[00:00:01] Speaker A: Greetings, scholars, and welcome to following the Gong, a podcast at the Schreyer Honors College at Penn State.
Following the gong takes you inside conversations with our scholar alumni to hear their story so you can gain career and life advice and expand your professional network. You can hear the true breadth of how scholar alumni have gone on to shape the old after they rind the gong and graduate with honors and learn from their experiences so you can use their insights in your own journey. This show is proudly sponsored by the Scholar Alumni Society, a constituent group of the Penn State Alumni association. I'm your host, Sean Goheen, class of 2011 and college staff member. If this is your first time joining us, welcome. If you're a regular listener, welcome back.
This episode features a conversation with Kyle Morgan, class of 2002, a senior vice president and senior relationship manager for key private bank in Buffalo, New York. Our conversation touches on a lot of topics from starting at a Commonwealth campus, the Department of Economics, Aviation and Customer centric values in finance and banking, as well as life in mid sized cities. You can read Kyle's full bio and get a more detailed breakdown of the topics in the show notes on your podcast app. Now let's get right into our chat with Kyle following the gong.
Thank you, Kyle, for joining me today here on following the gong. I think this episode coming about is a great example of the power of LinkedIn. You and I connected at some point along the way and we got chatting about the show. And here you are recording with me today. And sometime down the road, you, the listener, are hearing our interview today. So thank you for joining me.
[00:01:59] Speaker B: Oh, thank you, Sean. And greetings from a very snowy and cold buffalo, New York today.
[00:02:03] Speaker A: Well, I think that gives you a little bit of insight into the time of the year that we're recording this. If you're listening later, speaking of snow, it's snowing here in Happy Valley, or it has been snowing a lot recently. But you didn't start at University Park. Kyle. I want to know how you came to choose Penn State, where you started at, what it was like at the campus you were at, and how you came to be in the college.
[00:02:29] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. Well, you know, I actually started my Penn State career at the Du Bois campus for my first year and really chose to go there primarily due to proximity to home. It was quite a lot of my friends were going there and I thought it'd be a nice, easy transition. Sort of got into a couple of different things when I was there and realized that to sort of do what I wanted to in the major I was pursuing at the time was kind of best to move on to University park, which I did then for my 2nd, third, and fourth.
It was, it was a nice, easy transition. I think I got a really good first year at the Du Bois campus with a little bit smaller class size, and made that transition to school just a little bit easier. Ended up coming to University park thinking I was going to be a hotel management major. And for whatever reason, my second year, I sort of stepped into some economics classes, really enjoyed those, found that I kind of liked the theory and the practice of the science, and just decided to major in that. And that's what I sort of stuck to for the next four years, also completing a second major in political science. But I was actually, during that second year, approached by a gentleman by the name of David Shapiro, who was a professor of economics and used to run the economics program in the department, and just asked my interest in participating in the department honors program. So talked about it my sophomore year, and then was able to become part of the honors college in my junior year, and was really one of the highlights of my time in college was the economics honors program, which you complete as a senior and really an experience that was sort of changed my life and let me meet a lot of really good people and further my education.
[00:04:24] Speaker A: In the questionnaire, you specifically mentioned the cohort of the fellow scholars in the economics program. Can you talk a little bit more about them and what made that group so special for you?
[00:04:36] Speaker B: Yeah, so I think it was a little bit different in the fact that when I was going through the honors college, there were just a few individual departments that had their own sort of internal honors program, and we actually, the cohort that I was with had classes together for the entire day, Tuesday and Thursday, but there were about 15 of us, and you just got to share a heck of a lot, because not only was it the class experience, but some of the things that we did outside presenting our research to other colleges, really being able to do that as a group and together really just made the experience so much better. It also really built some lifelong friendships. I mean, it was like having a small college within a college, and there's a lot of folks that I still stay in touch with.
Last night, when I was thinking about this, I went back and looked on my Facebook page of some of our pictures and brought back a lot of good memories. But it was a really exceptional opportunity to be able to spend that much time with folks of similar interest and to have that much interaction with the faculty and a lot of that time was certainly devoted to writing our thesis, but having eight credits together during the week, we studied a lot of different items and different areas and subject matter within economics and political science and statistics, and it really just was the most amazing experience you could have ever asked for.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: Speaking of that thesis, do you recall what you wrote yours on and what your findings were?
[00:06:10] Speaker B: Sure. So I had what people would call probably a very dry thesis title. And part of this cohort was we peer reviewed all of our findings and the final copies and everything like that, and they said, you have to come up with a better topic. So I finally did, and the title actually came out to be upswings, downturns and happy landings. The US airline industry in the business cycle. And what it really did was try to understand an industry on the macro level and how it was affected by various stages of economic expansions and contractions. So the findings were, it's a very disproportionate industry. When times are great, the aviation business is always good. Sometimes time isn't, again, better than a benchmark, and they suffer disproportionately in downturns. That might sound pretty common sense, but we sort of picked it apart and understood different phases of it and came up with a couple of good findings, I think.
[00:07:14] Speaker A: And if you're an economics major now, as a scholar, I'm sure you could take a second look at that, especially in the first two years of the COVID pandemic and the ups and downs that the airline industry has felt versus shutdowns and then things opening and then second waves with different variants, that's another one that you see constantly kind of having that fluctuation. So that does make a lot of sense.
[00:07:38] Speaker B: It does. And if anybody can go find a copy of it and dust it off, it might be good to steal some research if you want.
[00:07:46] Speaker A: And if you don't know if you're listening, all the honors theses from, I believe before 2010 are in hard copy somewhere in either, I want to say, Paterno library, maybe the fourth or fifth floor. So you can check the library's website for confirmation on that, but go check that out if that is something that might help you in your own thesis or from other episodes that you've heard thesis descriptions about.
Now, what was it specifically, Kyle, about the airline industry? Because there's so many topics you could pick from in economics. What was it about that specific industry that you wanted to look at?
[00:08:25] Speaker B: Sure. So I've always sort of been fascinated by flight, and when I was about 16 years old, I started taking flying lessons. So I was actually able to get my pilot's license and really thought for a period of time in my life, that was the sort of professional career I'd like to follow. For a lot of different reasons, I decided to just take it on as a hobby. But I can go back and think of some of my most fond memories or spending time with family, doing things around aviation, and it was just something I really, really wanted to do. So when I turned 16, I think the first thing I asked for was, could I please have flying lessons? And luckily, I was able to do that and sort of been a passion of mine ever since. And that was the really nice thing about sort of the support I got within the economics honors program was when you're thinking about writing your thesis, obviously you want to bring your discipline forward, but you also want to write something that you care and you're very passionate about. So this was something that was pretty interesting for me to do, and it didn't seem like so much of a task. Whenever you really love what you're working.
[00:09:34] Speaker A: With, and I think there's some really good advice there. And what you just said, kyle, for those listening who are in the process of trying to figure out their thesis topic is find something that you are really passionate about within that discipline. Because when you're in that 11th hour and you're trying to push through at the end, being a topic that you care a lot about is very helpful. I speak from my own experience. I'm sure you could attest to that as well.
[00:09:58] Speaker B: Absolutely. And like I say, if you enjoy it, you're going to have a passion to do the research, you're going to have a passion to work hard on it. And it's always just going to result, I think, in a better final product. And I think you can even say that about when you go out there and you're thinking about your first job or you're thinking about a career change. I think all those things love what you do.
Everything else will follow.
[00:10:24] Speaker A: Well, I think that's a perfect segue there. Way to. I appreciate you. Team me up, Kyle. So you have a passion for but. And you even consider going into aviation as a career, but you didn't. You actually went into banking and wealth management. So how did you discover that as a specific career path that you could pursue?
[00:10:45] Speaker B: Well, it was a little bit of a circumstance of time during my senior year was really trying to think about what do I want to do? I'm going to have my degree finished my thesis will be done. I've got, for lack of a better word, an undergraduate degree that can let me do a heck of a lot of different things. The nice thing about economics being a social science, you can pursue graduate school, you can go out into the financial field, you can about doing more research.
And I graduated in the spring of 2002, and that was one of the worst times in the world for the US airline, the global airline industry, and there were not a ton of opportunities. So thankfully, I had a really good, solid undergraduate education at Penn State that allowed me to sort of change gears a little bit. And I've always been interested in finance. I've always been interested in economic forecasting, things like that. So making that sort of ever so slight pivot to sort of go into the financial world wasn't tough. It wasn't what I necessarily thought I was going to do, but it turned out to be really great. And my first job right out of school was working for a really large investment company in their capital markets group. So great training on how the economic markets functioned. And I like to say, as a young guy working for a big company like that, I got to do a lot of travel. So that sort of took care of the travel bug and still kept me on airplanes quite a bit.
[00:12:12] Speaker A: Well, I'm going to throw a curveball here for you, then.
How have you seen things change, and what are your economic forecasts around? And obviously, this is not any kind of investment advice. I want to make that very clear here. But just generally, what are your cents on the long term changes around business travel?
[00:12:31] Speaker B: Sure. So that's an incredibly interesting question. And as you and I are sitting talking here today on the 25 January, we've had probably the rockiest January in recent times as far as the markets are concerned. And there's a whole lot of reasons for that.
It's uncertainty around what the Fed is going to do. It's potential issues in Ukraine and Russia and NATO's response.
All of it really boils down to uncertainty. Markets don't like uncertainty. Our 401 ks don't like uncertainty. So it's certainly something for us to sort of be concerned about. How does that really translate into everyday lives? How does that translate into everybody's industry? And you specifically ask about business travel. I mean, when you think about it, over the last three years as a society, we've been forced to digitize meeting, and to a certain end, if you look at a lot of the sectors of the economy, they've rebounded differently.
The aviation business, or specifically the airline industry has rebounded principally on leisure travel. People have wanted to get out of their houses. They've wanted to do things. They've had some disposable income to do that with. So the recovery has really come from the american family. For the aviation business. It hasn't come from the S and P 500 composite makeup companies spending more on business travel. And in fact, that is at record lows of where it was 20 years ago. I still don't think you can ever replace in our business a face to face meeting with a client, whether they're across town or they're across the world. But we've been able to really think about how much travel do we need? And if you think about the economics of aviation, the majority of the profit of when that Boeing triple seven takes off comes from business travelers, and that's still way down. It is hurting the industry. Remember how much stimulus money has gone into the aviation industry, how much has gone into the airlines, and they're still really benefiting from that.
There is going to be a time that we have to reassess how much business travel does this industry support? And it will be less than it was five or ten years ago. Does that recover over the next seven or eight years? I bet you it does. But there's going to be a time here that there's sort of a disconnect there. And that's why you still see just ever so slightly, a little bit of softness in all of those aviation airlines.
[00:15:02] Speaker A: You got me thinking back to Econ. I think it's 102 and 104, where I think airlines are always a textbook example of price discrimination. Right. And business travelers, oh, we have this meeting next week, and we got to get this presentation. And you book your trip and you're kind of in a, you know, there's a price premium versus the family that's booked their Disney trip six months out so they can get their fast passes scheduled and everything. And so the flights are cheaper. So that makes sense that you can't replicate a vacation on Zoom, but you can do business meetings on Zoom. And actually, we're recording this. You are at home, you've got your cats there. I'm at one of my work from home days here. I'm in my home office with, I've got my rescue muts behind me. So certainly a different flavor on even how we're engaging alumni for you students.
We would not have done this two years ago, probably five years ago, we.
[00:15:57] Speaker B: Would have done this over a cup of coffee or know, probably, and a.
[00:16:01] Speaker A: Lot of the technology has advanced to make this more feasible.
Now, going back in time a little bit, again, you wrote in your questionnaire that you actually ended up in Boston after you graduated. You referenced working for a really big firm. Can you tell us what that experience was like? You went from being in Dubois and in University Park State College, which are both pretty small towns. What was it like going to a top ten size city with its own unique culture and character up in Boston?
[00:16:34] Speaker B: It was one of the greatest things I ever did, and I'll walk it back just a little further. When I left Penn State, the first stop I made was my first job was actually in Pittsburgh, and I was there for about 18 months. And my boss at the time came down and said, hey, you've been doing a really great job for us. We want to offer you a promotion. Usually when these things happen, we like to send you somewhere else. And there was an option for me to go to, I believe it was Cincinnati, Ohio, or to go to Boston. I never spent much time in either city, but, you know, what the heck? Let's go to Boston. And I'd like to say there was a whole lot more thought in it than that, other than I thought Boston would be a great place to be. I made the move there in 2003, and it was one of the best things I ever did. I lived there for over 15 years. A fantastic city, wonderful people.
They call Boston, New York with an inferiority complex, but I sincerely loved it. The people there are some of the greatest you'll ever find. And being in sort of that type of an environment, dealing with clients that from very small individual investors all the way up to corporations where you were literally managing billion dollar accounts for them, it was a great mix. It was a great city to grow up in. And I like to say when I moved up there, I helped the Red Sox break their curse. But I guess that'll be left for the historians to determine.
[00:18:06] Speaker A: Well, certainly, at least, if not causation, certainly a nice correlation there for any Sox fans listening. So you can thank Kyle for that run of titles across all of the different teams in the Boston sports scene in the past two decades here.
Now, as we're talking, you're no longer in Boston. You actually moved to another city that's having its own sports renaissance, if you will, with the Buffalo Bills in western New York. What precipitated that move?
[00:18:41] Speaker B: Well, the move was precipitated by a little bit of a career change. But when I was living in Boston, I was very fortunate to have clients all over the country and all over the world. One of my best clients who actually ended up being a really great mentor to me, was a gentleman who lived here in Buffalo, and I got to visit him multiple times a year for literally a decade. And you get to, with business travel, I think, get to learn about a city, get to learn about its people a little bit about what makes it tick. And in the back of my mind, I always thought, this is a great little city, and I shouldn't use the word little, it's a great city. And I always enjoyed my time here. We had some changes that were taking place at my job in Boston. And coincidentally, about the same time, a friend of mine let me know that the firm that I work for now, which is called KeyBank, was really rebuilding and ramping up their wealth management presence. And their sort of wealth management arm is called Key private Bank, and that's where I work. And they had recently completed a really large merger for the bank that acquired a company called First Niagara Financial Group, which was a large regional bank that was based here in western New York. So key came in the 11th largest bank in the country and was really trying to make all of western New York a pretty big focus market for it. Along with myself and a couple of other folks from across the country, we were recruited to come in, and we've been at it for about four years now, and it's been a great success. But really what brought me to Buffalo was the people.
Just a fantastic city to live in. We're close to a lot of different things. In normal times, you're a hop, skip and a jump from Toronto, which is a great and wonderful city. And as you mentioned, we have a great sports culture here with the bills and the Sabres, the collegiate teams. We also have a little bit of a renaissance going on. Our downtown core is really expanding. We have new businesses coming in focused in healthcare and on technology.
It's a younger city, it's really growing. I look at it from living in Pittsburgh and now living in Buffalo. Buffalo is just a few years behind. And if you've been to Pittsburgh, you've seen the real renaissance that's taken place there.
That's happening here, too. And as sort of a guy who's in his forties and part of the financial markets here in western New York, it's fun to be a part of that from a commercial perspective and also helping our individual clients that are coming from all over the world to this relatively new experience for them here in western New York. And there's a reason that the population is starting to grow, and it's because people are liking it here, they're staying here and finding it's a really great city to raise a family and sort.
[00:21:42] Speaker A: Of be part of which, again, gong back to our conversation around business travel versus remote. That's certainly an option to look at if you can do a job remotely, which I think a lot of our scholars are going to be seeing those opportunities as corporate roles shift. In that way, you can work from anywhere, and that includes settling down in a town like Buffalo. In addition, even if the company is not located there. So you heard it from Kyle. Great option to consider, I think. Also great shout outs for Pittsburgh. And I'm a little familiar with Cincinnati from my time in Kentucky, also a great kind of city in that same vein of those slightly smaller than New York, Philly, Boston towns for you to consider, and a lot of big companies headquartered there as well. Now, Kyle, in your answer, and a lot of your answers, you keep saying words like client and people and communities. When we think of banking, the first thing we think of is lots of numbers. Spreadsheets, graphs, checkbooks, atms, bitcoin, all these different things. But without the people involved, the numbers don't really mean anything. So can you talk about your role and your day to day if there's such a thing as a VP and a relationship manager for t private bank and working in this specific type of financial role?
[00:23:02] Speaker B: Sure. And you're absolutely right. This is a people's business because everybody can give you an ATM machine, everybody can print you off a credit card, give you a checkbook. Anybody generally can do all those day to day functions for you. But it's something sort of special when you get to work with a client who maybe they started a business when they were young, maybe they had a really great idea, and you really get to follow them through their journey in life because their life won't get less complicated.
We always think about how we help our clients grow and thrive in our typical clients are individuals who have really done well for themselves.
When I reference key private bank, we are sort of a boutique bank within key bank, which is itself part of Key corp. And while we're the 11th largest bank in the country, what we do is we try to be a hometown bank in all the cities that we're large in. And that's in cities like Buffalo, like Portland, Maine, like Detroit, like Cleveland, Ohio, like Anchorage, like Seattle. Those are cities that we really have a big presence in and where our home is. And we try to operate as a local community bank in each of those cities, while we still have these global reaches that we have and the power of being such a large bank, we really want to be bankers to our community. So it is really kind of a people business in the fact that we want to help folks grow their business. We want to help them plan for their future.
We want to help them mitigate any of the little sort of sidesteps that can happen, whether that's issues with children, with marriages, with taxes, with things of that nature. We're really here to be consultants for the entire lifespan of an individual. So how does that look on a day to day basis? That's, I guess, the really interesting question. And every client is different. I mean, it can be an individual. I work with a lot of institutions, such as nonprofits.
Think of higher education institutions that have endowments that people have donated to, and how do you invest those funds properly, and how do you make sure that they're there to push the mission forward of a nonprofit, of an institution that's specializing in different types of education? So all those things really lead back to what we do, and that's really listening to people understanding where they want to go financially and giving them the tools to do that. That's, in a nutshell, what a day to day life is. Now, there's a lot of tools in the toolbox to make that happen, but that's sort of what we do on a day to day basis is really sort of try to customize a roadmap, or, for lack of a better word, guide the journey for the client, help a family get where they want to go, help a nonprofit get where they want to go. And as long as we can be a partner doing that, we're helping them. We're helping the communities we serve, too.
[00:25:46] Speaker A: So for the scholars listening, Kyle, what would you recommend that if they want to go into what you're doing or similar roles that are heavy customer service, heavy client and relationship management focused, what are some opportunities or skills that you would recommend that they start working on now? Obviously, probably excel is a good skill to know, but particularly around the people and what we might call the soft skills, what would you recommend that they start looking at and how they can start developing those?
[00:26:17] Speaker B: Sure. So I'll say something to sort of my fellow economics finance majors. When you're an undergrad, the best thing you can do is with your electives, take some interesting classes, take a foreign language study, some Pennsylvania history. Think about some theater, some art, some film classes. Really try to be as diverse of an individual as you can when you're coming out of school. That really goes a long way with a lot of our recruiters. I know it does at key in my other firm, making yourself stand out a little bit. And really in those first couple of years when you're out in your first job, whether you're an analyst, whether you're doing something at a big accounting firm, you've went to work for an investment bank, you've decided to go into financial services at a brokerage house or something those first couple of years, finding a good mentor, which I did, also a Penn State graduate from the 1980s, but finding a really good mentor, somebody that can really not just teach you the technical aspects of the job, because I promise you, you're going to pick that up quicker than you ever think. So don't worry so much about that. But it's finding out how to deal with people, understanding where they want to go, and more than anything, just being able to listen, understand where they want to be, what do they want to do, what's the desired outcome, and you're going to have a set of tools to be able to do that. So I think the best thing that any scholar can do is when you go out and you get that first job and you're going to have some scholars that go to really big firms and small firms. But the unique thing is they're going to go to good firms and there are going to be individuals there who want to help that next generation really be able to grow and create and succeed. And finding somebody that you can be lifelong friends with and work with them and learn this business is the best thing that you can ever do. And it's something you can't study. It's something you can't learn. It's just something you have to try. You have to do.
[00:28:13] Speaker A: So mentoring is a very common theme of this entire podcast show.
How would you, in your experience, recommend that scholars, and particularly those who are interested in this line of work, for those econ, for those finance, for those accounting majors, how would you recommend that they go about finding a mentor in that internship or that first job?
[00:28:35] Speaker B: Well, I think the first thing you can do is depending on the size of the company you go to. A lot of them, like Keycorp, have very formal mentorship programs where when new individuals will come into the bank, either as an intern or a new hire, you're sort of assigned, for lack of a word, a buddy or a friend that can help you learn all the ins and outs of the bank or the firm from technical systems all the way up how to run the Xerox machine. So you find somebody like that to help you understand all the big picture things, but also how that nine to five or that day to day works.
And going back to my last answer, if there's not a formal program at the firm you go to, even if it's somebody in HR when you were interviewing that you sort of clicked with, or one of the folks who have just recently gone through the same thing that you have just pal up with them, become friends, go out, grab a cup of coffee, grab a drink after work and really sort of just lay it on the table that, hey, I've noticed how successful you've been. You seem really happy in what you do. I'd like to replicate that. How can I learn from you to have a similar experience? So I think it's mostly personality matching. Find somebody that you get along with that's been successful and really just attach yourself to them. Even if you're ever so much a bit of a pain, they're going to still do it for you because they've been in the exact same shoes that you've been in. And I found without question, I've only worked for two firms, but they've both been pretty big firms. Without question. There's going to be some formal mentoring opportunities. If you go to a larger place, take every advantage of that you can. If you're going to go to a smaller firm or you're going to even go to graduate school, find somebody who's sort of traveled your path before, become good friends with them. It's the best decision you can ever make.
[00:30:28] Speaker A: Absolutely. And I noticed you mentioned the Xerox machine. Definitely. Even those little things like that are very helpful to learn. Whenever we have somebody join the college, I always make sure they know how to operate the coffee machine because it's a little challenging, I think at first to make sure that you do it right, especially if you're not a trained barista.
[00:30:50] Speaker B: And if you're going to go into finance, you're gong to need a ton of coffee your first two years, no matter what job you have.
[00:30:57] Speaker A: And I imagine also the consultants would probably tell you the same thing for the Deloitte's and the McKinsey's of the world, too. So going back a couple of questions here, you mentioned that you work with both individuals who are high net worth. You work with some businesses, you work with nonprofits. What is it like balancing those portfolios? Are there any similarities and any differences between working with those different types of clients, sure.
[00:31:21] Speaker B: The risk tolerance of individuals and institutions can be very similar, meaning how much exposure do they want to the markets versus sort of safe and secure investments? And it all still goes back to understanding where your client wants to go. It can be a family that has been successful, and they want to grow their wealth for generations. And there's a customized plan that we put in place for that, and that's to make wealth last, not just for an individual's children, but for grandchildren, great grandchildren, and maybe even a charity that they'd like to endow. If you take a step to the side, it's actually very similar when you work with a nonprofit because they're really doing the same thing. They're receiving bequests, they're having operational profits, things of that nature, and they put a plan in place of what they want to do in the future, and it's really our job to help them get there. So you think about nonprofits, maybe even in the healthcare sector, that are really out there trying to stay on the cutting edge of whether it's providing healthcare services to inner city, disadvantaged individuals or they're a large cancer research institution, it's still pretty similar. Understanding what the client wants to do and how they'd like to get there. It's really then our job to get them there. So, as I said, we always have a lot of tools in our bag to do that. So there's a heck of a lot of similarities between individuals and, for lack of a better word, institutions and how they want to move forward. It's very different from a tax structure, from an investment structure, from an amount of risk that you can take with an individual versus an institution. But the fundamentals are there, and for folks that are going out to start in this world and in this career path, the best thing you can always do is listen to your client, put a plan in place, stick to it, and you'll have the desired outcome if you want. When you don't listen to your client, or you try to sell them something, or you deviate from a long term plan, that's when you have trouble, and that's when you don't really have the desired outcomes that you want.
[00:33:23] Speaker A: Mentioned quite a few things in the last couple of answers, and I'm curious.
Tax codes change, technology changes, industries evolve. Things that were great investments before, maybe not so great now. New things are coming on the horizon, like cryptocurrencies and different green technologies.
How do you continue your professional development? Well, after your days at Penn State, so that you can stay on top of your game, add to your toolkit, and best serve your clients?
[00:33:53] Speaker B: Sure. It's a great question because there's nothing as sure as change, especially in the markets that we're living in today. You see so many different things changing. 15 years ago, people didn't even if you would say, what is ESG investing? They wouldn't understand. It's environmental, social responsibility and governance. And that's a big change. The tax changes, they happen every year, sometimes more than once a year. So being involved in some different professional organizations, working for an institution like I work for, where we have dedicated individuals who are following all of those changes and bringing the folks that are out in the field, such as myself, those really good ideas that we can translate to our clients, it's paramount in delivering the right experience.
But what I would say to folks who are thinking about this, you can never sort of stop learning, because if in 1980, we would have gone out and bought our clients a portfolio of 50 of the largest stocks in the country.
Those 50 largest stocks in the country are very different today than they were in 1980. They're very different than they were in 2000. They're very different than they were in 1990. So really staying on top of things, making sure that you're in tune with the markets, that you're doing the requisite amount of sort of research into the different tax situations, and understanding that nothing is as sure as change, but making sure that you're on top of it always is the best way to deliver the best outcome for your client. There's a lot of ways to do that. It's, again, learning from your peers, from your company, getting into civic organizations. I belong to an organization called the association of Mergers and Acquisition.
So getting into folks and institutions like that, where they're constantly bringing you new ideas, understanding what's going on in Washington and around the world, that's the best way to really deliver the best outcome for your client.
[00:35:49] Speaker A: So you mentioned that professional association. You're really involved in the profession.
How did you get involved in that? And more importantly, why do you take on that extra work to volunteer with these kind of professional groups?
[00:36:04] Speaker B: Well, I think it makes you a more well rounded advisor for your client. You're sort of specializing in certain areas. And for lack of a better word, when you go out there and you start working with individuals, you're always going to gravitate toward a certain type of situation, whether that's helping business owners, whether it's helping institutions, but really thinking about there, what really can I learn what can I sort of be an expert at that can translate into a good outcome or a good knowledge base for my clients. And one of the reasons that I decided to sort of get involved in an organization that specifically helps with individuals who might have grown a business.
Maybe it was a startup, and then they went through an IPO, and now they grew this business out of their garage, and now they could buy a small country.
Finding and really thinking about the topics that are important to them. Many, many times it's taxes, many times it's thinking about how to preserve wealth and pass it on to my kids and grandkids and really figuring out those sort of answers and really having an association of individuals that are doing that. Seeing multiple situations across the globe really helps us a great deal in the amount of knowledge we're able to gather and whatever situation that we find ourselves in. It's also a really nice peer group to go out and ask for resources and to see how you can best help your client through. Maybe they've been in a situation that's similar before.
[00:37:32] Speaker A: And then in addition to your professional community across the country, you're also heavily involved in your community in Buffalo. Can you tell us what you do and why you do what you know?
[00:37:44] Speaker B: I have always had a soft spot in my heart for the city of Buffalo, even when I wasn't living here and I was living in New England.
So when I moved here, it didn't take very long to realize that this is the place that I hope to put down roots for the remainder of my time. And the city is really growing.
You're going to see it in a lot of travel magazines. You're going to see it in a New York Times dining out article. But it's important that we realized, I think, that not everybody in the city of Buffalo and in western New York is sort of sharing in those same headline successes.
We're still a city that is recovering from Bethlehem steel shutting down in 1984. We've lost roughly a third of the population in the last 30 years, and it's just starting to come back. So there's a lot of people that maybe aren't sharing in all of the success that the city is having on a macro level right now. So I was really pleased a little while back to get involved with an organization called Evergreen Health Services that first started off as the Buffalo AIDS project. And really it went out there and tried to help individuals that were suffering with HIV and AIDS at the time in the 1980s and 90s. But it's really turned into an organization that provides primary health care, dental health care, mental health care, helping folks get their first house. Really sort of a catch all organization that's out there trying to make a difference in the lives of people of western New York, specifically sort of folks here in Buffalo, because it is easy to get left behind. There's a lot of folks that have had some circumstances that we could never even in a million years, you and I sitting here, understand or candidly even fathom.
And they're a vital part of this city, too, and they need all the resources that we as a collective here, can provide. And being able to serve with this organization a little bit, first as a volunteer, and now I'm on the board of directors of their foundation to really help them grow. I've seen the good things that they've done.
The good things they've done historically, the good things they're doing today. Helping people who've had a tough time, whether it was with substance abuse, whether it was suffering from discrimination because of their sexual orientation or anything like that.
It's just a fantastic organization, and it's one of many in this city that's really trying to help those of us who just haven't had the opportunities or trying to change their life. And being able to be a part of that, it's probably one of the most rewarding things I've done in many, many years.
[00:40:34] Speaker A: That's great. And I think that is really a continuation of the honors college's mission and vision. So that is great to hear. Now, before we get into the reflective questions, one thing I wanted to ask you about, you mentioned earlier you're a licensed pilot. Do you still get out to fly? And when you were a student, was there any.
There's students who are interested in picking this up or who are active getting their license as well. Were you able to practice and fly and get hours when you were a student?
[00:41:05] Speaker B: I did, yeah. I probably didn't fly as much as I should have when I was younger and in college, but I did.
I got to go out and practice, got to use the university park airport a little bit, rented some airplanes, and flew all over Pennsylvania, New York, and Maryland.
Today, I still get to fly quite a bit. One of my flight instructors is a gentleman that I've been lifelong friends with that lives in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and every year take a little bit of a trip out there, and we always go flying and have a lot of fun together. So, yeah, it's something that, it's a lifelong passion of mine. It's a great pursuit. And it's always something that you continue to learn, because just as the financial markets are always changing, the technology of aviation is too. So it's always something that you can keep up with, learn a new skill. And there's nothing cooler than getting up there and seeing the world below you and flying an airplane and just having a great time. And one of the things I can't encourage people enough to go out and try, if you have an opportunity, the amount of freedom that it allows you to have and experience, it's not rivaled in anything else.
[00:42:17] Speaker A: Well, as Penn staters, I think we know a little bit about unrivaled. So you heard it from Kyle about going out and checking out the blue skies. And I know it can be a bit of an investment, but maybe you work with folks like Kyle to see if you can financially swing that, if that's a hobby that you are interested in pursuing. Now, Kyle, now we're going to kind of pivot to the last section of our conversation today. What would you say is your biggest success to date?
[00:42:46] Speaker B: I would say in my professional life, it's definitely taking some organizations that serve the greater good of our communities to the next level.
I was fortunate enough to work with an organization that helps folks sort of in their last days in Chautauqua county here in New York state.
And they were an organization that had always done a fantastic job of helping individuals that were facing really tough decisions. It was sort of a hospice like organization, and they sort of came to us with an idea of how they wanted to build a residential inpatient facility to help folks that maybe didn't have a home or didn't have loved ones that could look after them in those last days. And really taking this organization from just an idea on a piece of paper to actually, a year ago, seeing them put shovels in the ground and build this building and take care of people. I've got to say that's probably the one that strikes home the most.
It's benefiting a lot of people. It's allowing them to have a lot of dignity and a lot of hope. And I think that's the powerful thing that we can do in my industry. You're going to watch a lot of movies that talk about the porsches and the expense accounts and the bottles of wine and finance, and, you know, that's not all it is. It is actually getting out there and helping individuals in our community. We have a mission, we have a duty to do that. And I just think it's amazing when you can see it happen.
[00:44:22] Speaker A: That's great. I think you've provided a lot of insight, kind of contrary to kind of the Hollywood perspective. You think of things like the wolf of Wall street, which is very probably skewed perspective on things. What would you say is your biggest transformational learning moment and what you learned from that experience?
[00:44:37] Speaker B: I think the transformational part of that is understanding that if you take things, for lack of a better word, one step at a time and trying to leap to where you want to go, you're going to have a really good outcome. Because we had a lot of twists and turns in this project that we assisted on. There was a family that was going to originally donate a lot of the capital. They decided not to, and now we're left with, oh, gosh, what do we do? So if you don't follow a methodic process, you might not be able to react in those situations the best way. In this situation, we were able to do so, and we found other ways to sort of get it done. So I think, to answer your question, just staying focused, understanding what the end of the game is, but realizing you don't have to get to a to z in one jump, that you can go from a to b to c to d and so on.
You can't be all things to all people, but you can give 110% of your best, and if you do that, you're generally going to get to where you want to go.
[00:45:36] Speaker A: Now, you mentioned of trouble faults at the very beginning when you were talking about the econ department. Are there any other professors or friends from your scholar days that you would like to give a shout out?
[00:45:45] Speaker B: Know, I was lucky enough to be able to do a double major in economics and political science. And in the economics world, I worked a great deal with David Shapiro, who is still a professor emeritus of economics, and stay in touch with regularly. I had another gentleman who I actually got to work with quite a while. His name was Philip Klein, and he was probably one of the world's preeminent researchers of business cycles and economic fluctuations. And sadly, he passed away about a decade ago. But even after I left Penn State, we stayed in good touch occasionally, would visit with him and his family, and just really loved the research he was doing. We were sort of kindred spirits in that regard, and it was wonderful. I also had a great experience in the political science department. A lot of professors there were exceptional in teaching political theory. I had a professor by the name of Bob Laporte, who was very skilled in sort of Southeast Asia politics, which I always found interesting, and local governments as well. And it was a great opportunity. And the nice thing about it is I still kept in touch with a lot of them. I think that's important. They're always great folks to share a story with or maybe even reach out for a little bit of advice. So, as I sort of said, even when you're talking about professional careers, when you're a student and you're a young scholar, find a few folks that you really like and enjoy, and you'll have lifelong friendship with them.
[00:47:09] Speaker A: Is there any final advice that you want to leave students that maybe hasn't come through at any other point in the conversation so far?
[00:47:17] Speaker B: I think that what I would leave a lot of the scholars out there with is think about what you're doing right now. Realize that it may be completely different from what you're going to do five or six years from now. Realize that that's okay. Take every opportunity that you possibly can to grow. One of those ways is, I think, to find a good mentor out there. Become as close as you can with them, understand where they've been successful, where they need some guidance, too, because you'll be able to help them. And as I would always say, I know it's a little bit of a cliche, but travel as much as you can, learn how the world works, learn how different cultures are, pick up a different language, get a global perspective on life, because there's a tendency, I think, to live in our own little bubbles. And the best thing I think you can do for your career and your first job prospects, and really that first promotion is always be able to understand what makes people, how do they think about things, how do they approach a problem. And it's not always going to be the same way you do. So it's important to think about that and really have as many different sort of centers of influence as you can go to to have different perspectives.
[00:48:20] Speaker A: Absolutely. Great advice. Love the shout out for our mission tenet of global perspective. You also mentioned mentoring, and we've talked about that quite a bit in our conversation. If a scholar wanted to reach out to you and take this conversation further, pick your brain, learn a little bit more from you, Kyle, how can they get a hold of you?
[00:48:39] Speaker B: Absolutely. And I've actually done that for a few scholars and just a few folks who have been students in the econ department over the years. Happy to do that. You're welcome to shoot me an email at ils
[email protected]. Certainly hit me up on LinkedIn. You'll see me there. Kyle Morgan at key private bank in Buffalo, New York. Happy to help anybody, principally as you're thinking about going out there and getting that first job or evaluating some different offers, or, heck, if you want to learn how to fly, I'd be happy to get you into the right places to do that.
[00:49:13] Speaker A: Well, you heard it from Kyle. He can help you with a bunch of different things, and I strongly recommend that, like me, you connect with him on LinkedIn. Now, Kyle, as is tradition here on following the gone, I know you've listened, so you know what is coming. If you were a flavor of Berkeley creamery ice cream, which would you be? And most importantly, as a scholar alumnus, why would you be that flavor?
[00:49:36] Speaker B: Pumpkin.
And don't throw me into the whole pumpkin coffee thing, because I don't like that. But I love the pumpkin ice cream from the creamery, and I'll tell you why.
My senior year, I ended up meeting one of my closest and best buddies at Penn State. First couple of days of class, I was like, is this guy stalking me or something? Because we had literally the entire same schedule Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays. And we sort of just started laughing. One day I'm like, you're in every class that I'm in. And this guy, his name is Bill Dunn, he said, yeah, I think we have the exact same schedule. So we thought, let's go get some ice cream and figure out how we can attack some of the projects that we were given and things like that in a couple of classes. And we went over the creamery. I had my typical pumpkin ice cream. I don't know what the heck he actually had, but it's a good memory of mine because one of my best lifelong friends, we sort of started our relationship over creamery ice cream. And I'm still really good friends with him and his son. We spend a few holidays together every once in a while, and it's a good thing. So don't pick on me about the pumpkin, but it is my favorite flavor.
[00:50:52] Speaker A: Well, I'm always going to side in the apple and the fall flavors. And by the point that this one has been published, I know we've already will have had an episode with the apple pie flavor. So now we've got pumpkin covered. So either side on that fall flavor debate, you've got your representative here on following the gone. So I haven't had that one yet, but I'll have to try that next fall. Kyle.
Kyle, you are a relationship manager and VP at key private bank in Buffalo, New York. Thank you so much for joining me today here on following the gone.
[00:51:27] Speaker B: Thank you Sean and all the best to you and all the scholars out there that took the time to listen to this.
[00:51:40] Speaker A: Thank you scholars for listening and learning with us today. We hope you will take something with you that will contribute to how you shape the world. This show proudly supports the shrier honors College emergency fund, benefiting scholars experiencing unexpected financial hardship. You can make a difference at raise psu.edu forward slash Schreyer. Please be sure to hit the relevant subscribe like or follow button on whichever platform you are engaging with us on today. You can follow the college on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn to stay up to date on news events and deadlines. If you have questions about the show or a scholar alum who'd like to join us as a guest here on following the gone, please connect with me at scholar alumni at psu.edu. Until next time, please stay well and we are.
