Antonio (Tony) Nanez, Regional Head of Commodity Trade Finance at North America HSBC, is a mentor to Carver high school students. With over 20 years of experience in client relationship management, structuring and syndication in the trade and commodity finance space, and as a graduate of the NYU Stern School of Business, Tony’s advice and guidance are priceless.

Our students attentively embrace all that he gives them. 

Tony recently met with a group of our high school students at the Carver Community Center. He shared lessons learned on his personal journey and listened to our students who voiced questions and concerns about life, learning, and careers. 

Tony connected with our youth by meeting them exactly where they are. He talked about his early childhood in Washington Heights as an only child with a single parent along with his numerous cousins after his family emigrated to the US from Venezuela. Tony didn’t allow the discouraging influences of his neighborhood to stir him in a negative direction. He shared about the personal challenges he faced early on when could not speak English and later when he became the de facto translator for his family. Tony worked through college.  The striving never ends. Tony has been living in Connecticut for 20 years helping raise four children with his wife who is a nurse pursuing her master’s degree. 

Student Question: Did you always know you wanted to go into banking? 

Tony talked about the importance of having a mentor. His father-in-law, an African American international banking executive told him about banking and working hard, habits he still uses today. 

Student Question: How do you handle stress? 

Tony talked about finding balance, the benefits of meditation, and managing stress by putting it in different mental compartments, and by prioritizing. Tony talked about the importance of being in programs like Carver’s and being around like-minded peers and adults. He talked about setting goals and committing to accomplishing them. Tony spoke about being open to learning new things, and about the power of internships, traveling, and continuing education.

 The students asked many questions: 

How has the war in Ukraine and other world events impacted your job? How many countries have you visited? How did you make it out of Washington Heights? Did you ever want to give up or feel like you didn’t belong at NYU? How challenging was it not to be able to speak English? What made you not fall into the negative paths of growing up in the Heights and getting in trouble?

Tony met with our students last week during the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. Jackson’s story of wandering the campus of Harvard as a new student, feeling out of her element, and wondering if she belonged, echoed what Tony and our students discussed. 

Jackson was encouraged that fateful day decades ago by an older black woman who knowingly read the expression on Jackson’s face and simply spoke to her a single word, "Persevere." That word may have made the difference for Jackson. But for her (and our students) it may be more the realization that she, young and lost as she may have felt, was seen and appreciated.

Tony likewise acknowledges the infinite value of each of our students by being there with them and encouraging and advising them. Tony gives our students that same message today: to persevere.