Watching him in the middle of the trading floor as he switches back and forth between computer screens, that is not apparent at all. But to check his e-mail, read research reports and look at presentations, Goyal uses a screen-reading software whose speed is so high that it sounds like gibberish to the untrained ear. When he needs to read graphs, which the software cannot do, Goyal goes through the data and tries to imagine the graph in his head.

On his desk, two computer screens show the usual flashing Bloomberg messages and spreadsheets of constantly changing numbers. Two keyboards are linked to headsets through which the information and figures are read out to him at rapid speeds. The same technology reads out text messages he receives on his cell phone.

Tolga Uzuner, executive director of JP Morgan’s chief investment office and Goyal’s boss, said he hired the 30-year old Wharton graduate because he was one of only a few candidates he interviewed who knew about Asian interest rates, had excellent risk management skills and knowledge of foreign exchange.

Vladimir Aleksic, who now works with Goyal, said: “We walked out of the interview room and just said wow.” Many people on the team analyze historical data and use comparisons to make decisions about risks, Aleksic said, but “Ashish looks at where things are now and just follows the news flow. He’s not blinded by the graphs.”

But as someone who can make out only light and shadows, Goyal also knows his limits. “I told people, ‘You can put me on the spot trading desk, but I’d be too slow,’ “ he said. “The challenges are to realize where I can add value and where I don’t. You need to find your niche.”

Soon, in pursuit of a career in global financial markets, Ashish came to Wharton in 2006.Not only did he excel in academics by graduating with honours, Ashish became an inspiration in the campus. He was known for leadership and extra-curricular activities.

Ashish became a staff writer of the Wharton Journal, member of a Brazilian drumming group, and chair of the ‘Wharton Leadership Lectures Committee’, among other things. At graduation, Ashish was voted by his peers for the Joseph P Wharton Award for Leadership and Innovation.

Goyal says he always wanted to work in financial markets. But despite a résumé that includes a top business degree from a university in India, another from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a three-year stint at an Indian subsidiary of ING bank, finding people who would hire him was not easy.

After gaining his first business degree, Goyal said he had made the short list of candidates for jobs at several firms, but once they realized he was blind he was turned away. When it was ING’s turn, Goyal recalled, he was so frustrated that he just blurted: “I’m blind. Do you still want to talk to me or not?”. “They asked whether I could do the job. I said I think I can, and I was hired,” Goyal said.

Years later, when he applied to Wharton with the goal of getting a job in New York or London, Goyal said, the university’s director of admission signed off on his application with the words: “I have never seen a blind trader on Wall Street. I can’t guarantee you’ll get a job but you’ll definitely be better off with a Wharton degree.”

Still, even after Wharton, many Wall Street firms rejected his applications because they could not find anybody else on Wall Street using the same screen-reading software. JP Morgan was the only bank to offer him a summer internship, which led to an offer of a permanent position.

Goyal was not born blind. Growing up in Mumbai, Goyal said he had a normal, happy childhood. But when he was about 9 years old, he noticed that he could not immediately recognize some people and could not see the lines in his notebooks at school. One night he walked into a ditch, later he crashed his bicycle, and then he started to miss the ball during his tennis lessons.

Goyal was told he had retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic condition that damages the retina, and would gradually become blind. By the time Goyal was 22, he had completely lost his eyesight.

The loss of his eyesight left Goyal “scared and confused” and with fewer friends, he said. “I was ready to just give up and not take my final exam and just go and work for my dad,” a real estate developer, Goyal said. But his mother forced him to sit for the exam, and to his surprise he not only passed but received good grades.

Despite his achievements, which this year also included a national award from India for the Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, Goyal speaks modestly of himself.

Ashish is the first blind trader to work for a bank and is also the first-ever blind MBA student at The Wharton School in the United States.

http://justsamachar.com/national/the-indian-who-manages-risk-for-jpmorgan-and-blindness/?r=http://www.indianexpress.com/news/the-indian-who-manages-risk-for-jpmorgan-and-blindness/720294/

The day before her first history test in the tenth grade, Garima Goyal‘s mother walked into her room and said: “You have the same problem as bhaiyya.”

For a regular 15-year-old, this might have sounded like bickering about the mess in the room, her grades or some such mundane problem.

Garima’s brother, Ashish, however was no regular teenager. After that morning, she wouldn’t remain one either.

It had been a few years since her brother was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa, an irreversible and degenerating eye condition.

Ashish Goyal was going blind. And now, so was Garima.

A little over 10 years since the day, the two siblings have lost most of their vision.

Ashish has gone on to become the first blind person to graduate from Wharton and is the first blind trader at J P Morgan’s London operations.

Garima is one of the first visually challenged media graduates from the Maharashtra State Board of Technical Education. She’s completed her course in social communications media from Sophia College — a major portion of this course involves a strong visual element.

She has around 20 per cent of her sight remaining.To be honest, at first, she didn’t seem like a visually challenged person to me either. Part of it, perhaps, has to do with the fact that Garima is so comfortable with her impediment, she’s learnt to overcome it superbly.

It was a senior in college who sensed this and offered to help.

“He challenged me to beat his scores. I said it was impossible, but since it is in me never to let my dear ones down, I did my best and graduated with flying colours.”

Garima counts her years in college as being some of the toughest.

Coping with her condition during her teenage years was not easy. She remembers jumping into extracurricular activities just to keep depression away.

“Ashish had suggested this. So I started participating in every committee in college,” she says. “It was a whole new world and I wanted to experience everything.”

At the time, Garima’s condition was in its nascent stages. She could still go about her daily routine without anyone noticing the difference.

But, since it would only be a matter of years, she decided to let her friends know.

When I asked her about the most difficult times in her life, she counted this as the first.

“Overcoming depression during my early college years was tough,” she said. “That is the age when you want to be a normal teenager, but you get labelled dumb because you cannot complete papers. You try to fit in but you can’t.”

It took her three years to come out of that phase.

“I used to sit for hours doing nothing. Time and the fact that no one let me give up healed it, I suppose,” she says.

The second phase was when she was pursuing her Master’s course in Commerce from Sydneham College, Mumbai.

“I was figuring out what to do and was largely at home, learning music and taking some time off. That was when people began to take my presence for granted. Everyone assumed I was only waiting to get married.”

Around this time, Garima found solace in writing — she has two unfinished novels and a whole lot of poems — and asked herself what she hoped to do in the future.

“Media seemed to be the place where creativity and writing came together,” she says.

Garima joined Hindustan Times in Mumbai as an intern to get first-hand experience.

She remembers her first day — a friend came over early in the morning and helped her go through six newspapers.

For the next three months, Garima worked at their office, where she edited stories for the Metro desk with the help of special software they had let her load.

This was the first brush she had with the outside world. It gave her the confidence to step out of her comfort zone; it also gave her much-needed direction.

Three months later, Garima knew what she wanted to do. She applied for the social communications media course at Sophia College, Mumbai.

“The department had inhibitions as to how a visually challenged would pursue a high-pressure visual course. They communicated their reservations to me.

“As part of the course, we were supposed to make a film, design ads, go out and speak with people. It wasn’t going to be easy and I had no idea how I’d do it, except that I wanted to.”

Garima started off on what she describes as the third most difficult phase in her life.

Garima’s first assignment involved watching D W Griffith’s The Birth Of A Nation.

By now, Garima had lost most of her eyesight. But she hadn’t stopped going to the movies with her family and friends; she could still follow most of what was going on because of the dialogues and the music.

The Birth Of A Nation however was a different ball game altogether.

Released in 1915, the seminal movie belongs to the silent era.

“There were no dialogues!” she recollects, now laughing. “And it was a three hour movie!”

As she sat through the movie, Garima felt like a fool. “I wondered why I was even bothering to waste my time on this. I couldn’t see a thing. I couldn’t understand what was going on.”

By the time she went back home though, Garima had made up her mind to get around the situation. She searched online for information about the movie, read up on it, researched the hell out of the topic and came back to the next class.

In her semester exam, she would top the film paper.

Garima says the course made her push her limits. It was challenging and affected her health but, she says, it was worth the effort.

Along the way, Garima made friends — friends who stuck by her, didn’t mind being woken up in the middle of the night to talk to her or stop by just so they could do little things for her.

Looking back at her achievements, Garima is content. She is currently working with her guru, Balaji Tambe, who runs a holistic healing centre in Karla near Pune and is translating his works into English.

She has never learnt Braille and says technology has helped her get by without much difficulty.

Her phone and laptop have screen reading software that help her read and write.

When I ask her if she’s ever felt alienated because of her condition, she tries to think back. “Maybe when I was 16 or 17.” After a little while she adds, “I do not recall. The more you collect things, the more difficult it is to move on.”

Life may not have dealt Garima a fair chance, but it isn’t something she is complaining about; she prefers to focus on her future.

The one lesson she’s learnt though is to be true to herself at all times.

Initially, people are sceptical of you. Then, when they see you work, they are proud. Later comes the phase when they begin to expect the best from you. When people tell me how I’ve changed, I only smile. All along, I have been the same person they were unsure of.”

http://www.rediff.com/getahead/slide-show/slide-show-1-achievers-interview-with-garima-goyal-first-blind-media-graduate/20110131.htm