Curiosity.

It keeps me interested in the work I’m doing. It keeps me motivated to find out more. It makes me want to learn and understand how we did and why we did what we did when we did for our clients…it makes me ask what else we could have done.
What non-work related activities do you get involved in through Citi (community, mentoring, charity)?: I participate in a non-profit program call Sponsors for Educational Opportunity (SEO). It’s a non-profit organization for that is comprised of a mentoring program for at risk inner city youth (from elementary through high school) as well as an internship program that places exceptional undergraduate students of color in a broad range of internship programs from investment banking to philanthropy. The SEO program is built on and supported by alumni giving back. SEO’s board of directors and the trainers and mentors for the Career Program are 100% comprised of alumni volunteers – which include every level from analysts to managing directors to CEOs. SEO strives to bring not only diversity but also a culture of community service and mentoring to the corporate workplace.

Citi has been a long-time supporter of SEO and (through Salomon Brothers and Smith Barney) was a founding member of the career program in 1980. In the summer of 2000, I helped pilot the SEO Career Program in Hong Kong along with two of my fellow SEO alumni – and once again Citi was a founding member. In the summer of 2007, Citi had 46 SEO interns working in its New York, London and Hong Kong offices.

Working with SEO has been incredibly rewarding for me and having the continued support of Citi has been extraordinary.
Describe your experience in your specific training program.: I’ve attended Citi’s analyst, associate and VP training.

Analyst training provided a good transition from school to the workplace. Associate and VP training was also very useful in that it helped to take a step back away from the constant demands of your Analyst or Associate daily workload in order to understand how to transition into the next phase of your career.

At every level, there was a good mix of hard skills (ie, accounting/finance concepts, valuation, advanced merger accounting, understanding derivatives products, etc.) and the more practical/soft skills (eg, presentation skills, negotiation training, team management, etc.). There was also always the social/networking side to training – I still keep in contact with many of people from my analyst training class. My training classmates are now colleagues across the firm that I can call for help when I need something from London, New York, San Francisco, on the capital markets side, on the GTS side, etc. They are friendly competitors who I can call to ask about a deal. They are my clients. They are some of my closest friends.

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