Manhattan Investment Banker Credits BYU Scholarships For Career Success For someone who always wanted to be a doctor, a position as vice president of JP Morgan Chase & Co., wasn’t exactly what investment banker Katherine Lum had in mind. She lives and works in Manhattan and is responsible for assisting clients in raising debt securities in the private placement market. Depending on the flow of deals, Lum has been known to work up to twenty-hour days. What keeps her motivated? “I truly enjoy my job,” she said.
A native of Singapore, Lum said a profession in business was most practical because of access to financial assistance. “I knew I couldn’t come up with the money to attend medical school,” she said. But through the grant-in-aid program available at BYU–Hawaii and working part-time, she was able to fulfill her goal of obtaining higher education.
After receiving her BS in 1991 from BYU–Hawaii in business management, she decided to continue with an MBA at the Marriott School. Lum was again fortunate in obtaining financial assistance. She heard about the International Student Sponsor Program (ISSP), applied for it, and was admitted. At BYU she took classes from Hal Heaton in advanced corporate finance that sparked an interest in investment banking. The summer after her first year, she participated in an internship at Chemical Bank in Singapore. Able to speak Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese, Lum worked with Asian companies on project financing and corporate finance activities.
After finishing her MBA at the Marriott School in 1995, Lum moved to New York to work for Chemical’s Asia Capital Markets program when they announced that the company was buying Chase Manhattan. After three years as a Chase associate, she was promoted to vice president of the Private Placement Group for JP Morgan, a division of Chase Securities Inc., and a subsidiary of JP Morgan Chase & Co. Lum said she might be considered successful by the world’s terms, but she said it’s also important to remember that success depends on your own yardstick of measurement. “I don’t measure it by monetary value,” she said. “Money is only useful when you can share it with others.”
That’s why she’s giving back to the Marriott School’s ISSP. “None of my achievements would have been possible were it not for the helping hand of the ISSP,” she said.
