A trip down the memory lane to celebrate 17 years of my career @Blackrock (Including Barclays Global Investors – aka BGI)

Dear All

Thank you for sending me direct messages on LinkedIn Chats, WhatsApp Chats, and various other forums to congratulate me on my 17 years anniversary @Blackrock. It is a wonderful journey with a lot of memories, ups & downs, successes & learnings that I will cherish for a long time to come as these helped me grow both as a person and as a leader.

As some of you may know, I resigned from Blackrock last month and July 8th would be my last working day at Blackrock. I would be sharing the details of my next gig very soon in my next post. I will be in the office on this Wednesday & Thursday and if you are planning on coming to office, would love to meet with you in-person.

I couldn’t have chosen a better forum than this to express my gratitude towards my line-managers and partners, who have had a positive influence on my career @Blackrock.?I couldn’t fit this on a regular LinkedIn post due to word count limitations :-)

I hope you all enjoy reading this.

1.????Ellick Butt (2005)

It all started back in July 2005, when I was looking for a change and had multiple offers on hand. Having short listed Cisco and BGI, I was in a dilemma in deciding between Cisco Vs BGI. Cisco was tempting as it was a short drive from my home in Sunnyvale and BGI was 90-minute commute each way taking multiple trains (Caltrain + Muni Train) but was continuation of the financial services domain that I had been long associated with most of my career. But thanks to Ellick and his team of panel consisting of Jeff Dean and Tim Porter , I got sold into the role to join BGI as the J2EE Architect in the Fixed Income Technology Team. ?

@Ellick – Thank you for offering a role that offered a lot of promise with no boundaries & constraints, in the same style as “All you can eat buffet” ? :-) ?As you may recall, I came into BGI with a startup background/mindset where I was a part of every area of every initiative -> top to bottom – left to right?and I couldn’t have asked for anything better than this role to begin my career at BGI as it was an extension of my startup experience.

2.????Jeff Dean (2006)

Fast forward to 2006, Knowledge management division was formed.?My career took an interesting turn in this newly formed department with lot more focus in the Data Architecture, ETL, Data Ops etc under the leadership of Jeff. I was inspired by Jeff's depth of knowledge in the Data eco-system and his ability to communicate the vision with impact.

@Jeff - You are the main reason behind my career transformation towards Data Management and helping me realize the nuances of Software Engineering Vs Data Engineering. ??As we entered 2007, when Knowledge Management got split into Equities and Fixed Income, thanks a lot for playing a key role as my sponsor and facilitated my move as an Associate Data Engineering Manager – Fixed Income, under Fixed Income Technology team led by Alan Moore. This provided me with a platform offering a lot of opportunities to grow and contribute as a future data leader and a trusted business partner. You truly are a leader in identifying & nurturing the talent to prepare next generation leaders.

?3.????Alan Moore (2007)

2007 was a year where I had to settle down in the new role as a technical manager, and I couldn’t have asked for a better manager than Alan.?Alan is a role model for any Technologist looking to shape up their career.

?@Alan – Thank You for your mentorship and guidance that helped me get to the next level as a Principal - Data Engineering Manager from Associate – Data Engineering Manager. Initially, at the back of my IC role, it was hard for me to let go of my emotional attachment and bias towards architectural choices, design decisions and implementation details. But, thanks to your feedback, I learnt the art of delegation and learnt how to build trust in my team’s abilities and yet keep the implementation oversight from a 10,000 ft level without getting bogged down to the micro details as I transformed from an IC role into a Technical Management role. All the technical conversations we have been having over the years, you continue to inspire me to be a Student of Technology. ?

4.????Ludovic Breger (2008-2009)

Fast forward to 2008, the quant research business demands from fixed income and equities continued to grow which prompted for a focused leadership team dedicated to support quants. I was very lucky to work for Ludovic for the next 2 years until Blackrock’s acquisition of BGI in 2009. ?

?@Ludovic - I couldn’t thank you enough for making me realize the importance of understanding the data through the lens of users (researchers) and taking me a step closer to the Alpha Generation business. This was the beginning of my journey into Data Literacy, working with various quants and data stewards on Data Analytics, Data Visualization, and other aspects of data delivery. I started to breathe Data from this point onwards as I was able to correlate and appreciate the role data played in the business of Research & Alpha generation.

5.????Tim Porter (2010-2012)

As Blackrock’s acquisition of BGI completed, I was keen to add Equities skill to my profile. Thanks to Jalal Akhavein and Tim who were able to create a role for me to lead the implementation & delivery of Scientific Active Equities Fund Performance Analytics Data Warehouse platform (IDW) and facilitate the consolidation, aggregation, migration and decommission of legacy implementation. This wouldn’t have been possible without the support of Prashant Mehta as my peer in getting me up to speed with operational platform (IDB) and Shlomi Bachar , who played a stellar role as Data Steward, helping me learn the Equities markets, Equities data products, asset resolution algorithm to map various security identifiers into a unified asset master, taking back into 30+ years of historical fund positions/benchmarks data. Thank you Prashant and Shlomi for your partnership over the years.

?@Tim – Thank you for your valuable guidance in channeling my energy in the right areas and helping me with the art of navigating ambiguity, building winning relationships & partnerships as I was adapting to Blackrock’s culture as well as getting settled into a project that required adapting to changes.

Special thanks to JaneKoch as the key stake holder and prime user of the platform, from whom I picked up quite a few management & leadership qualities that are left-right-center to my day-to-day functioning of team building and how to be a champion of one’s team.

@Jane – I was very fortunate to witness a great quality in your handling of your team, that I have always admired and took this quality with me and made every effort to live by that principle. It is so impressive, how you champion your team and the way how you go to any extent to back them, support them, and clear the blockers . I tried to become a better student of people, more so with my own team, always looking out for their success and be their champion / sponsor.?Thank You for influencing me to become a better manager and a servant of my team. ??

6.?????Ludovic Breger (2013 – 2016) – 2nd Term

I was very fortunate to have had Ludovic as my manager for the 2nd term, this time longer than the first term.?Having seen both Equities Research data and Fixed Income Research data operating models, there was an exciting opportunity to build a common data platform covering many aspects such as data Infrastructure, data acquisition, data registration, data catalog, data lineage, data services, data orchestration, data operations and other related components of the data eco-system connected by a metadata hub.

@Ludovic – Thank you once again for investing in me. You continued to be a sponsor of my career progression at Blackrock, facilitating my promotion to the Director level.?If I look back, this phase of my career was probably one of the best, if not the best as it helped me grow as a leader , partner and more importantly a Data Champion. The role offered opportunities to learn, research and deliver, without any boundaries across data eco system. I felt that Data is no longer a new oil. It is a new oxygen as I adopted DMBOK 1.0 principles to heart and soul and started breathing data day-in day-out.

I would like to thank Manvendra Gupta, David Soronow for playing an important role as my partners throughout this journey.??

7.?????Alan Moore (2018-2019) – 2nd Term

?Fast forward to 2018, as I was looking for new challenges, I was fortunate again to have found a role in Alan’s team for my 2nd term, delivering the data backbone for Investment Systems Shared Services APIs starting with Optimization API. It was a great experience establishing our team’s footprint in Atlanta office, working with local leadership.

Additionally, I was entrusted with a responsibility to welcome our 2019 summer interns and manage them during their stay of 10 weeks.

?@Alan - Thank you for challenging me with this opportunity of managing 14 summer interns and build something special to showcase in 10 weeks.?It was not an ordinary task to create a single project to engage all 14 interns in a meaningful way to showcase their talents, help them grow and deliver a product, that they would be proud of. It was probably the best decision I made to build a home-grown Data Lineage product prototype. It would be an understatement, if I say that what the interns achieved in 8 weeks, is a phenomenon. It was my privilege to be their manager and I am very glad to have played a part in their success journey and very happy to see majority of them took full-time roles with Blackrock when they graduated.?This was another special phase that will remain in my memory forever.?

8.????Andrew Wilson (2020 to 2022 )

?As I reflected my career, I identified some gaps and needed to get closer to Aladdin operational data to complement the Quant Research Data experience I gained over the years and approached Wilson. I am so thankful that Wilson and the DOE leadership team welcomed me with open arms and created a new role to head the data pipeline engineering team of 20+ team members globally (AMRS, EMEA, APAC) covering index data, reference data, market data, and client data domains supporting Aladdin data eco system.

?@Andrew – I couldn’t thank you enough for all the support you extended in supporting my career growth and investing in the team to grow from 20+ to 50+. ?It wouldn’t have been possible to deliver what we did, without your guidance, and mentorship, more so, as I was the only one in your leadership team operating out of San Francisco :-) ?I benefited a lot by being a part of your leadership team and didn't have an iota of doubt in my mind to take this role and was very happy to start my day at 4:30 AM PST to attend our daily DOE management calls at 5 AM PST, thanks to Pandemic and WFH :-) .

?I also would like to thank a few partners who helped me settled down into this role. Amuktha Yelamanchili , Dawn Wilson Migiam Yiu as Program/Product Management partners along with Shakuntala Kaurav and Nan Jiang from Index data stewardship team.?

Special thanks to Aman Goyal who provided me with a lot of contexts around Aladdin data and supported me throughout. Without his contribution, I would have taken longer to settle down into my role. @Aman - Big Thank you.

?I also would like to thank Nikita Surin, Mark Prestileo and their teams as my data stewards’ partners and can’t thank enough for their participation during third party vendor evaluation of Data Quality, Data Governance, Data Integration products.

Ritu Kaushal – Thank you for all the support you have extended in fulfilling my passion in Data Governance / Data Capabilities domain. I am very happy to have found someone with whom I can discuss about Data Governance at length. I can't thank you enough for having me as your trusted partner in the Data Governance / Data Stewardship journey. I have enjoyed my last 2 years in this role – thanks to your team’s partnership. I will take this experience into my new role with a lot of pride and happiness.

?@Trevor Kirkbride @Daniel Gastel – Thank you for all your advice and guidance during our 1:1s. I am indebted for your valuable feedback ever since I have known you in the last 2 years and I picked a leaf or two from your rich experience and learnt to navigate challenging situations.

@Graham Carle and @Dave Woodhead – I learnt a lot during our conversations around data management both during our 1:1 and in common forums such as DMBOK book club. Thank you for being available to me as resources when I needed to discuss on various nuances of data management to validate & enrich my thoughts.

?@Diwakar Goel – I am very happy to have been part of your team and had great conversations which always resulted in positive outcomes.? I have no doubt that DP&S will flourish in your leadership and I wish you all the best as you scale the team.

Mentors & Partners

Over the years, other than my line managers, I have had a few mentors in SF that I constantly looked up to for advice and/or inspiration.?

Thank You @Andy Peterson @Sanjeev Malik , @Jalal Akhavein – You all have inspired me in several ways.

I would like to add that, @Umesh Sharma (Unix & Infrastructure) and @Sivaji Kota (DBA) hold a special place as I learnt a lot from them when we partnered in implementing several infrastructure projects and those multi year projects wouldn't have been successful without their strong partnership and contribution. Thank you guys for everything.

There are many research partners in Fixed Income as well as Equity research teams who were instrumental in helping me understand the data better ( Way too many people to tag )

Last, but not the least, this post would be incomplete, if I don’t acknowledge the role played by my own team members.?I am not tagging the individual members here as the list goes to 70+ members spanning across 17 years :-)

@Team – If you are reading this post, I want you to know that I owe my success to you, for walking together with me on this journey rain or shine. ?

It has been an incredible journey and hard to replicate. I am very proud to be called a Black-Rocker and very glad that I had a role to play in Blackrock's success as much as Blackrock had in my success.

I just want to close this by saying that I miss you all and may our paths cross again.

Till then - please stay in touch and don't be strangers.