Public bio:
Commercially experienced business operator with a background in finance, entrepreneurship and advisory
work.
Started career in investment banking and asset management before founding and running a UK consumer
brand stocked by retailers including John Lewis, Habitat and Heal’s.
Comfortable working across strategy, finance and day-to-day business operations. I enjoy helping
businesses solve practical problems, improve how they operate and make better commercial decisions.
Known for being practical, thoughtful and easy to work with. I value clear thinking, good relationships and a
calm approach when things get complicated.
Open to a broad range of roles where experience, judgement and adaptability are useful.
Public bio:
Seasoned strategy, product, and innovation leader with experience at the intersection of strategy, innovation and digital technologies.
Starting as a core technologist, I made a transition into strategy and innovation consulting roles with organisations such as IBM, EY and Accenture. I bring a track record of leading engagements to define, build and scale digital-first business models leveraging marketing, fintech, data and AI solutions.
I successfully led strategic programs and product innovations for Fortune 500 organisations and market-leading brands across Retail, Consumer Goods, eCommerce, Telecom, Automotive and Hospitality sectors.
Public bio:
Financial services professional with experience in both buy-side and sell-side projects ranging the lower, middle and upper markets. Leadership and corporate finance experience spans multiple industries.
Current position:
• Global advisory, private capital markets in an independent partnership
Overview of experience and education:
• Live generalist debt / equity capital raise and M&A sell-side mandate execution experience
• Generalist private equity and credit based direct lending, private capital markets advisory, consumer / retail investment banking sector coverage
• Industry financial planning & analysis background
• Columbia Business School MBA and D1 Athlete
Public bio:
Rafael is a Senior Lecturer at Brighton Business School and was a Consultant Trainer at Training the Street, the main worldwide provider of investment banking training courses. He previously worked at Capital Partners, an investment banking boutique in London, and at Seymour Pierce Private Equity, managing two Venture Capital Trusts (VCTs). He also led several LBO transactions at AIG Southern Cone Fund in the retail and food sectors, and was responsible for Ellington's Capital Management Latin American operations, the second largest hedge fund issuing mortgage backed securities in the US. At Citigroup he worked in the Corporate & Investment Bank in the Oil & Gas and Transportation units, and was a systems and strategy consultant at Accenture.
Rafael has a degree in Industrial Engineering and MSc in Systems Engineering, and holds an MBA from Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.
Public bio:
Vice President in model validation at Crédit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank with 10+ years of experience in quantitative risk analytics, and regulatory compliance across market, credit, and liquidity risk
Previously in consulting (ex-KPMG), advising major institutions including BNP Paribas, Natixis, Société Générale, and ENGIE on quantitative risk and model governance projects in Paris and Montreal.
FRM-certified, proficient in Python, SQL, and R
Graduate of École Polytechnique (Master’s in Data Analytics) and ENSAI (Risk Management & Financial Engineering)
Fluent in French and professional proficient in English with extensive experience across complex banking risk environments
Public bio:
- Founder & CEO of AperioHub Advisory, a business consultancy and EdTech platform providing Experiential Learning focused internship opportunities to University students and recent graduates
- Global banking professional with 20+ years of experience across Investment Banking, Equity Derivatives, Private Credit, Wealth Management and other general banking/investment areas
- Built new businesses on larger banking, corporate and fintech platforms in Hong Kong & Singapore for Asia and Middle East markets
- MBA graduate from Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad and alumnus of Kenan Flagler Business School at UNC - Chapel Hill
Public bio:
Gabriel Pires is a Senior Data Scientist and Quantitative Modeling Specialist, with a career defined by the integration of data science, artificial intelligence, quantitative finance, and risk management, primarily within the Brazilian financial, pension, and capital markets. His professional trajectory combines strong academic training, hands-on experience in highly regulated environments, and the development of advanced models applied to strategic decision-making.
Current Professional Role
Since 2025, Gabriel has been working as Quantitative Modeling, where he is responsible for the development and evolution of analytical solutions focused on credit risk and fixed income. His main responsibilities include:
- Development of clustering models for credit bounds, providing new perspectives on credit risk;
- Construction of corporate, sectoral, and issuer-level credit curves, used as proxies for CDS;
- Enhancement of the Credit Curve, including callable bonds and methodological refactoring;
- Implementation of Z-spread calculations applied to credit bounds;
- Creation of monitoring dashboards for credit and fixed income, focused on detecting out-of-pattern market movements;
- Deployment of models to production in Databricks and AWS, including version control, governance, model risk management, and MLOps practices.
- Clustering studies of Brazilian investment funds and asset managers, using market metrics and machine learning to produce more representative classifications;
- Development of synthetic benchmarks through mathematical modeling of time series;
- Leadership of a Generative AI project applied to self-regulatory documents, aimed at supporting member inquiries;
- Creation of a text classification model using embeddings for the automatic categorization of customer service requests;
- Acting as a bridge between business areas and technical teams, facilitating meetings and strategic alignment.
Experience in Risk Management and Quantitative Finance
Gabriel worked as a Quantitative Risk Analyst. During this period, he developed high-impact institutional solutions, including:
- Creation of a Systemic Risk model for the Brazilian economy based on machine learning, presented at five events and awarded the Financial Innovation Award 2023 (CFA Institute);
- Development of portfolio optimization models used to define risk limits across 14 pension plans;
- Implementation of an NTN-B optimization model, aligned with PREVIC standards, applied to all immunized plans;
- Construction of IPCA inflation forecasting models using domestic macroeconomic variables, supporting medium- and long-term strategic decisions;
- Modeling of interest rate simulations based on an adapted RiskMetrics methodology;
- Development of Credit and Liquidity VaR, as well as deep learning models for distribution simulation, risk metrics, and correlation matrices;
- Active participation in an Innovation and AI Working Group, promoting a data-driven culture and identifying organizational bottlenecks.
Experience in Energy and Data Analytics
Gabriel also worked as a Data and Risk Analyst, operating in both Brazil and Chile. His key contributions include:
- Quantitative studies to support trading desk strategies, leading to more informed and effective decisions;
- Development and maintenance of VaR, CVaR, stop-loss, and P&L control models, mitigating significant monthly losses;
- Creation of a customer geolocation project, generating approximately 10,000 leads;
- Development of energy consumption forecasting models for current and prospective clients, directly applied by the commercial team;
- Implementation of end-to-end ETL pipelines, using Python, SQL, APIs, web scraping, and Power BI for portfolio visualization and monitoring;
- Maintenance of energy pricing processes and portfolio visualization for the Chilean market.
Academic Background and Scientific Research
Gabriel has a strong and multidisciplinary academic background:
- PhD in Artificial Intelligence – UNESP (2026–2030)
Thesis: Magic Bullet for forecasting macroeconomic variables: development of a state-of-the-art neural network for the Brazilian economy;
- Master’s Degree in Artificial Intelligence – UNESP (2023–2025)
Dissertation: Deep Learning and Metaheuristics: An Approach to Portfolio Optimization;
- Bachelor’s Degree in Chemistry – University of São Paulo (USP) (2016–2021)
Undergraduate Project: Synthesis of Reversible Covalent Inhibitors of SARS-CoV-2 Mpro.
Skills and Professional Profile
Gabriel has C1-level English proficiency, strong command of Python, SQL, and C, experience with AWS, Azure, Oracle, and MySQL, and a proven ability to translate complex business problems into mathematical models and scalable AI solutions.
Public bio:
Execution of domestic and cross-border M&A and capital raising transactions advising both private equity firms and industrial companies.
Public bio:
With a PhD in Computational Statistics, I’ve built my career as a quant working across market leaders in asset management, insurance and banking, specialising in portfolio and regulatory risk and model risk management. I’m passionate about using data, models, and rigorous analysis to better understand risk and improve financial decision-making.
Public bio:
- Currently an Associate at a growth-oriented PE firm with focus in the technology-enabled services sectors
- 2 years Investment Banking Analyst in the power, energy and renewables group
- Graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Human Development
- MBA
Frequently Asked Questions
Can’t find an answer? Please send an email to [email protected]
The WSO mentor service runs at a very slight profit (~5-10% net margin) in order to help motivate amazing professionals to provide great (free) advice in the forums (many mentors have green "mentor" buttons next to their usernames) which strengthens the entire WSO community. Luckily, there is a surprising number of elite professionals within the WSO community that love giving back to motivated candidates. We also recently automated the mentor matching with an algo that helps reduce the manual work needed on the backend should a requested mentor not be available. Prices range from as low as $57 up to $997 depending on the package you purchase and the mentor you select. Given the success of our service and the number of repeat clients we have, we know that we can afford to run on thin profit margins and serve thousands of applicants. We also know that many of you will follow the advice of our mentors and invest in additional courses and/or services from WSO.
After checking out, your request will immediately be sent to the mentor you selected. You will be expected to fill our some basic information (location, industry preference, etc) along with upload a Word version of your resume in order to help the mentor decide if they feel like they are a great match. As soon as they accept (usually within ~9-12 hours), an email will be sent making an introduction. Your mentor will introduce him/herself and then proceed to review your current resume and/or offer times when you can connect for a mentor session. Over the following days, you will schedule a time that is mutually convenient for you initial phone call to go over what you need help with (mock interview, career consultation and/or both). If you would like to continue with this mentor, you can schedule more hours anywhere from 1 hour to 3+ hours with him/her over the following weeks & months.
Typically the match happens within 12hrs. If your preferred mentor has not responded within 9 hours or they indicate they can't take you on as a mentor, we will notify other top mentors that have the most in common with the mentor you selected (based on our matching algo). These backup mentors will indicate to you if they are available and you have the choice to move forward with one of them, get a refund or wait longer for your preferred mentor. If for whatever reason we cannot match you in time and/or there are no mentors that are available that you'd like to work with, we will refund your purchase in full, no questions asked.
We have an incredible team of 1,000+ dedicated mentors across top firms all around the world. Our #1 goal is to make sure you are placed in the hands of the most competent and detail-oriented professional in your specific target industry. This coupled with our strict process ensures a smooth and thorough experience. Why do we use actual professionals? The answer is simple: they are the ones ACTUALLY SCREENING APPLICATIONS for their own firms! They know what it takes to make it out of the trash pile and into the interview pile. On top of this, since we have been doing mentor sessions for over a decade across THOUSANDS of clients, we are able to immediately identify a top mentor and feed them more clients to ensure happy customers like you (due to our strict screening process). Our team includes investment bankers at all the top bulge brackets and elite boutique banks as well as private equity, hedge fund and VC professionals at the most prestigious funds. We also have reviewers at the top management consulting firms in the world, elite prop trading firms, top corporate finance roles as well as other related finance careers.
Usually these are all self-limiting beliefs, but if you're unsure if we are a good match for you, please send us a quick email to [email protected] and we can send over some bios if we think there might be a potential good match for you.
Too Young / Too Inexperienced: We do NOT recommend our mentor service until you at least have at least some relevant WORK experience that we can leverage. For the young clients out there, this means an internship, ideally in your target or related industry. If you are still in high school, it is unlikely that you have this experience. The earliest we'd recommend doing a mentor session is early freshman or early sophomore year as you prepare for summer internship recruiting. If you have no relevant experience then it probably doesn't make sense to sign up for the service. Our mentors are amazing, but they aren't magicians. If you tell us you really want to be in Investment Banking or Private Equity (for example) and everything in your background points to law or medicine, it's going to be an uphill battle. On the other hand, if you have unrelated experience but you have started the transition process by taking relevant classes and joining relevant clubs and associations, we'd love to work with you. You may not be the most competitive candidate, but we will highlight the most relevant education and functions at your current job that would translate well across industries.
Too Old / Too Experienced: We DO recommend our mentor service for more experienced professionals that are looking to make a transition or have an interview coming up. We have several very senior mentors that can answer the tough questions and make sure you are up to date on the latest trends in your target industry. However, before you move forward, we encourage you to give yourself an honest assessment. If you are looking to make the transition and have not made any steps outside of considering this mentor program, you probably aren't ready. If you've taken steps (education, new degrees, courses, etc) and feel like you're ready, we're on board and eager to help!
Yes, but if you have a negative attitude you are unlikely to have success. If you think a mentor session is an automatic referral, please don't bother to hire us.
Yes, our mentors often do refer our clients for open positions at their firms (over 20%), however, this should not be asked of our mentors to avoid a conflict of interest and it should not be expected as part of the service. It is up to you to impress the mentor if this is your goal, however, we believe you can gain much more out of the experience by being honest about your weaknesses and concerns with the mentor so there can be an open dialogue on how to improve your chances.
The only discounts are for larger packages and more hours purchased at once. This is an incredibly labor intensive 1-on-1 service using finance professionals that typically make well over $200/hr and are doing this primarily to give back.
This is a personal question and the answer is naturally subjective. If you are serious about landing a job in investment banking, private equity, hedge funds, trading, asset management, management consulting or any other competitive industry, it's more than likely that the answer to that question is a resounding "YES".
Career services advisers at your school are not screening applications for interviews...neither are your classmates. If you do happen to have a friend in the industry, are they going to take the hours necessary to give you a realistic mock interview? Odds are that their time is limited outside the office and if they do give you some guidance, it won't be as thorough as our expert mentors. If you look at the competitive nature of recruiting nowadays, why would leave your application up to chance when many of these jobs pay well over $100,000?
Join the 1,000+ candidates just like you who have already used the WSO Mentor Service
If you’re reading this, you’re here for a reason: because you want to be one of the very few who gets an an elite job and because you need help doing it. The choice really is yours. And your opportunity really is limited.
or Want to Sign up with your social account?