Building the Network He Didn’t Inherit

Jason Omoruyi believed what everyone says in New York: network is everything. The problem was that he started college in the one stretch of time when the usual ways of building one barely existed.

At Baruch during the pandemic, campus life narrowed to scheduled Zoom sessions and submitted assignments. He did the work and kept moving forward academically. What disappeared was the informal layer of college: repeated faces, conversations before and after class, club meetings that run long, events that lead to introductions, the thin layer of everyday contact that thickens into relationships. Through a screen, those moments rarely happened. Class ended, and everyone logged off.

When things reopened, the calendar moved quickly. Graduation was closer than it felt. He could sense how much of a career is shaped by relationships, and how little time he had spent building them in person.

Jason grew up in a household shaped by responsibility and steady effort. His parents came to New York from Nigeria and focused on stability. When he was still a kid, his mother went back and earned her nursing degree while raising him. In their home, it carried two meanings at once: relief, and clarity. Education mattered, and it demanded persistence. It also did not come with a set of corporate introductions or an inside track into finance. Jason understood early that the professional relationships he needed would have to come from his own effort.

So he went looking for a place designed for building those relationships. He found The City Tutors.

He joined the mentorship community while majoring in finance at Baruch, determined to prepare for the work he wanted. He wanted to understand how professionals think and how decisions are made inside the industries he was studying.

He chose his first mentor, David, because David worked in investing. Jason wanted to understand the gap between coursework and professional judgment: how investors think, how macro trends shape decisions, how financial statements fit together, and how to position himself through resume choices and relationship-building. Each conversation clarified expectations and raised the standard for what he needed to know.

Through David, Jason also learned what it means to interact with a professional. He learned how to prepare for a conversation, how to listen closely, how to ask questions that invite real insight, and how to follow through afterward.

A lesson from those early conversations stayed with him.

“Being 100 percent present in every conversation,” he said. “You never know when an opportunity may arise.”

For Jason, presence became discipline. It meant arriving informed. It meant engaging fully. It meant treating conversations as moments that can shape direction.

Later, he met with another mentor, Zach. By then, Jason wanted to refine his approach. He worked on interview questions, resume development, and understanding expectations in competitive roles. He began paying closer attention to continuity, returning with updates, implementing advice, and carrying conversations forward over time.

In school, he tried to make use of what was available. He attended career fairs. He went to recruiting workshops. He did mock interviews. He joined a Wall Street club and initiated weekly discussions with guest speakers across private equity, venture capital, wealth management, and investment management. The exposure expanded his understanding. The pace required focus. Balancing coursework, internship pressure, and family responsibilities demanded resilience. For a period, he stepped back while managing everything at once.

After graduating in August, he worked as a location planning analyst at an off-price retailer. The role gave him practice applying data to business decisions and operating inside a full-time environment. He describes that experience as instructive, a period that helped him understand expectations, communication, and what kind of work setting brings out his best.

Then, after a stretch away from City Tutors, he returned to it again because he still needed what it had provided the first time: a space designed for relationship-building. He felt himself getting too comfortable staying home and skipping events. People around him talked about the value of relationship-building and the way it opens perspective. He wanted that growth. City Tutors was a place where that could happen.

One of the first events that stood out was a gathering at the Williamsburg Public Library. Jason described the difference between one-on-one mentorship and being in a room with a broader community. Individual conversations had given him depth. Events widened the frame. He met other Baruch students, and he spoke with professionals in fields like software engineering and consulting. It helped him remember he was part of a larger community of people navigating similar questions.

Soon after, he attended a City Tutors event at the Yale Club focused on personal finance. He described learning how broad personal finance can be, especially for someone early in life, and he left with new frameworks and books he had never encountered. He also valued the shared reflection in the room, hearing how others were thinking about similar choices.

At the Yale Club, he spoke with Thomas Gresham, a strategy consultant at Deloitte focused on sustainable energy. Jason asked about Thomas’s daily responsibilities, client presentations, and how research translates into recommendations. He found himself drawn to consulting’s structure, the discipline of turning analysis into guidance for decision-makers. The conversation also stayed with him because Thomas shared something Jason recognized in himself: early discomfort presenting and the way confidence grows through repetition.

The conversation clarified direction.

Jason describes City Tutors as a program that opened perspective and helped him develop confidence in professional conversation. He talks about becoming more comfortable asking questions, listening carefully, and sustaining relationships over time.

“City Mentors is a program that I’m grateful for,” he said. “It has opened and unlocked different perspectives for me, not only how to navigate my career and professional growth, but how to navigate my personal growth and what that even looks like.”

For Jason, that is the work. He is building the relationships he did not inherit, showing up repeatedly, learning the norms of professional conversation, and turning access into preparation.