This is the 128th article in Bears Doing Big Things, a bi-weekly column celebrating the stories of notable M-A alumni.
“At the heart of our businesses, it’s a people’s business,” Jake Solomon ’13 said. Solomon works as an investment banker at Wells Fargo Bank. From the young age of 13, he has always been interested in finance.
Solomon grew up in Menlo Park, attending Oak Knoll Elementary School and Hillview Middle School. “My dad grew up on the Stanford campus. My mom was born and raised in San Francisco. So there’s a lot of history of my family just being in the area,” he said.
At Hillview, he experienced the Great Recession of 2008, which sparked his initial interest in finance.
At M-A, Solomon participated in various extracurricular activities, including jazz band and trivia club. He began playing the clarinet at a young age, continued into high school, and also picked up the saxophone at M-A. “We traveled quite a bit for festivals, we would go down to Disneyland, we performed over the Bay Area. That was a fun experience,” he said.
Solomon also joined the Quiz Bowl Club, a trivia club that competed in various tournaments and appeared on TV. The club was a great way for him to meet new people, including multiple close friends. “I would say I have three very close friends from high school that I still regularly keep in touch with,” Solomon said. “So I’m very grateful to kind of have those core friends.”
Solomon highlighted his AP U.S. History class with Ben Wellington as a favorite, because he says Wellington made the material engaging for his students. He also appreciated Liane Strub, who taught Solomon English and AP Art History classes, which he wasn’t very interested in. “She knows how to get your attention real quick, and then she just knows how to draw that attention and maintain it,” he said.
After high school, Solomon attended Stanford University, where he majored in economics. “I was pretty much at every [Stanford] home basketball game and football game. I grew up just loving Stanford and its sports programs,” he said.
Two major aspects factored into his decision to go to Stanford: their reputed program and the proximity to home. “I wasn’t quite ready to leave home. It’s funny, I had a number of classmates [say], ‘Why do you want to go closer to college than you did to high school?’” he said. “You couldn’t go wrong with going into an academic institution. I was very fortunate.”
Solomon found certain similarities between M-A and Stanford. “Stanford was a place like M-A with incredible diversity, a lot of smart people, and a lot of really good people,” he said. “It was a combination of both challenging but also intensely rewarding.”
Solomon’s favorite memories at Stanford centered around spontaneous outings with his friends, especially those in the fraternity he joined, Delta Tau Delta. “The way Stanford was set up encouraged folks to make connections and just go,” he said.
In high school, Solomon originally considered becoming an attorney. “Both my parents were in the law profession. Other family members were in the law profession. I wanted to kind of strike out and do something different,” he said.
A 10-week summer internship in Los Angeles further steered him toward the field of investment banking. “What I soon came to realize was that that internship wasn’t quite the career path I wanted to go down in that specific realm,” he said. “The investment banking field seemed more appealing to me because it kind of marries both a much more technical, quantitative aspect with people oriented, soft skill elements.”
With this career in mind, Solomon decided to move immediately after college to New York City, the heart of the investment banking industry. “It was quite a culture shock for someone who grew up in the suburbs and went to college in the suburbs to move to a city of eight million people. It was invigorating,” he said. “New York is definitely a special city. There’s nothing else like it. If you want to have a career in investment banking, that’s kind of the place to be.”
Solomon’s first job was as an analyst at the Bank of America. As a part of his role, he interacted with large businesses in the consumer retail area.
After about seven years at the Bank of America, Solomon moved over to Wells Fargo after new leadership invested more in its capital market activities. “That presents a really unique opportunity for someone like me to come in and to have a real long term path within the institution,” he said. “Most people would agree that you want to be part of a growing place that has a lot of upside.”
He started as a Vice President but rose throughout the ranks, recently becoming an Executive Director. As an Executive Director, he advises the leadership on long-term goals, monitors financial portfolios, manages teams of senior professionals, and maintains relationships with major clients.
Solomon appreciates the community at Wells Fargo. “There’s a lot of phenomenal people,” he said. “There’s just a strong culture of doing what’s right and doing it responsibly and growing responsibly. We have a lot of great people on the platform, and I just really enjoy my co-workers, and I enjoy the clients that we have, and I’m very excited about the future.”
Solomon’s advice to current M-A students: “If you do the work and have fun, enjoy your time with your friends and family, it will all work itself out. The added stress of the what-ifs and what could happen, it’s all superfluous, and it’s easier said than done, but I just wish I had been able to talk to myself 15 years ago [and say] focus on what’s in your control, and let the other stuff go, because the added stress isn’t constructive.”
Solomon’s advice to those interested in finance: “If you want to pursue a career in investment banking or just broader financial services, I don’t think there’s a requirement that you have to go take these certain classes and take a certain major. What I look for in prospective students, prospective analysts, and associates that I work with are people that are just hungry and generally interesting.”
