Going through struggles to make it

Christopher Pape of Metro Resident interviewed Fox Business Network reporter Shibani Joshi about how she got into business journalism.

Here is an excerpt:

R: How did you get into the business?

SJ: I had a different path than most, if there is a typical oath to getting on television. As a Finance and Accounting major in college, all I wanted to do was come to New York and work on Wall Street. I grew up in Oklahoma and went to the University of Oklahoma which was a crazy route if I wanted to get to Wall Street since there’s no direct path. But there was always a feeling that this was where I was supposed to be.

For whatever reason I have always been drawn to New York, and it was what I wanted to do since I was 22 years old. I made it happen when I got a job in investment banking at Morgan Stanley. It was amazing and very hard, with lots of long hours and commuting, but pretty breathtaking since I was 22 and working on $100 million deals with CEOs and CFOs. But that wears off quickly. If you don’t love what you’re doing there’s no point in doing it for 100 hours a week, so I started thinking about other things I wanted to do with my life and financial news came to mind since I’ve always been a veracious consumer of media and loved finance.

I thought this could be a good marriage of the two. At the time, CNN Finance existed, which it doesn’t anymore, but I took a Production Assistant job there. That was a rude wake up call; at first I was discussing huge accounts with CEOs and now there was a huge pay cut and rolling prompters and making graphics. I thought to myself that I could be doing a heck of a lot more, but these were the struggles you have to go through to make it. Overall, it was what I wanted to be doing, the stars aligned, and there was a good amount of work and tenacity that’s part of success – and of course, a sprinkling of luck.

Read more here.