“Learning Out Loud”: Justin Ramdeo’s First Big Room

Today, Justin Ramdeo looks like the kind of senior who has always known how to move through a finance room: firm handshake, clear pitch, sharp questions.

What you don’t see is that just a few months ago, he had no idea how to be in those rooms. He didn’t understand the roles, the language, or the unwritten rules. He only knew one thing clearly: classes on their own were not going to be enough. He needed more.

At the start of this year, Justin was a senior economics major who felt like he had muscled his way into college but didn’t yet have a map for what came next. He knew he liked economics. He knew he wanted something in finance. Beyond that, it was fog. No one had ever really sat down with him to explain how you move from a major to an actual role, from a classroom to a desk in an office.

That uncertainty didn’t come out of nowhere.

Justin grew up in Spanish Harlem, the oldest child of two immigrant parents and the first in his family to navigate college in the United States. He finished high school online during COVID, watching his junior and senior years dissolve into Zoom tiles. When he arrived at City College, his first registration experience was like it was for many students during that time: a huge Zoom room, a new system, a lot happening all at once. Even with guidance, it was easy to feel overwhelmed.

There were no cousins to call about majors. No older siblings to explain how office hours work. No family members who had gone through the college process here.

“I had to learn everything the hard way,” he says now.

He chose economics because the classes felt interesting and concrete. But once he got there, another pressure appeared: What are you actually going to do with this?

He started pulling on every thread he could find. Googling roles. Skimming finance forums. Dropping into the career center. That’s how he ended up on the radar of Sarah Dyer at City College’s career office.

Sarah saw both sides: how hungry he was to break into finance, and how little structured guidance he had around actual roles and paths. One day, he got an email from her about a City Tutors event at a firm called Landing Point, focused on private equity and investment banking. She thought he should be there.

That email was the moment things started to shift.

At the time, Justin felt like he had reached college by sheer effort and persistence. He almost didn’t go to the Landing Point event—and not because he didn’t want it, but because he didn’t know what he was walking into.

It felt exactly like the worst-case scenario he’d been imagining: a sleek office where everyone already knew the rules, and he’d be exposed as someone who didn’t. From the time he registered to the time he arrived, he was nervous—unsure what to think, how to act, what to say, even where to stand.

In reality, it was still sleek, but different than what he had pictured.

The Landing Point team showed up as real hosts. City Tutors staff translated the room into something usable. They helped explain who was who, how to introduce yourself, what questions to ask, and what actually mattered in those first conversations.

It was his first real networking event in finance, and it was terrifying.

“Here I am, Mr. High School, Mr. College,” he remembered. “No experience. Nothing. I was just faking it till I made it.”

But as the evening went on—rotating tables, short conversations, repeated handshakes—something shifted. He started to realize that the professionals in the room weren’t some separate species: they had their own messy early chapters.

He left Landing Point with proof that rooms like this existed, that he belonged in them, and that City Tutors would keep opening the door. And he left with something else, too: genuine excitement. He was impressed, honestly in awe, seeing what the professional world had to offer, and realizing it might actually be available to him.

After that night, he leaned in. He went to one of the bar socials where the vibe was looser. Mentors joked about their own missteps. Mentees compared notes on interviews and classes. He learned this wasn’t a one-time opportunity. It was a network he could keep returning to.

Then came the one-to-one mentorships: five mentors in about six months.

With Roland Salluce at AIG, the tone was tough love mixed with humor. Roland asked the questions nobody else had: What do you actually want from this? How direct do you want me to be? Justin had his eyes set on investment banking—and Roland didn’t dismiss that, but he challenged him to see the full landscape. Together they walked through roles across operations, trading, and banking, mapping what each path actually looks like and what kinds of skills and lifestyles come with them. Investment banking didn’t stop being a goal; it stopped being the only option.

With Lily Widgren at Webull, they focused on details. His resume, in his words, had been a hot mess. She helped him clean it up line by line—tightening bullets, organizing sections, and making sure it reflected what he had done and where he wanted to go.

With Lawrence Sang, the conversation felt like talking to a future version of himself. Their backgrounds were similar. Their ambitions overlapped. Lawrence shared stories from a trading desk, including one about how hiring managers sometimes overlook operations candidates for front-office roles. That story nudged Justin toward equity research: a role that builds market judgment early and can serve as a bridge into other parts of finance.

With Jean Thomas, the frame widened again. Jean works in ESG and pushed Justin to see that finance isn’t only about deals and models. It’s also about climate, governance, and long-term risk. He reviewed Justin’s resume, connected him to people in his own network, and encouraged him to show up at ESG conferences where the industry is rapidly evolving.

With Daniel Mathis, the focus was scaffolding: off-cycle projects, learning resources, ways to turn downtime into skill-building.

None of these mentors did the work for him. They did something more important. They met him where he was, and expected him to move forward.

In just a few months, from that Landing Point evening in May to the end of the year, the change has been dramatic. At the start, Justin describes himself as someone who knew nothing: no LinkedIn strategy, no real understanding of corporate culture, no idea how to talk to professionals beyond surface-level small talk.

Now he can explain, in a few sentences, what he’s exploring and why. He understands the difference between operations and front-office roles. Between banking and research. Between traditional finance and ESG. He knows how to prepare for a networking event. How to follow up without feeling like he’s bothering someone. How to turn a conversation into an ongoing relationship.

He’s also clearer on what City Tutors is for, and how it complements the academic foundation he built at City College.

Being in those rooms—first at Landing Point, then at AIG, and now at places like Nuveen—showed him something he had felt but couldn’t yet name. There’s a whole category of student who isn’t “job ready” yet, but who could get there quickly if someone invests early: first-generation students figuring out basic questions, seniors who chose a major but don’t yet know the roles attached to it, people who are hungry to succeed and missing only the map and the guides.

“I know what hard work is. I am doing it right now,” he said. “But having people open their resources to you—that is huge. It changes your whole path.”

He now talks about City Tutors to classmates who are feeling lost in the same ways he once was. He forwards event links. He explains what happens in those rooms so people don’t self-select out before they even sign up. He already imagines a future where he returns as a mentor himself, sitting on the other side of the table at an event like Landing Point, watching someone else walk in shaking and leave steady.

The job market is still difficult. Rent, tuition, and timing are all real. But the journey from “no idea what to do” to having a path and a circle of support happened faster than he ever expected. And it started with one email, one room, one night at Landing Point.

The next time he and City Tutors sit down to talk, the story may include a first job offer. For now, the story is about something just as important: a student who kept showing up, and a group of mentors and partners at City College, at Landing Point, and across the City Tutors network who made sure that when he did, he wasn’t alone.