Traveling abroad helps Auckland students realize their potential

OAKLAND — Many of us dream big about life, work and travel. Robert Greene is living these dreams and more.

In the year In 2019, Greene was a senior at MT Eden High School, starting his coursework and preparing for college in Minnesota, where he hopes to earn a PhD and eventually become a professor. What kind of difference does three years make in a person’s life?

know more: Students rising up

Flash forward and Green is back home in Oakland, getting ready to start his junior year at Pitzer College in Southern California. After being hired, he started a new job.

“I’m an investment associate at Capital Group,” Green said. “I work in product management for credit exchange funds, the current hedge fund is like a push. It’s a summer job, but I hope to have an offer at the end of the month.”

So what is the main story doing in finance? Green said the process of changing career goals from professor to financial whiz was the result of some serious soul-searching and a good sense of humor.

“What am I good at?” Green asked himself. “What do I like? And I said, “I like money!”

Financial success was only part of the green equation. His personal, cultural and collective experiences were also factors.

“I think as a low-income, gay black person… growing up in Oakland, I think things happen to me,” Green explained. “I don’t influence the moment. I don’t influence the market. So bringing that perspective, being an underrepresented person and going into these places where there’s no business, I think I really bring a different perspective. Bring that influence and it’s really going to have a positive impact in my community.”

The green community now includes the friends he made during his semester abroad in Africa. The trip was life-changing.

“When I first went to Africa, I saw black people fill different personalities, different perspectives, different people on the political spectrum,” Green said. “I discovered my true self. I just found myself on that journey.”

The process of green entrepreneurship is also stimulated.

“In Africa you see it as a black bank, you see it as a black investor, you see it as a black real estate agent,” Green said. “So it opened my eyes to a lot of different career fields that I didn’t even know I could do.”

Now Green says his memory of Africa motivates him to succeed. His first stop will be his college graduation. Then hopefully a full-time job in finance, based in Africa, where he loves the country he grew up in. Green has a return trip to Africa in December. The goal is to see friends and research apartment rentals and job opportunities.

When Greene was in Africa, “I was like the first time, the blackness is bright.” “It taught me that my blackness is unique to me, and it’s a process of making it my own.”