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Victor Perez has held a few job titles over the course of his career.
The 34-year-old son of Cuban immigrants and first in his family to be born in the US is a father (of two), husband, and vice president in credit derivative trading at Wells Fargo.
He's also a former Naval lieutenant and graduate of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business who worked for a time as a professor at the University of Notre Dame, teaching young armed forces personnel about weapons systems and Naval systems engineering.
But one of the roles he seems especially proud of is more a vocation than a job: helping veterans find meaningful careers on Wall Street.
"The person I wanted to be when I grew up was like John Glenn — I wanted to be an astronaut," said Perez, who was named to Business Insider's annual Rising Stars of Wall Street list this year.
As a kid, he thought he'd "go to the Naval Academy and be a fighter pilot and then somehow end up at NASA. That was my goal."
But Perez found his calling not in orbit among constellations, but beneath the ocean waves aboard a submarine. After discovering that flying planes wasn't for him, Perez enrolled in the US Naval Academy, graduating in May 2010.
With a focus on nuclear engineering, he served aboard the USS Cheyenne, a nuclear-powered submarine based in Hawaii, eventually rising to lieutenant.
In 2014, he was assigned to teach at Notre Dame, and spent two years there as a professor while simultaneously pursuing his MBA at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
He gradated in 2016, and has since focused on a new mission: paying forward the experiences he had as a Naval officer by working with organizations like Veterans on Wall Street, Patriots Path, and Team Rubicon. In 2019, he even had the chance to represent the Veterans on Wall Street initiative, ringing the Nasdaq closing bell on their behalf on the eve of the Fourth of July.
While Perez doesn't have an official title or role in veteran recruitment at his bank, he has nevertheless attracted a reputation for supporting other veterans by way of his support for them, mentorship, and work toward their career advancement.
"It's the network of people I've built over the years that I just know like, 'Hey, this person is hiring, this group is looking,' or even the hiring managers here on the floor will just give me a heads up, like 'Hey, we're looking to hire. Do you know of anyone that's interested?'" he said.
In 2016, Perez graduated with his MBA and went to work at Wells Fargo
After graduating from the University of Chicago, Perez was invited into the inaugural, eight-person class of Wells Fargo's roughly two-month Veteran Employment Transition Program.
The program cycles veterans through a variety of duties like risk management, investment banking, and commercial banking. Perez fell in love with a relatively new desk — credit derivative trading — and, after receiving a full-time offer, has remained with that team ever since.
During that time, Perez also helped to establish the Charlotte chapter of the Veterans on Wall Street initiative, a national cause that was cofounded in 2011 by veteran and Wall Street executive Christoper Perkins.
Perkins is a managing director and the global head of OTC clearing and FX prime brokerage at Citigroup in New York. In an interview with Business Insider, Perkins praised Perez for the work he's done on behalf of veterans.
"When you have a veteran who transitions, they're representing all the other veterans," Perkins said. "We have a certain weight that we carry on our shoulders when we land a job and we land on a desk. Victor landed on a really prestigious trading desk — trading credit derivatives — and he's thrived."
See more: 6 tips on how to move from the military to Wall Street
For its part, Citigroup has hired more than 2,100 veterans over the past five years.
And Perez's firm, Wells Fargo, has hired some 1,500 employees within the past year who self-identify as veterans.
Since 2018, the bank has recruited more than 5,000 individuals who identify as veterans, said Sean Passmore, Wells Fargo's head of enterprise military and veteran initiatives.
This year's summer 2020 Veterans Employment Transition Program cohort was composed of 29 veterans, all of whom were extended offers to join Wells Fargo full-time upon completion of the program, Passmore added. And, while the numbers could vary slightly, he predicts that about 22 roles will be available for the 2021 cohort.
Veterans bring certain qualities to the table that make them a strong fit for finance
People who work in finance say that veterans' fortitude and quick thinking make them strong candidates for Wall Street jobs.
"In our business, we're always hit with a massive amount of information. You have to distill that information, make a decision, and execute," Perkins explained. "I can't tell you how many times in the Marine Corps I was told that even a poor decision executed well is better than no decision at all."
It's a mentality, he said, which is mutually intelligible for the kind of jobs that he and Perez now hold.
Marshall Lauck, a Marine Corps vet, explained that veterans "tend to understand how to operate in high-pressure situations and compressed timelines, [and] operate with incomplete information."
Lauck is now the chief growth and marketing officer at the Bob Woodruff Foundation, a group that has raised more than $70 million to invest in veteran support programs since its inception in 2006.
The foundation now does extensive work with Veterans on Wall Street, and Lauck and Perez have worked together directly.
Lauck lauded Perez as "the driving force behind the growth of that Charlotte chapter" of Veterans on Wall Street. "I'd say arguably the Charlotte chapter is the most active of our chapters... [Perez has] got a real gravitational pull."
Hiring veterans boost diversity and fills companies with skill sets they need to thrive, experts in the field say
The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs sets an annual 5.7% benchmark for veteran recruiting for companies that do federal contract work — but Wells Fargo exceeds that metric, hitting 6.5% in the past year, Passmore, who heads their veteran recruiting initiatives, said.
"Veteran hiring is actually helping us increase the diversity of our workforce here at Wells Fargo," he said, explaining that, "while every veteran is actually a diversity hire, we know that about half of our veteran hires represent one more additional diversity segment."
And Citigroup's Perkins said it's that diversity — of background, opinion, and experience — that makes veterans such an asset to financial institutions.
"Everyone in our military today are volunteers, and they become part of something that's bigger than themselves," he said. "People who change the trajectory of their life to become part of something bigger than them generally are wired in a certain way."
"Insert people like this into your firm, and the culture tends to shift in a way that galvanizes people to accomplish a common goal," he added.
Are you a young person working on Wall Street? Contact this reporter via email at rhodkin@businessinsider.com, encrypted messaging app Signal (561-247-5758), or direct message on Twitter @reedalexander.
SEE ALSO: Meet 2020's Rising Stars of Wall Street from firms like Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, and Man Group
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