Public bio:
Over the past decade, John Lee has ventured from a data scientist to a university lecturer, from a retail trader to a FinEd startup owner, and now a sought-after educator in quantitative finance.
His pedagogical interests include theoretical and applied statistical learning, investment and trading analytics, and personal and enterprise wealth-building. As a knowledge-driven entrepreneur, his goal is to help learners of all backgrounds develop technical skills to steer toward financial success.
During his graduate studies at the University of Michigan, he instructed over 600 undergraduates on theoretical and applied statistical topics over the course of 3 semesters and inspired over 200 students to start a career in finance by running a school-wide trading club. There, he discovered his deep passion for teaching. Afterward, he was offered a data scientist role at Harvard University but passed up on the prestigious position to work on his FinEd business. He was a statistics lecturer at the University of Chicago, where he designed and delivered his signature course, Data Science in Quantitative Finance and Risk Management, teaching learners how to take charge of their intellectual and financial wealth through the use of the “Do-It-Yourself” technologies. This course was based on the trading methods that granted him a statistical edge in the stocks and options markets as a retail trader.
In the past, John learned the hard way when he threw $10000 out the window by diving into the market without sound statistical measures. This drove him to apply his data science knowledge to the financial market, which granted him a statistical edge in investing and trading ever since. In John’s view, one should never be required an advanced degree or own a super-computer to navigate the financial market. That’s why he expanded his course into a suite of FinEd offerings at Aries Profit with the goal of imparting his trading and investing techniques to learners around the world.
What sets John apart from other financial mentors is his ability to equip his students with elite-exclusive data science skills and his commitment to democratizing practical financial knowledge. A life enthusiast, John continues to share his vision to help learners stay curious, motivated, and focused on achieving their financial dreams.
Public bio:
Executive Bio available on following link: https://leadafi.com/executive-biography/anouar-lo…
Public bio:
English, Spanish and Catalan speaker. CFA Level 1 Passed, with 3-year experience in Corporate Banking, 3-year Valuations & Restructuring at EY and KPMG, 2-year experience in Structured Finance at Banco Sabadell, and currently working in M&A at PreZero (Former Ferrovial) and an Equity Research side-project
Public bio:
Over 10+ years of successfully trading global public equity markets; former Data Scientist.
If it moves and is liquid, I can trade it.
Public bio:
A Strategic Advisor and Institutional Relations Executive with a 16-year career trajectory covering sovereign relationships, family office engagement, wealth networks, private capital, and institutional partnerships across Saudi Arabia, the GCC, and EMEA.
My background includes senior advisory work connected to the Public Investment Fund (PIF), Saudi Aramco, Saudi giga-projects, Coursera, TAQNIA, and KAUST. Over this period, I have leveraged an active C-suite network spanning federal health ministries, sovereign healthcare networks, corporate medical cities, family offices, investment groups, and enterprise conglomerates to align public governance, private capital relationships, and multimillion-dollar commercial growth objectives. My core competence centers on high-value relationship origination, strategic market access, product strategy, and private capital positioning across private wealth, venture capital, deep-tech, artificial intelligence, and institutional growth sectors.
I have supported $220M+ in AuM-linked mandates and capital-linked partnership work, with a strong focus on curated deal flow, permission-based introductions, family office engagement, and ultra-high-net-worth stakeholder relationships. This relationship-driven approach is structured to identify and qualify capital opportunities across healthcare, circular economy, energy, housing, food, water security, and other strategic sectors, supported by institutional alignment capabilities and full bilingual fluency. Currently, I support regional market-entry and strategic relationship mandates across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, and the GCC region, including a confidential UAE sandbox initiative with a global tier-1 consultancy, GCC retail and banking loyalty programs, immersive tourism-tech platforms, and founder advisory across KAFD and DIFC. This work builds on a long-standing background in public administration, institutional capacity building, and senior stakeholder relationship management, supporting $125M+ in NNA-related capital and resource mobilization work while positioning private, sovereign-linked, and institutional stakeholders for long-term commercial growth.
Public bio:
Odin Zhang is a dedicated analyst focusing on Methanol & Derivatives at S&P Global Energy. Currently responsible for the Northeast Asian market, he tracks critical downstream trends—including MTO and marine fuels—and develops cost models for green methanol applications. Odin holds a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering with a minor in Law from ECUST, where he graduated as a Shanghai Outstanding Student. His professional journey includes a tenure at IXM, where he successfully led business development and logistics for cobalt trading, generating substantial net profits. Odin is a multilingual professional (Chinese, English, French) skilled in Python and SQL, committed to bridging the gap between technical engineering data and global market strategy.
Public bio:
I am an italian management engineer with a deep passion of corporate finance, M&A, investment banking, fintech, deep tech and start up ecosystems.
After my Master of Science in Management Engineer, I worked for three years in a Milan-based M&A boutique. We were working on buy-side and sell-side deals, usually assisting italian entrepreneurs to sell their companies to Italian or international buyers (we preferred to pisition ourself on the sell-side).
After that, I spent some time in the USA during Covid time; in USA I started to feel the need and the willigness to become an entreprenuers, and I started together with three toehr guys a start up focus on sustainability, called Behave. I was in charge of business development, specifically regarding sales and fundraising. The company does not exists anymore, but during the two years I spent working on this project I had the change to reinforce many competences and skills.
I am currently working for Scindo Payments, a fintech start up where I am a co-fouder and business development officer.
Public bio:
I am an accountant, an administrator at an information technology and management consulting firm, and a professor and researcher in technology and public policy. I worked at Banco do Brasil for 10 years.
Public bio:
- Former global macro and fixed income trader with experience at hedge funds in Brazil, specializing in interest rates, inflation, and macroeconomic investing.
- Master's in Finance from London Business School and CFA Charterholder, with a strong interest in global markets, portfolio management, and investment strategy.
- Happy to mentor students and early-career professionals on breaking into asset management, hedge funds, sales & trading, and preparing for finance interviews.
- Passionate about discussing career development, networking, CFA exams, graduate school, and navigating the transition from emerging markets to global finance.
Public bio:
Malik Ayaz is an experienced business leader with a strong foundation in audit, finance, and operations. He began his career at Deloitte & Touche before moving to the Ali Bin Ali Group, one of Qatar’s largest conglomerates, where he conducted audits across 52+ companies. Malik later joined Marketing Squad at inception and played a key role in transforming it into a multi-division business with operations in e-commerce, auditing, consulting, marketing, and FinTech. Now based in Dubai, he brings over a decade of diversified leadership experience and a passion for building scalable, high-performing business units.
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.
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