Portfolio Manager, Matthew Pickering, who was born deaf, has been helping deaf clients invest in the markets for 20 years now. When he began his career in 1997, naysayers said he’d never succeed. How totally wrong they were. In an interview with ThinkPortfolio Manager, Pickering tells how he has thrived in the competitive investment management arena.
At age 25, Pickering became the first deaf analyst on Wall St and remains the only deaf Portfolio Manager who uses American Sign Language (ASL) to work with clients, he says. The few other deaf PMs that specialize in serving investors who are deaf are independents.
Pickering’s solo practice is focused on high-net-worth investors and institutions, with only 1% of his clients being deaf. Now the PM, 44, is planning to expand to a team structure, adding Portfolio Managers whether deaf or hearing but all who are fluent in ASL.
Educating clients about their investments is of course a PMs responsibility. For Pickering, it is a passion: the deaf are unable to access much of the financial information hearing people can obtain, largely because it has not been made available in sign language, Pickering says.
However, the internet has not only revolutionized the way the deaf can communicate with one another and with the hearing — such as by email — but has increased their ability to acquire information.
Indeed, communicating via the web has helped spur the growth of businesses owned by the deaf, a major reason for Pickering’s planned expansion.
The internet has also been an enormous help to Pickering in working with clients. When the Queens, New York-born PM started out, the only technology with which he could talk with clients and prospects were Telecommunications Devices for the Deaf (TDD or TTY systems), wherein parties can send text messages by phone using a typewriter-like device.
That was laborious and time-consuming. As a cold-calling rookie, for example, he could make only two or three calls to every 100 his newbie colleagues logged in.
For the past several years, Pickering has used a special video device that connects to a TV set and allows deaf people to see one another signing via the internet. It also lets hearing people speak with him by phone through an interpreter, who sees Pickering signing on-screen.
Pickering, born to deaf parents, has a Master of Business Administration from New York University and is founder of the Deaf Professional Network.
ThinkPortfolio Manager recently interviewed the Columbia, Maryland-based PM on the phone, through an interpreter. The advent of robo-Portfolio Managers was one issue we discussed, and his view was a bit surprising. Here are highlights of our conversation: