Anojan Palarajah is an Investment Analyst at Cidel, where he conducts fundamental equity analysis and oversees the firm’s quantitative research initiatives. He is passionate about AI and the democratization of financial services. Anojan is a CFA charterholder and has a BASc in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto.

Being a Tamil in finance is an empowering experience. My family and I, like many others in our community, came to this country with very little and often faced financial hardships along the way. As a Tamil in finance, I have now gained the knowledge and experience to help my family and other members of the community take control of their finances and stop letting money get in the way of their dreams.

TiF’s mentorship program helped me understand what I wanted from my career. My mentor provided me with deep firsthand insights into the trends in the industry (particularly in Toronto) and she helped me see what opportunities were available and, more importantly, what the future of those opportunities might look like. Through our regular conversations, I was able to get a sense of the things I liked most about my job and create a game plan to seek out avenues that would cater to those aspects. TiF’s mentorship program is a rare opportunity to get 1-1 guidance from an experienced professional who has a similar background to you. Personally I found this made it easier to make an immediate connection, whether through anecdotes of colleagues mispronouncing our names or through stories of our childhoods.

I believe TiF is filling an extremely important gap in our community by building an official network of finance professionals and supporting future generations of our community who choose to pursue this career path. When I entered the industry in 2015, I knew exactly 0 Tamil professionals and did not know how to find others. In a sector where career progress is often driven by “who you know”, this obviously did not bode well for me. Little did I know there were hundreds of others like me; TiF has opened up that network for all of us. I believe the next step will be to collaborate with universities to reach the kids whose networks do not overlap with the networks of TiF members, allowing us to further connect and empower our people.

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