Blind Wall Street analyst shares wisdom to live life 'durably' to the fullest

Soon-kyu Shin, a credit analyst and vice president of the private investment bank Brown Brothers Harriman in Wall Street / Courtesy of Minumsa publishing house

'Hang in there. Life's trials and tribulations are opportunities for personal growth,' he says

By Kang Hyun-kyung

Soon-kyu Shin, a blind Wall Street-based credit analyst and author of two books, knows better than anyone else how people feel when they are discriminated against or experience verbal violence, intentionally or unintentionally, from ignorant people.

Being discriminated against has been part of his life for nearly five decades, since he lost his vision due to glaucoma and retinal detachment when he was nine years old. He underwent surgery 22 times but that didn't help him get his sight back.

The recent hate crimes against Asian Americans are the newest form of discrimination-driven violence that he, along with fellow Asians and Asian Americans in the United States, have been grappling with since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.

This anti-Asian hate has become a source of concern among his coworkers at the private investment bank, Brown Brothers Harriman, as America is gearing up to return to normal because the number of fully vaccinated people is on the rise.

“The other day, I got a phone call from my manager. He asked if I'd be okay about resuming commuting to work,” Shin said during a virtual news conference to promote his second book, “Shining Through the Darkness: A Blind Wall Street Analyst's Values for a Durable Life.” Although the book is written in Korean, he said he made an English title just in case.

Shin, 53, said he initially thought his manager was asking if he'd feel comfortable about commuting to work in New York from his home in New Jersey amid the pandemic, thinking that he would have to touch objects to orient himself when taking the train and transferring in the New York subway system to get to his workplace on Wall Street, worrying that his contact with various surfaces would increase his vulnerability to becoming infected with the virus.

“I was wrong. He meant he was concerned about the ongoing hate crimes against Asians, and was asking if I still feel fine about commuting between my home and my workplace” he said.

Shin said that the racially motivated crimes many Asians and Asian Americans have been experiencing since the outbreak of coronavirus came out of the blue, but their emergence did not surprise him, because he knew that there have been many similar waves of racism and racial discrimination in the United States.

Compared to other minority ethnic groups, Asian Americans have been relatively safer from racial crimes, partly because they were portrayed as a “model minority” due to an abundance of success stories, according to him.

“Black people live in fear because of racial injustice, and the level of fear they have goes far beyond our imagination,” he said. “I heard that some Black parents teach their children to be obedient and do whatever they are asked to do when they meet police officers, because any possible defiance could lead to tragic results, as we've seen in the recent past…. Muslims have been targeted in hate crimes as well since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.”

“Shining Through the Darkness: A Blind Wall Street Analyst's Values for a Durable Life” by Soon-kyu Kim

His new book, “Shining Through the Darkness: A Blind Wall Street Analyst's Values for a Durable Life” was released by the Minumsa publishing house six years after his first book, “Things You See with Your Eyes Closed: A Blind Wall Street Analyst's Stories of Everyday Miracles.”

In his second book, Shin shares the wisdom he has learned from his past sufferings and experiences to help readers stay strong amid the pandemic. Instead of giving a list of dos and don'ts, he chose to share his personal experiences ― some of which are bitter ― and the lessons he learned from them.

During the hardest of times, he said that he just tried to hang in there. When careless people put him to the test with their reckless behavior or discriminatory words, he said he tried not to get hurt by them. Instead, he observed why the situations occurred and tried to analyze where those people's abusive attitudes came from, so as to figure out whether he held any responsibility for what had happened, or it had been the other party's fault entirely.

Shin said that meaningful life and the thriving businesses that investors want to put their money in have one thing in common: they are durable and have the strength to overcome ongoing and forthcoming challenges, no matter how formidable.

As robust businesses continue to grow and benefit investors with higher returns despite crises, the author said that there are things that can help people build inner strength and that will help them endure incessant challenges, such as the pandemic, which has paralyzed the global economy.

“Intelligence or knowledge per se cannot automatically help us lead a durable life. Neither can our performance, capabilities or money, which many believe will solve almost all the problems we are faced with,” he wrote. He went on to say that inner strength is the one thing that can help people overcome life's trials and tribulations to become even stronger.

His philosophy could be termed, “durable optimism;” he tells us that when times are hard to handle, just to hang in there and wait for your time to come. Once they are over, you'll find you've grown, become wiser and learn how to remain steadfast in difficult times. “Don't be dismayed or blame others,” he advised.

In his new book, Shin shared some of the bitter moments that frustrated him, noting that such scathing experiences didn't necessarily lead him to fail. Rather, thanks to his lasting optimism, he was able to continue growing and building through ceaseless effort and self-training throughout his life so far.

He shared a conversation with an unnamed doctor who was rude enough to ask in disbelief how a blind man like him could work as a Wall Street analyst, after he mentioned his occupation. A Korean taxi driver he met in New York presumed Shin was a massage therapist without even asking him. Such insulting experiences, however, didn't make Shin feel ashamed of himself. He said he knew that these people making these assumptions was their fault, not his.

Citing his wife, Grace, a strong woman who was determined to come to the United States to study years after she and her family had emigrated to Brazil when she was 16, Shin said that his wife is wise and optimistic enough to dream of her happier, better future, even though the reality she faced back then was far from positive.

Born in Seoul in 1967, Shin came to the United States to study when he was 15. He obtained a bachelor's degree in psychology at Harvard and was a Ph.D. candidate at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

In Wall Street, he has been a trailblazer. He was the first blind analyst at JP Morgan, where he worked for two years, until he was laid off in a business restructuring initiative. Later, he joined Brown Brothers Harriman in 1998. He has been working there ever since, rising to the rank of vice president, as a credit analyst responsible for evaluating investment opportunities in the healthcare sector.