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Sterling Gabriel II
I’m a Morehouse finance graduate with experience in public finance, fixed-income sales and trading, and investment-accounting operations. At Siebert Williams Shank, I contributed to financing proposals and independently developed two commercial-paper systems adopted by traders and sales. At Bank of America, I initiated and built a platform of 30+ AI-assisted Excel/VBA solutions beyond my assigned financial work. The team uses it daily, with estimated time savings of approximately 115 hours annually. I also teach colleagues to build and modify workflows of their own. I enjoy getting to know people across a business and understanding their responsibilities. That interest has led to working relationships and opportunities to contribute beyond my immediate team.
Bank of America
IT Business Analyst III · Global Markets Operations · February 2026–present
I support investment-accounting operations, reviewing trade details and booking transactions on desk instructions, reconciling cash, collateral and positions, and following up on unsettled activity. The work also includes cash and income processing, approved pricing updates, journal work, reporting and control evidence. I investigate discrepancies with trading, operations and technology colleagues.
Beyond those assigned responsibilities, I independently initiated and built a platform of 30+ AI-assisted Excel/VBA solutions. The team uses it daily, and recurring workflows became part of management-approved procedures. The platform is estimated to save the team approximately 115 hours a year. I documented the work, taught teammates to create and modify their own tools, and developed requested workflows for other teams. I also contribute practical instruction in a departmental AI learning forum.
Siebert Williams Shank
Fixed Income Analyst Intern · Sales & Trading · August–December 2025
I returned to SWS after the Public Finance summer and supported traders and sales across commercial paper, agencies, municipals and Treasuries. I independently developed two commercial-paper systems that the desk adopted: one for prospective-issuer and program-capacity analysis, and a separate Bloomberg API ratings-history system for daily monitoring and historical review.
I also built an Agency redemption model, developed a repo model with trader and sales feedback, and built callable municipal-bond databases with Municipal Sales & Trading to support client inquiries. Other responsibilities included trade-document retrieval and validation with Operations and Compliance. Alongside that direct work, I observed new-issue pricing and allocation from pre-pricing through deal day.
Siebert Williams Shank
Public Finance / Infrastructure Summer Analyst · June–August 2025
I researched municipal and infrastructure issuers, bond structures and market conditions using Bloomberg and MSRB EMMA. My research and drafting contributed to the Public Finance team’s RFP responses, pitch decks and offering materials for debt-financing proposals.
Additional assignments included an issuance database, deal tombstones and Ipreo-related new-issue support. I also prepared a separate research presentation on electric-vehicle investment and energy-related financing themes.
City of Los Angeles
Financial Services Intern · Board of Public Works · June–August 2023 · June–August 2024
During two separate summers, I worked directly with commissioners, reviewed 271 public-sector investment funds for idle balances and data gaps, researched ordinances and council records, and investigated balance-sheet and trial-balance discrepancies. I presented findings to Board leadership.
In 2024, I also supported budget analysis during the hiring freeze, collaborated with program managers on public-private partnerships, and explored policy issues involving climate emergencies, petroleum and oil, and forest management. One week in LADWP’s Financial Services Office introduced me to the financing of its separate Water and Power systems. The internship also included helping deliver the Watts career fair and tracking event funds.
Morehouse Investment Fund
Technology Industry Head · While enrolled at Morehouse
I researched technology-company growth drivers and trends across AI, semiconductors and software. As Technology Industry Head, I led construction of a concentrated ten-equity collegiate portfolio using fundamental and technical analysis and presented market outlooks and portfolio work, including to BlackRock executives in Atlanta.
Morehouse Marketing Association
Treasurer · October 2024–May 2025
I managed budgeting, financial planning and event funding during the student association’s re-establishment year.
Lighthouse Mentorship Program
Mentor · October 2024–May 2025
I offered academic and career guidance to underclassmen, drawing on my experience at Morehouse, student leadership and early professional work.
Academic–Industry Fellowship
Student fellowship involving McDonald’s franchise owners and executives · August–December 2023
The fellowship included presentations and support for student career programming, with opportunities to learn from franchise owners and executives.
Investment-accounting operations
My title is IT Business Analyst III in Global Markets Operations. The assignment is financial operations: reviewing and maintaining investment records, investigating differences and coordinating with the teams responsible for the next step. My work covers fixed-income activity, including U.S. Treasuries, repo, agencies and money-market instruments.
I review trade details and book transactions on desk instructions, reconcile cash, collateral and positions, and follow up on unsettled activity. I also support cash and income processing, approved pricing updates, journal preparation and approved posting, along with reporting and control evidence. Trading, operations and technology colleagues are involved when an item needs clarification or further action.
The investigative part of the job is important to me. When records disagree, I need to establish what the difference represents and explain what remains unresolved. Preparing a journal for review and carrying out an approved action are different responsibilities; neither gives me discretion over an investment or trading decision.
Learning these responsibilities gave me the basis for the automation and documentation I later introduced beyond my assigned duties. Those contributions grew from understanding the work and the colleagues using its outputs.
Building an automation platform for the team
I began looking for improvements while learning my financial-operations assignment. Recurring preparation and reporting tasks required colleagues to collect information, check it and put it into a usable form. I saw an opportunity to make that preparation more consistent. Developing an automation platform was an initiative I took beyond my formal responsibilities.
I independently built a platform of 30+ AI-assisted Excel/VBA solutions. The workflows supported trade-report preparation, financial-data comparisons and standard review workbooks. I worked through the purpose of each workflow, reviewed the output and kept human checks in the process. I then documented the workflows and explained them to colleagues who would be using them.
The team uses the platform daily, and recurring workflows were incorporated into management-approved procedures. The platform is estimated to save the team approximately 115 hours a year. I also taught teammates to create and modify tools themselves and developed requested workflows for other teams. Taking a useful idea into everyday use required attention to the explanation and the handover as well as the build.
Operating procedures and practical tool guides
I take detailed notes when I’m learning unfamiliar work. I want to understand the purpose of a step well enough to explain it, not simply remember where to click. Some of those notes became a basis for official team procedures.
I later authored an operating procedure and co-authored a separate revision. Those documents describe the work to be performed. The guides I wrote for individual tools serve another purpose: explaining what a tool does, what it depends on and how a colleague can use or modify it. I wrote with non-VBA readers in mind and included explanations of the underlying logic.
The written reference supports the teaching. A colleague can return to it after a demonstration or when covering work in someone else’s absence. It also makes me examine my own understanding: an explanation that only makes sense when I’m standing beside the reader needs more work.
Teaching colleagues to build their own workflows
I wanted colleagues to have more than a set of files they could run. When a recurring task changes, being able to understand and adapt a tool is useful in its own right.
I teach teammates to use and maintain the workflows I developed, create their own AI-assisted Excel/VBA tools and modify existing ones. My written guides give colleagues without a VBA background a reference after the demonstration. I’ve also built workflows at other teams’ request and shown colleagues how to approach their own processes.
I now teach weekly in a departmental AI learning forum. The examples come from practical development experience, while the questions introduce me to work I might not encounter in my own assignment. I enjoy helping someone find a starting point for an idea and explaining it in terms of the work they already know.
Contributing beyond my immediate team
At Siebert Williams Shank, I got to know colleagues across Sales & Trading, Public Finance and Corporate Finance. I was interested in how their businesses worked, but the conversations also became working relationships and friendships.
Those relationships sometimes led to a specific contribution. Corporate Finance colleagues asked me to help prepare deal tombstones, separately from my Public Finance assignments. At Bank of America, I’ve built requested workflows for other teams and taught colleagues how to create tools for their own processes, alongside my primary responsibilities.
I don’t approach every conversation looking for a project. I like understanding someone else’s experience and staying engaged with the organization around me. When there is a useful way to contribute, knowing the person and their work gives me a better starting point.
Commercial-paper issuer and capacity analysis
The commercial-paper desk needed a way to investigate prospective issuers and consider the capacity a potential program might support. That called for an issuer-level view of credit and liquidity, rather than a list of company names.
I independently developed a Bloomberg-connected Excel tool that brought issuer ratings and liquidity information into a structured analytical view. I used those inputs to support potential rating-tier and prospective program-capacity analysis. The output was a starting point for the desk’s investigation; it did not assign an official credit rating or approve a financing.
Traders and sales adopted the tool. The financial question shaped what I built: the information needed to help someone examine an issuer and decide what warranted further attention. This was a separate project from the ratings-history system I developed for ongoing monitoring.
A continuing record of issuer ratings
A current rating and a rating history answer different questions. The commercial-paper desk needed a record it could revisit when monitoring an issuer or examining an earlier point in time.
I developed the ratings-history system using Bloomberg API data from Moody’s, S&P and Fitch, with available histories extending back to 1971. It retains dated ratings information, refreshes the record daily and alerts traders and sales to changes. It also supports comparison of historical trading levels with the ratings in effect at the time. Coverage depends on the issuer and the available agency history.
The desk adopted the system, and I refined the workflow with traders’ and sales colleagues’ feedback. The continuing history served a different purpose from my prospective-issuer tool: one supported origination analysis, while the other made an issuer’s credit record usable over time.
GSE and agency issuance and redemptions
On the Agency desk, I built a redemption model covering securities from government-sponsored enterprises and government agencies. The purpose was to consider issuance alongside redemptions, rather than looking at new supply alone.
I used Bloomberg exports in Excel to bring together issuance, redemptions, net issuance, coupon and call measures, outstanding callable securities and charts. Looking at those measures together connected the broader supply picture with the features of the securities behind it.
Repo funding costs and net carry
I proposed and built a repo analysis model for Treasury and Agency securities. I wanted the income on a position to be understandable alongside the cost of financing it and the exposure associated with the borrowing.
The model brought together borrowings, interest income, funding costs, counterparty exposure and annualized net carry. I refined the analysis directly with traders and sales so those related measures could be examined in one place.
Callable municipal-bond research
A client inquiry about callable municipal bonds can depend on much more than the issuer. Call terms, maturity and other structural features help determine which securities are relevant.
I built databases with the Municipal Sales & Trading team to organize those characteristics. The records brought together call features, maturities, ratings, insurance and sinking-fund information so the desk could investigate securities against an inquiry.
The database supported the team’s research for client inquiries. It showed me how the way information is organized can make a financial question easier to investigate.
Trade-record review
My Fixed Income internship also included requests for supporting trade documentation.
I worked with Operations and Compliance to retrieve and validate the requested records. The assignment required care with the specific documentation and coordination with the colleagues responsible for reviewing it.
Following a new issue into the market
During my Fixed Income internship, I followed new-issue transactions from pre-pricing through deal day.
I observed issuer meetings, pricing discussions, changes in price and yield, retail and institutional order periods, and allocation. I was learning how the information, participants and timing fit together as a transaction reached the market.
Seeing those stages helped connect issuer research and financing materials with the market process they support. It gave context to the analysis and tools I contributed directly to the desks.
Issuer research for financing proposals
As a Public Finance / Infrastructure Summer Analyst, I supported research and materials for municipal and infrastructure debt-financing proposals. The work required understanding an issuer as an institution, not only as a collection of financial figures.
I researched issuers, bond structures and market conditions using Bloomberg and MSRB EMMA. I contributed research and drafting to team RFP responses, pitch decks and offering materials, working within the bankers’ review and deadline process. I also created an issuance database and deal tombstones and used Ipreo in connection with new-issue pricing support.
The research and writing fed into the team’s financing materials. A separate presentation on electric-vehicle investment and energy-related financing gave me another way to connect an industry question with capital needs.
My earlier City of Los Angeles work had introduced me to the public institution behind a financial record. At SWS, I was contributing to how a team explained that institution and its financing needs to another audience.
Reviewing public financial records
I worked at the Board of Public Works during two separate summers, in 2023 and 2024. Working directly with commissioners and attending Board meetings gave the financial review a clear institutional setting.
Across those internships, I reviewed 271 public-sector investment funds for idle balances and data gaps. I researched ordinances, council files and administrative codes, investigated balance-sheet and trial-balance discrepancies, and presented findings to Board leadership. Reading the financial records alongside the governing material helped me understand the questions behind a balance.
In 2024, I also supported budget analysis during the hiring freeze. I collaborated with program managers on public-private partnerships and explored policy issues involving climate emergencies, petroleum and oil, and forest management.
Presenting findings required me to explain the information to people responsible for public resources. That experience became a useful foundation for my later issuer research and drafting in Public Finance.
Learning how water and power services are financed
I spent one week of my 2024 internship in the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s Financial Services Office. It was a learning assignment within the City internship.
Through conversations there, I learned about the separately operated and financed Water and Power systems, their customer-revenue-supported operations, revenue-bond capital financing, forecasts of future funding needs and financial-risk oversight.
The visit connected essential services with the revenues and long-term capital they depend on. It added financing context to the fund-review and budget-support work I was doing, which I later built on through municipal and infrastructure issuer research at SWS.
Helping deliver the Watts career fair
The City internship included helping plan and deliver a community career fair in Watts.
I supported planning and event delivery and monitored event funds. The work put practical coordination and financial follow-through behind an activity intended to help people access employment opportunities.
Technology research and portfolio presentation
In the Morehouse Investment Fund, I researched company growth drivers and disruptive trends across AI, semiconductors, software and technology businesses.
As Technology Industry Head, I led construction of a concentrated ten-equity collegiate portfolio using fundamental and technical analysis. I presented market outlooks and portfolio work, including to BlackRock executives in Atlanta.
Preparing the presentations meant moving from company research to a view I could explain and support. I enjoyed connecting the industry developments with the reasoning behind the collegiate portfolio.
Studying valuation through General Mills
My Finance Academy capstone material used General Mills to connect company understanding and financial information with valuation.
The material covered business segments, historical results and published forecasts, with illustrative discounted-cash-flow, trading-multiples, precedent-transaction and cost-of-capital analysis.
It provided an academic foundation for understanding how operating assumptions, comparable companies and discount rates relate to a valuation. I’m continuing to develop that foundation through hands-on financial work and study.
Lighthouse mentorship
I served as a mentor in the Lighthouse Mentorship Program from October 2024 to May 2025.
I offered academic and career guidance to underclassmen, drawing on my experience at Morehouse and in early professional roles. The useful starting point was the student’s own question and where they were in their development.
I enjoyed making time for those conversations. Mentorship gave me a way to share what I had learned while recognizing that someone else’s next step would not necessarily look like mine.
Budgeting for a student organization
I served as Treasurer during the Morehouse Marketing Association’s re-establishment year.
My responsibilities included budgeting, financial planning and event funding. I worked on the financial side of the association’s activities alongside the other members contributing to its re-establishment.
Connecting students with industry
From August to December 2023, I participated in an academic–industry fellowship in Atlanta involving McDonald’s franchise owners and executives.
The experience included presentations and support for student career programming. It gave me another setting to communicate with business professionals and contribute to activities connecting students with industry.
I valued hearing from people in different parts of the business and contributing to programming that helped students make those connections.
Building an applied-AI reference
I wanted a way to return to what I was learning about AI without leaving it scattered across notes and conversations.
I developed The Intelligence Stack as an organized reference covering foundations, systems, governance and practical applications. AI assisted the research and drafting; bringing the material together required organizing it into topics that could be revisited.
The project is part of my continuing study. Its value to me is the structure for returning to a subject and developing my understanding as new questions arise.
Giving a professional record context
A résumé can record an accomplishment without fully explaining the question behind it, the person’s contribution or how someone used the result. I wanted a way to preserve that context.
Through CASE and the earlier Role Robot work, I developed an evidence-led approach to comparing experience with opportunities, distinguishing established capabilities from areas still being learned, and explaining the work accurately. The important decisions are what to include, how to attribute it and what a reader needs to understand it.
This profile is one application of that approach. It gives an introduction a second layer: the financial purpose, individual contribution and perspective behind the experience.
What first interested you in finance?
Business interested me before I knew which part of finance I wanted to work in. Growing up, Shark Tank and HGTV made ownership, property and investment feel tangible. I began studying markets more deliberately in my senior year of high school, then built on that interest at Morehouse.
My work has given those interests more substance. Public Finance introduced me to an institution’s financing needs; fixed income put me alongside traders and sales; operations has taught me about the records and responsibilities behind investment activity. I enjoy understanding what financial information means to the person using it, whether they’re examining an issuer, a funding cost or a difference that needs investigating.
What does your current role involve?
My title is IT Business Analyst III in Global Markets Operations. My day-to-day work is in investment-accounting operations. I review instructed trade activity, reconcile cash and positions, investigate discrepancies and work with the colleagues responsible for resolving them. Cash and income processing, approved pricing actions, journal work and reporting are also part of the role.
The automation platform was additional initiative, not a replacement for those responsibilities. Understanding the operating work gave me the basis for developing improvements around it.
How do you approach unfamiliar work?
I ask what the work is meant to achieve and who relies on it. I want to understand what an input represents, why a step is there and what needs clarification when the information doesn’t agree. Taking detailed notes helps me remember the process and ask better questions.
At Bank of America, some of those learning notes became a basis for official team procedures. Writing an explanation that another colleague could follow made me examine my own understanding. I may notice a repetitive task early, but I want to understand its purpose before proposing a change.
How do you decide what a tool should do?
I start with the question the user is trying to answer. The two commercial-paper projects are a useful example. One needed to help the desk investigate prospective issuers and capacity. The other needed to preserve a credit history that could be monitored and revisited. Similar information was involved, but the jobs were different.
That distinction guided what I developed and how I discussed the result with traders and sales. I want to understand what someone needs to do with the information before deciding what the tool should contain. Their feedback is also important after the first version works.
What matters to you when teaching a colleague?
I want the explanation to connect with work the person already understands. A colleague may know an operating process very well without knowing VBA. Starting with the task and the intended result gives the technical explanation a purpose.
I teach teammates to create and modify workflows as well as run the ones I’ve built. Written guides give them something to return to after a demonstration. I also learn from their questions: an explanation that seems obvious to me may skip the very detail someone else needs.
How do you build working relationships?
I enjoy getting to know colleagues outside my immediate assignment. At SWS, I built working relationships and friendships across Sales & Trading, Public Finance and Corporate Finance. I was interested in the people themselves and in how their different businesses worked.
Some conversations led to requested work, and the same has happened with cross-team projects at Bank of America. I value the conversations that don’t become projects too. I don’t want my interest in a colleague to begin and end with the next thing I need from them.
How do you use AI in your work and learning?
AI can help me research a subject, examine a problem or develop a first version of a tool. My broader experience includes Copilot, ChatGPT and Claude. In Excel/VBA development, AI assistance does not necessarily mean a model is running in the finished workflow.
The responsibility remains with me to understand the task, inspect the result and know when a conclusion needs further checking. Employer information and systems have their own permissions and boundaries; familiarity with an AI tool is not permission to put confidential material into it. I’m interested in useful applications, not treating generated output as evidence that the work is correct.
Why does public finance interest you?
In Los Angeles, I could connect the financial records I was reviewing with the people responsible for public resources. I worked with commissioners, investigated accounting discrepancies and presented findings. One week at LADWP introduced me to the revenue and capital requirements behind water and power services.
At SWS, I built on that foundation through issuer research and drafting for financing proposals. I like understanding what an institution does, how it funds its work and what financial information helps explain its needs.
What did student leadership ask of you?
The Investment Fund asked me to develop and explain a view. As Technology Industry Head, I researched companies, led construction of the collegiate portfolio and presented the reasoning behind the work. The analysis needed to be understandable to someone who had not done the research alongside me.
Treasurer responsibilities were more immediate: budgeting and funding activities that the Marketing Association was organizing. Through Lighthouse, I made time for academic and career conversations with underclassmen. I liked having different ways to contribute, rather than treating every responsibility as the same kind of leadership.
What makes a handover useful?
The next person should be able to tell what has been done, what has been checked and what still needs attention. I try to make unresolved questions explicit, rather than leave someone to infer the status from a file or a brief message.
That applies to both operating work and the tools I develop. Documentation and a clear explanation of the result help a colleague continue the work without reconstructing what I intended. Writing those explanations is also a useful test of whether I understand the work well enough myself.
Why do you want to return to New York?
I enjoyed my time at SWS in New York. I was close to markets and financing work, with colleagues across different businesses who I could learn from and get to know.
I’m based in Charlotte now and planning a return to New York. I’d like to build the next part of my career there.
What are you working to develop next?
I want more experience evaluating issuers, interpreting market developments and explaining the conclusions to another person. My desk analysis, issuer research and operations work have given me a foundation to build on.
I’m also interested in working more closely with the people using financial technology. A trader, a sales colleague and an operations team may need different explanations, even when they start with similar information. That’s part of the work I enjoy and want to keep developing.
What did you want this profile to explain?
I wanted someone to be able to follow the work behind my résumé: the financial question, my contribution and the people who used the result. A title or a tool name can’t explain all of that.
I also wanted room for the parts of professional life that don’t fit neatly into an accomplishment bullet: how I learn, what I find interesting and how I get to know colleagues. Those are things I’d enjoy discussing in a real conversation.