<p class="ql-block">By Christy Wherry</p> <p class="ql-block">I wake up to the sound of the coffee grinder and my dog's low growl welcoming her breakfast. My husband Nick has been up for hours and is making his first cup of coffee. Since COVID his company - a hedge fund based out of San Francisco with his team dispersed across several continents - has committed to permanent virtual work. He wakes up when the European markets are near closing and before the North American markets open, and thanks to his morning alarms I’ve not slept in, not even accidentally. I reach for my two phones - reading the news, New York Times headlines, McKinsey articles and emails in bed, planning out the high priority emails I'll need to respond once I get to my “office”, aka my dining table that's been converted to my workstation, enjoying a few moments of solitude while brushing my teeth before I join my husband in our living room/co-working space to face the world in another day in pandemic lockdown.</p> <p class="ql-block">The sun is pouring into my apartment's living room by the time I walk out to greet my husband, who has considerately left me a pot of boiling water for my tea. The kitchen smells of fresh coffee. He's set up in our den - formerly my boudoir, his workstation still surrounded by my plethora of purses and hanging racks since the pandemic has stranded us in our downtown Toronto apartment, now even more cluttered with his various screens and technologies.</p> <p class="ql-block">I spray a little dry shampoo in my hair and throw on a collared t-shirt before sitting down at my desk, still in my sweatpants. The lockdown has been a saver of time (and money) for my morning routine, forgoing the mascara, contour, highlights... Now I only have to turn up the filter function on my Zoom camera. Total time to groom and commute: 8 minutes. I sip my tea and review my calendar. It being a Thursday I’ll probably have quite a few End of Week deliverables for some folks taking their summer Fridays. I send a Good Morning message to my research team on Slack, briefing them on my availability for the day in case they need to chat, and expecting them to respond with the same. I review more industry ed news in my email: The Information, the American Investment Council newsletter, and relevant news from Bloomberg that Nick has sent me directly from his terminal - today it's on Canadian pension fund's allocating ESGs. Top of my to-do list today is preparing to speak on a panel for the Arab-Canadian Investment Council. Luckily, I have some notes from a previous talk I did for Korean investors the week before. I reword a few things, pull some numbers and make sure I’m talking about myself the appropriate amount, while also reminding myself to wear a longsleeve shirt out of respect for what would likely be a mostly-Muslim audience.</p> <p class="ql-block">Soon 10 AM rolls around and my entire team gathers for a staff meeting, reporting on their week and sharing their personal tidbits in lockdown, such as they were. We are strangely familiar with each other even though I've seen them in person only a couple of times since I joined. Kim, our CEO, takes the effort to ask how everyone's doing besides work, in her charming French-Canadian manner (like how she omits the “h” in pronouncing her words), which endears me. Staff meetings are followed by my one-on-one with David, manager of research who reports to me. We are building a new database and I ask some probing questions, less concerned about what he says but rather how he says it. When he sounds confident, I know he'll try a few things before making it my problem, which is what I’m looking for. We chat about how the co-op student is doing, noting that I'll have to schedule a coaching session with her tomorrow afternoon. The quarterly report is due in a few weeks and I'll need to block out some time today for uninterrupted writing, graphing, and analysis work which is best done without the constant chimes of incoming emails, thankfully with WFH that’s not been too much of a problem.</p> <p class="ql-block">I put on my noise-cancelling headphones and start to review the data for the Q2 report (so as to avoid being interrupted by the Amazon delivery at my door every few hours) and it looks like private capital has had another good quarter, venture capital activity at an all time high. Private equity on the other hand doesn't seem to have the same momentum. I panic a bit, and message two of my friends working PE - an MD at a global ibank and a VP of a boutique M&A shop, to ask if they're seeing the same on the deal level. "It's so insanely busy, everyone is, M&A is on fire!" The VP is also working on a $600M deal but it won't be closing until the next quarter, so we may see more movements then. Validated by my colleagues in the field, I feel slightly more confident in my analysis.</p> <p class="ql-block">I am aler.ted that it's lunchtime by Nick fussing about in the kitchen, assembling his usual salami sandwich. I don't share his fondness for Italian cold cuts, plus I started Intermittent Fasting as advised by my dietician since the start of COVID so my eating won't be open for another couple of hours. No meetings between 12-1 so I can squeeze in a quick spin on my bike machine, conveniently located next to my desk. I climb on and turn on my Youtube, finding time to play a few words for Grandma Wherry, who derives much joy from our 20 ongoing games of online Scrabble. 101 years old and she’s still teaching me new words (“Zoic'' for today). Having spent her 100th birthday in lockdown, I’m comforted that she can still feel connected to us by our word games.</p> <p class="ql-block">Fifteen minutes into my spin and I'm drenched in sweat, moving my legs as fast as I’m running my scri.pt for the panel in my head, reminding myself to wrap up early as I'll need a quick shower before my 1PM meeting with Jacki, the chair of the data committee and an industry veteran, taciturn but impactful. I refuse to be late or look sweaty, lest it be mistaken for nervousness. She seems pleased with the direction I'm taking with the department, and had just given me effusive praise at the previous board meeting. I am glad for my work to be validated, but at the same time, my Imposter Syndrome doesn't allow me to receive or enjoy compliments well, and I have to remind myself that I'll need to work even harder to make sure that I don't make Jacki a liar.</p> <p class="ql-block">My calendar dings and reminds me that it’s almost 3PM and I must put on my DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) hat and check in with Michelle, co-chair for the DEI committee, on a number of our projects. I scarf down a few bites of leftover Indian food takeout from last night, the butter chicken sauce nearly scorching my tongue. Ten minutes after 3 and Michelle doesn’t show, and I get a note and an apology that she had to miss our call to drive her son to the hospital. She sounds sincere and apologetic, and I didn’t mind either way. It’s hard to remember that the women I work with have double duties as mothers during the lockdown, a job that's perpetually underpaid and underappreciated. I forward the DEI updates to Sophie, the other DEI committee co-chair, who’s on maternity leave but still occasionally checks in and shares her thoughts and much-welcomed photos of her newborn. I always enjoy emails from Sophie, as a trained lawyer she seems to actually enjoy words, and I enjoy the eloquence in her emails more than the usual overtly succinct exchanges in my inbox.</p> <p class="ql-block">It's 5PM and I get an email from Derrick, head of a grassroots BIPOC (Black, Indigenous & People of Colour) talent group who is working with me on the internship pilot that I started earlier this year to place qualified BIPOC students into VC and PE firms for the Fall. His note simply read “forwarding for transparency”, the attachment is a note from a university in Quebec rejecting our request for BIPOC students to participate in the pilot, citing simply “In lieu of an official stance on the program, we don’t prefer to target any groups, the program should ACTUALLY be for everyone.” My blood runs cold. This was the most articulate and insulated way of saying “All Lives Matter'' that I’ve encountered. There is clearly more work to be done in D&I, and some groups are more nascent in their journey than others. Between the sound of my head buzzing from the familiar feeling of frustration, exhaustion, and exasperation, I am reminded that there’s still more work to be done. The progress is slow, but I’m in it for the long haul.</p> <p class="ql-block">The next time I look up it's already quarter to 7, and Nick reminds me that it’s time to get dressed - for my favourite time of the day, when we take the dog out to the park whilst catching a bit of sunset. We walk hand in hand and discuss our respective days - he tells me what's going on in the market, which stock is doing well and which dropped, how his fund did for the day and why. Our discussions of the market invariably lead to discussions of geopolitics - China is clamping down on fintech, Alibaba stock taking a 10% hit reactively. I validate with the Chinese news I’ve read on WeChat from the night before, verifying or diverging from his western news-informed views, and secretly thanking my Tiger Mom for insisting (often quite aggressively) that I maintain my facility of the Chinese language, both reading and writing, which as a teenager I never fully appreciated. Now in my adulthood my bilingual skills and the ability to access media from both sides of the Pacific is paying dividends - honing my perspective that the truth probably falls somewhere in the middle. With this as a reminder, I text my Mom a photo of my dog playing in the dusk - my way of keeping her in the loop of my life.</p> <p class="ql-block">Nick drops me at home and continues his walk to take calls with his colleagues and friends on the west coast, who should be just getting off work now. And I stop by a patio to catch up with a girlfriend, having to choose a franchise pub away from the one in my neighbourhood because my usual spot has been permanently shut down due to the pandemic like many well-loved family-owned establishments. I'm already planning out my list of Things to Do Tomorrow, Next Month, and maybe Rest of the Quarter in my head. I read on Twitter that Italy is opening its border for vaccinated travelers without requiring quarantine, giving me hope that maybe I’ll be able go this summer - a first trip in 18 months - and reflecting on how lovely it would be to eat some pasta that's not served in paper takeout containers. That's when I'll know that COVID is behind us. Until then, we wait with patience, and hope and pray that we may all soon recover from the social, physical and emotional distance through which the pandemic has forced us to endure.</p> <p class="ql-block">I should head home soon, and finish my copy of Minor Feelings that Thomas, a well-read Asian-Canadian investor, has recently recommended to me. It’s been a powerful read, but racial trauma (and identifying too often with it) is perhaps not how I’d like to close out this evening. Plus I’ll likely spend an hour scrolling through social media, feeling both superior and sad by how my US-based friends are enjoying their unmasked and uninhibited summer. So I finish my wine and order a second glass. The sound of The Weeknd and Ariana Grande “Save Your Tears” is cooing in the speakers, the city light is twinkling before my eyes...</p> <p class="ql-block">(The end)</p><p class="ql-block"><b style="color: rgb(1, 1, 1);">Christy </b></p><p class="ql-block"><b style="color: rgb(1, 1, 1);">September, 2021</b></p>