In this episode of CFI’s Member Spotlight, Nigel Rayford shares his inspiring journey into the finance world, detailing his educational background, career progression, and the impact of COVID-19 on his professional life. He discusses his experiences at Nationwide and Goldman Sachs, his current role at Texas Capital Bank, and the importance of mentorship and representation in the finance industry.

Nigel also shares his aspirations, including his dream of owning an NBA team and his commitment to helping others navigate their careers in corporate America.

Transcript

Meeyeon (00:11)
Hi everyone and welcome back to another episode of CFI FinPod Podcast. We’re doing my favorite series, Member Spotlight. And today I have here with me Nigel Rayford. Welcome, Nigel.

Nigel Rayford (00:26)
Thank you, thank you, glad to be here.

Meeyeon (00:27)
And Nigel, can you tell us where you’re joining us from today?

Nigel Rayford (00:33)
Yes, I am joining us actually live from Las Vegas.

Meeyeon (00:37)
What?

Nigel Rayford (00:38)
Yeah.

Meeyeon (00:39)
My gosh, how long have you been in Las Vegas for?

Nigel Rayford (00:42)
Yesterday, just a quick trip.

Meeyeon (00:45)
Okay, I thought you had moved to Las Vegas. I was like, you’re uprooting your whole career and your whole life, like over the last week.

Nigel Rayford (00:54)
No, just a little vacation, but I am currently in Dallas, Texas.

Meeyeon (01:00)
Nice. Now the question I like to always ask everyone is because for Member Spotlight, we have so many members of CFI, it’s not realistic for everyone to be able to talk to each other because there’s so many and everyone’s kind of in all parts of the world. We love to put Member Spotlight out there so people could get to know the people that are also taking courses and just to familiarize yourself with the community that surrounds you. So I would love to understand, it’s the question that I always pose.

How did you start your kind of career in finance? So did you go to school for it? Did you always know that you wanted to do this? Or was it more of an accidental path? And when I say accidental, it just kind of means like, well, I needed a job after graduation and there was a job.

Nigel Rayford (01:47)
All right. No, that’s a great question. So for me, my whole life, even probably when I was 10 or 11, like I would tell my parents, I want to be on Wall Street. Like that was, yeah, I like that little bit what I said. They said, OK, go do it. So they have full faith in me to complete that dream. And as I got older and I went to school, so I majored

Meeyeon (02:02)
What they say.

Nigel Rayford (02:16)
in economics with a minor in Chinese at the University of Oklahoma. And right before that time, I’ve been in Dallas a couple of times and I always said Dallas will be the financial capital of the South.

Like I called it way back then to see all the rush of money and almost every bank coming down to Dallas is also amazing. So Econ was actually in the Liberal Arts College at the University of Oklahoma. It’s in both, but I took it in Liberal Arts because, with my minor in Chinese, it gave me more flexibility to study abroad and do something like that.

Meeyeon (02:49)
Which is amazing, by the way. You have the foresight to say that Dallas is gonna be the financial capital of the South, but you also took Chinese. Chinese, like, that’s my big thing. I’m like, if you’re gonna learn a language, I’ll tell my son, well, he’s only like one. But if you’re gonna learn language, it’s gonna be a program language in Chinese. So just, if you have those two, you are set.

Nigel Rayford (03:02)
And then…

He’ll be good for success for sure. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So my dad worked in corporate America, but he worked for an oil company. So I was born and raised out of Houston. So oil kind of dominates that region. But he was a toxicologist. So more on the chemical aspect. Didn’t ask what I saw from him was kind of the corporate man, like getting dressed up, going to work,

Meeyeon (03:10)
Wait, quick question. Did either of your parents work in finance?

Nigel Rayford (03:37)
like going to the big downtown building. And that was kind of cool. I’m not going to a front about that, but I kind of wanted that as well. Like, you know, it makes you feel important. So I saw it from my dad, but he did something totally different. And my mom was a teacher. So education was always really big in my family, like anything less than a B they had a problem with. But I thrive to that. Like I excelled in almost all levels in all my classes. So when I was at Oklahoma for school,

majoring in Econ, needed a job, didn’t get an internship until my last summer before I graduated. I had an opportunity at Nationwide in Columbus, Ohio through some networking where I worked with the CEO on a LinkedIn optimization project. It was kind of cool because I was the only intern picked to work with Kurt Walker. At the time, he was just the president of the Nationwide financial services arm, but he was en route to be the CEO.

So, by the time I had to do my presentation to him, it was in his CEO office. Like I will never forget. I was a little bit nervous that morning, but once I actually stepped in his office, the nerves went away. Like it was like, okay, down to business. I’m about to present my summer project to you and he loved it. Had a great opportunity. And they welcomed me back to join their retirement solutions department where I worked with their retirement specialist as an ops analyst

Meeyeon (04:50)
Nice.

Nigel Rayford (05:06)
facilitating like rollovers for the 401k’s, 457b’s. So that was my entryway into finance and it’s only expanded from there.

Meeyeon (05:17)
And what would you say your biggest takeaway from that was, being able to work with someone who then eventually became like the CEO?

Nigel Rayford (05:24)
it gave me confidence. It gave me confidence that I can talk to anybody. And I’ve always felt like that. I’ve done PowerPoint presentations and contests since I was like eight and I will win them. So I always had a natural speaking ability. I am a member of Apple, Apple five fraternity incorporated, and we had a regional convention in Houston while I was in school. And there was maybe about three to 5,000 brothers

at the convention for the assembly and I had to speak and volunteer and tell them why I my chapter should be the fraternity chapter of the year. So that was in front of 5,000 people. I started getting up on stage. So just a natural speaking ability, just there was nothing to scare me. So it went up speaking to Kurt and just getting his conversation and hearing his intellect, you kind of see why people are put in charge to run them.

Fortune 500 campaign.

Meeyeon (06:25)
Wow. And then today you’re at Texas Capitol, but from when you were at Nationwide to where you are today, there’s a couple steps in between. tell us what that was like. Also, tell us about all the life that happened in between, like any fun travels or whatnot. I know you’re a big fan of traveling, so am I. think traveling, think, is, especially when you’re young, is a really important part of your growth and your maturation. And it does a whole lot, I think, for just building character and just…

Nigel Rayford (06:35)
Lily.

Yeah.

Agree.

Meeyeon (06:54)
helping you figure out the world. So I’d love to hear from nationwide to Texas Capitol, all the stuff that happened in between.

Nigel Rayford (07:01)
Absolutely. COVID was one of them. So being in Columbus, Ohio during COVID, new region, never really settled in the Midwest for it to live there. So during COVID, everything shut down. It’s my first year out of college. And I’ll never forget, it was like March 13th or March 15th, three months in my first big boy job. And I’m told I have to go home and work.

And I met a set of friends that I love for life. Like they were mentors because they were all like older. Some of them were at Nationwide and some of them were at EY or a member of my fraternity. So having kind of some mentorship while I was there to kind of help me navigate that space. So I didn’t feel scared or didn’t feel unprepared to work at Nationwide. That was really helpful. But then as time passed,

I kind of want to come a little bit closer to Texas. Like with COVID health, family, parents are really was far away. I had opportunity to join Goldman Sachs and I would never forget when I joined Goldman Sachs and got the, when I got that notification of the first interview, almost like shed a tear. was just like, what? Like because it’s like a full circle as a kid, I said I wanted to join Wall Street and boom, like

Meeyeon (08:20)
My God, I love that.

Nigel Rayford (08:28)
there’s my entryway. Like there’s the things that God has blessed me with to like accomplish in my life. Right, right. What would it come out of COVID? So that moved me down to Dallas, where I worked in their private wealth management department. And that was awesome. And during that time, talk about travel, I traveled all over. I went to Dubai twice. I took my mom to Dubai and Singapore. Went to the Caribbean, Jamaica, Punta Cana.

Meeyeon (08:33)
And what a way to come out of COVID, right?

Nigel Rayford (08:58)
So during that COVID time, I took advantage of the two flights. Like that was my friend. Like if you wanted to go somewhere, I would never forget my mom was so nervous because she hasn’t traveled, or she didn’t travel that far in years. And then this is during COVID, she’s older.

So, of course, she’s really nervous, and Singapore is very strict on the COVID policies and their vaccination policies. So to be able to go over there and see another world, as we say, like you need to travel. It helps you grow as you’re younger.

Meeyeon (08:59)
My gosh. I love it.

Nigel Rayford (09:28)
It’s the exposure thing that we get from learning new cultures, trying new foods, really immersing yourself in a whole other place. Like, I’ll never forget the night I landed in Shanghai when I studied abroad. I was speechless because I would look outside the window, see all these international planes from Germany, Europe, Malaysia, like Africa, like just, and I was like, my God, I’m in China and it’s nighttime,

Meeyeon (09:32)
Yeah.

Nigel Rayford (09:57)
like, how am I going to get there? Yeah, so that was also amazing. And then back to, know, pivot to my career, I really wanted to try to get into more strategy role within finance. And so S&P Global, had an Investors Relations Advisory role that I thought it would help me increase my toolkit, be more on the front line, work with

Meeyeon (09:57)
That’s my favorite line. My God, I’m in China.

Nigel Rayford (10:27)
our publicly listed companies, investment relations officers, CFOs, really get that experience and understand their business and understand their story that they want to tell to their shareholders. So from an institutional perspective, like Vanguard, BlackRock, Citadel, so really focus on those names and not your retail investors like you and I, right? So…

Meeyeon (10:50)
And, for when you were at Goldman, you were in the private wealth group. it, when they were… So the private wealth arm of Goldman hasn’t been around for that long.

Nigel Rayford (10:59)
So, the private wealth group has been around for, I do want to say a good amount of time. They’ve done some consolidations within their departments, right? I think that’s all banks do as they continue to grow.

But they haven’t been around that long in Dallas. And to really grow their presence, like that was the time to where they were growing the Dallas office very at an exponential rate. They had a lot of their team in New York and Chicago, Miami.

Meeyeon (11:34)
Yeah, because private wealth is becoming one of the hugest, like one of the most significant lines of business that a bank has.

Nigel Rayford (11:39)
Right, right. And I think that’s segwayed me to really understand that business because in my current role at Texas Capital Bank, like in my enterprise finance role, I’m supporting private wealth. So my life has been a full circle, which has been pretty amazing. I’ve been able to understand how that division works front to back. And I think that’s really awesome to say.

Meeyeon (12:06)
And so you’ve been around various lines of businesses in the bank. So you have a really good understanding of what drives a bank, what their bottom line is, what their bread and butter is. You’ve seen all different aspects of it.

Do you ever plan to actually go to New York and work on action? Well, most of the banks are no longer on Wall Street, but do you have a plan to ever move out to New York and pursue your career there? That would be a real full circle.

Nigel Rayford (12:18)
Great.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, that would be a real full circle. I thought about it. But me personally, I can’t get past the New York living. Like being born and raised from Texas, you know, that’s been an opportunity and a possibility. But a lot of those New York based companies, they’re building regional offices in Texas and Dallas, you no longer need to go to New York like the Texas, I don’t know if you heard about it, but the Texas Stock Exchange

is going to be coming in the near future. they want to sell on my street where a lot of the bank starts called McKinney. And some of our bank colleagues want to turn McKinney to Yall Street instead of Wall Street, to get that Yall, Texan flavor. So I think in today’s age, there’s a lot of possibilities in New York, but I think there’s endless opportunities for young financials

Meeyeon (13:21)
My, that’s so good. My God, I love it.

Nigel Rayford (13:33)
to really grow their business, grow their opportunity in Texas and Dallas as well.

Meeyeon (13:39)
And of the roles that you’ve done, what do you think is your favorite?

Nigel Rayford (13:46)
I would say my current role, like I love my current role, like to do strategy work, help leading my private wealth organization, but then also my operations organization and just seeing the efficiencies that we can put into place. But then also working with numbers, like I haven’t had to work with numbers as much as I currently do in my role. So a lot of my forecasting and budgeting and really driving business, driving that bottom line, that P&L.

Meeyeon (13:47)
Nice!

Nigel Rayford (14:16)
It’s really fantastic work and I’m able to see the work that me and my colleagues are putting into place at a more granular level that I think it makes me feel good.

Meeyeon (14:30)
Ooh, so tell me what your day to day is like.

Nigel Rayford (14:34)
So about day to day, I normally wake up, my commute from, I live a little north Dallas, about 15 minutes north Dallas without traffic, but you’re in Texas, so you have traffic. So it takes me about 25 to 30 minutes to get to work. Normally sit down, I go grab a coffee. You kind of need coffee in the morning if you work in corporate America. It’s that extra jolt Yeah. And then,

Meeyeon (14:56)
Naturally.

It’s a vibe.

Nigel Rayford (15:04)
I first go check my emails just to see if anything come through overnight. I may have a couple of meetings lined up through the day. I’ll work with my manager to just go over the work that we need to do either today or throughout the rest of the week. Because it kind of is at my own pace. I have things to take care of, but I have to know what’s priority and what’s important. Everything you get at your desk is important, but something’s a priority. So you have to know,

how to say, like, you know, this is more important than this right now. So I’m going to delegate my time and my task here. But also my team at the Texas Capital Bank is amazing. Like, so a lot of my kind of partners, they support our technology arm and corporate real estate. And just, I think the bank has done so well of grabbing the best talent from other places. So our CEO,

Rob Holmes came in 2021 and he really wanted to change the bank into having a full service platform, right? So to serve all our clients need from investment banking to private wealth all the way to treasury solutions. And in order to do that, he’s drawn the best talent from Bank of America, Charles Swal, Goldman, and just to have a high intellect in one place. And we kind of all working on this goal of really

producing the best service and opportunity and solution for our clients. I think it’s awesome. It’s definitely one of the best work environments that I’ve ever been in. We actually like each other. We talk about personal life as well. And we’re really collaborative as well. If there’s anything I need, then I know can lean on my counterparts, especially in my first couple of weeks joining Techless Capital Bank,

Meeyeon (16:42)
I know that’s so important.

Nigel Rayford (16:59)
my manager went on jury duty. So it was just like, but work still had to go on. So, but I had a great team to lean on to a great manager, a great director. it ended up working absolutely fine.

Meeyeon (17:01)
God.

And then in your current role, you do, is it a lot of like data analysis with numbers or what’s that like?

Nigel Rayford (17:23)
Absolutely. So I do a lot of data analysis. So a lot of my PowerPoints and presentations do go to our executive board. So in order to formulate that in different charts and different views, we do have to extrapolate data. That’s from our deposits, our loans, access to under management. So definitely heavy in Excel every day. Have to understand how to do all the different types of Excel formulas.

That’s why I like the CFI course was so pivotal to me because I didn’t take a lot of intermediate or advanced finance classes or management classes because Econ was in our liberal arts division. So I took that financial modeling evaluation and analyst certification to give me the extra leg, but also to learn. Think you always want to learn, kind of, as I said in my LinkedIn post, like the day you stop learning.

It’s a day like your mind would no longer be here, right? So the course really helps me do that. So a lot of my time’s in Excel and then PowerPoint.

Meeyeon (18:32)
And do you ever lean on kind of like the AI stuff that’s come out lately, know, like chat GPT and whatnot. I’m always curious whether people at financial institutions are kind of absorbing that into their workflow lately or not yet. Banks are always slow to kind of, and it sounds weird to say, but they’re kind of slow to adapt new technology.

Nigel Rayford (18:49)
You’re right.

Don’t want to say we’re last, but we’re last. But I think as a bank, have started pulling AI into certain data feeds in different organizations. In my current day, day to day, not too much. If I have a question about something that I’ve never done before, I’ll go to like chat GPT or Google. But normally, not really.

Meeyeon (18:54)
Yeah. Don’t want say it, but it is.

And it’s interesting that you say that as econ as a liberal arts degree, you guys didn’t necessarily do like the PowerPoints and whatnot, but an Excel, but at least when I was in school, which was further back than you, we definitely did not have courses that were really using Excel or PowerPoint. Basically, the tools that you would use in a workplace, we didn’t have courses that actually prepared you for that.

So I don’t know if it’s changed since then, but I remember when I first started my, I had an internship at a major pension fund in Canada and I just remember thinking, like, what am I gonna do on my first day? Like, it’s gonna be so different. And I just had friends that were going to, back then, like Merrill Lynch in sales and trading and my friend was like, what do I do? What do I take? Do I like take an econ textbook? And so, like, it’s so strange, cause like you…

Nigel Rayford (19:48)
Great.

Very.

Mm-hmm.

Meeyeon (20:16)
Like you’re mentally prepared, you’ve done everything that you are supposed to do in school, you’ve done your best to excel, no pun intended, but when you get there, you don’t necessarily do, you don’t really necessarily do anything that you learned in school. You’re supposed to kind of apply it, but the tools are so different. So I’m like so glad to hear that CFI was helpful in that way.

Nigel Rayford (20:34)
All right. All right.

Absolutely, because, to your point, college doesn’t prepare you for your everyday or real-day job. College helps you learn how to work with others. I think that’s one of the biggest lessons. Like, can you work with others? Can you ask questions? Can you put yourself out there? Join your organization. So go volunteer. And those are things that you’re going to do at banks, right? Or wherever you go. You’re going to join a research, employee research group. You’re going to do some volunteering.

You’re going to have to work with your colleagues either if you like them or not. And when you’re in college, if you were in a project, you may have had some people or students in your group that you just absolutely hated and you just didn’t want to work with them. So you learn how to navigate that space. But I do agree from what you’re saying, because I think this day, the education system doesn’t teach what students and adults really need to know in order to thrive in the real world.

Meeyeon (21:37)
And given where you are today, I’m curious. You sound like a planner, and I feel like you are, you’re a planner, but also, I feel like just, like, in the time that I’ve gotten to know you, you’re obviously very likable. You are probably very easy and fun to work with, clearly smart, clearly driven. In the next three years, five years, what’s your plan? And like ultimately,

Nigel Rayford (21:44)
Definitely a plan

Meeyeon (22:04)
I always like to say, at least for me personally, I like to have short-term goals that are one, three, and five year, but then a really big goal that is just more like, I want to be the CEO of some type of company that I found. To put it out there and manifest a little bit, what are your goals in the coming years?

Nigel Rayford (22:19)
Right.

Right.

Absolutely. And it’s amazing you asked that question to me now because this is coming on my fifth year working in finance, right? And so that’s kind of like a reflection year to me, five, 10, 15, dominations of five, right? And so this year has been able, it’s been a reflection year, kind of seeing like where I’ve been, what I’ve done, all the skills that I’ve learned and now how have I been to put them all together and apply them.

And I think I’ve been able to do that in this current role in my fifth year and to see my growth professionally and personally, I think it’s been amazing. I started with my biggest goal because I think it’s easier to start there. My biggest goal is I want to own an NBA team. That’s my biggest goal. I want an NBA team. Yeah. Yeah.

Meeyeon (23:12)
You wanna what?

My gosh. my gosh. I hope this works out for you because then I could come back and be like, my gosh, Nigel, remember that time? Which team?

Nigel Rayford (23:24)
Yeah.

I don’t, it doesn’t matter. I think I’m not really, I’m not really too, I guess, particular on the team. just want to, I just want to do that. I love basketball and, and I think it’s basketball and running the business, like put it all together, like what’s the best way. So like, that’s like my biggest goal, but looking like three, five years old, I just want to keep growing and learning.

I just want to see how far I can go. I think I want to keep doing this. The FP&A financial strategy for sure, because I do think I was born for this. Strategy, really do.

Meeyeon (24:08)
I love when I hear that someone loves a current job, thinks that this is like the one that they’re meant to do.

Nigel Rayford (24:14)
Yeah, like I do really believe that I was born to do strategy. Like I’m always going to do that. And that’s that plan in me, as you were saying, because sometimes I’m like, how are people, how people are doing things. But I think that’s where I’m focused on is just really growing where I’m at now, making those connections, because you never know when they’re going to come like full circle. So it’s just been a really great opportunity

and then another thing that I really want to say and do is that I probably want to I want to manage and like work with people, like that’s something I’m really passionate about. I think I’ve always been able to give back to students coming after me and so being a mentor to a lot of like my brothers and sisters I think that is very important to me and

helping them drive their professional career in corporate America is challenging. It is not easy, especially as a minority. How do I navigate this space? What do I need to know? And how can I put myself in the best position? I do want to help those after me. So I think that’s what I really be excited for next is having people, having someone under me and just helping them grow their career professionally.

Meeyeon (25:39)
My God, I love hearing that because I just remember when I started, I started on a trading floor and I remember at least in like, you know, in Toronto or in Vancouver, I’m like, I guess I’m technically considered a minority, but when you see it’s like kind of like I’m a visible majority at school. Like there’s lots of Asian people around, but I just remember when I went on the trading floor, it like really opened my eyes. Like I was clearly a visible minority at that point. But I ever since then,

Nigel Rayford (25:56)
Great.

Mm-hmm.

Meeyeon (26:09)
I had wonderful colleagues and it was such a great experience. But I would love to see more representation of like me and just as you do with you. I think it’s such a great way to give back in a way. It’s, it’s helping the, it’s kind of like helping you when like, when you look back and see all you’ve achieved to give back to the people that are coming up. It’s such a wonderful thing to do.

Nigel Rayford (26:20)
Absolutely.

Mm-hmm.

You know, it’s important. I can never forget. Maybe like my second year in corporate America, like someone told me like, I’m glad like you’re in corporate America, but I just feel like we’re just not supposed to be there. And yeah, like they told me that. And I don’t know if it made me frustrated, but I can see why they say that just because of everything going on, how much lack of representation they feel like it’s just not the space we’re supposed to be in.

But I like to always be the outlier and show people like why, why, why that space is for everybody.

Meeyeon (27:16)
Yeah, exactly.

You want to go where you want to be. There’s not a place where it’s not for you or anything. It’s like if you want to be there, be there. especially with people like you, there’s just like, you don’t feel like, if you want to be here, but you feel like you don’t belong here, guess what? I’m here to help you and support you to make you feel like you belong. Because if you’ve already gotten here and you are here, you deserve to be here.

Nigel Rayford (27:19)
Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, yeah, there’s a quote that I’ve seen is that it goes something like, if you’re in a room, meant to put you there. No matter the room, you’re meant to be there. And I had it as my lock screen on my phone, I think my full first year in corporate America. Yeah.

Meeyeon (28:03)
Amazing. And what a way to conclude our podcast. I have to say, though, you heard it here first, Nigel Rayford gonna own an NBA team. I’m gonna be courtside at a game eventually.

Thank you. Thanks so much for joining us today, Nigel. I think this has been my most fun podcast so far and I’m so glad I got to meet you. And I’m so glad that everyone listening that’s got to meet you.

Nigel Rayford (28:17)
I got you.

I’m glad you did.

No, thank you for the opportunity. Thanks. I think CFI for just allowing me to expand my knowledge and really growing as a professional. So I’m really glad to be on this podcast and I hope it touches lives and people that may normally not think that they’re supposed to be there, but they are.

Meeyeon (28:46)
I’m so glad you’re here. And thank you everyone for listening to another episode of CFI’s Member Spotlight and we will see you again next time.

Nigel Rayford (28:49)
I appreciate it.

Sounds good.