Hello and welcome. I'm Patrick Curtis, your host and Chief Monkey, and this is the Wall Street Oasis podcast. Join me as I talk to some of the community's most successful and inspirational members to gain valuable insight into different career paths and life in general.

Let's get to it.

In this episode, Solomon shares his path from Ethiopia to the D.C. area when he was just six years old.

Learn how his path was shaped at UBA to consider finance and how his internship at J.B. Morgan

in sales and trading pushed him

to consider banking instead. Listen to how he shares some great advice on brand name and taking on risk

early in your career. Enjoy. All right, Solomon, thanks so much for joining the Wall Street Oasis podcast.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

So it would be great if you could just give the listeners a short summary of your bio.

Yeah, sure thing.

So it was born in Ethiopia, moved to D.C. when I was six, went to UVA undergrad,

was pretty undecided, ended up going the undergrad business school

path, did an internship at JPMorgan in sales and trading, realized that wasn't really a fit for

me. And then after that, found my way into Lazard doing a summer internship and then ended up

accepting a full-time offer to join a power and energy group.

You know, a year in, like many analysts, realized banking isn't the long-term path for me.

And at the same time, I didn't kind of want to recruit for the mega fund PE shops because

a lot of them were only marketing power and energy opportunities and I wanted

to try something new. So began exploring startups and venture funds serendipitously as I began

that search, the firm I'm at Tusk, I guess it's not much of a secret, was looking to, you know,

expand the team.

I reached out to one of the partners, began a dialogue.

...