Thursday, November 5, was among Jake Woodson’s more chaotic days as a trader at Goldman Sachs. AI stocks were plummeting after the midterms, all three benchmark indexes were falling, and, in the middle of it all, Woodson’s phone was ringing with one of the most important calls of his career.
Everyone on the trading floor went quiet as Woodson, 34, said hello to firm president John Waldron, who congratulated him on being promoted to partner, Goldman’s highest-ranking title outside the C-Suite. Woodson, who oversees trading in leveraged corporate debt and loans and was previously one of Business Insider’s Rising Stars of Wall Street, is the second-youngest among the 109 executives who earned the promotion this year.
“It was high-fives and hugs, and then right back to trading for the rest of the day,” Woodson said early the next week, adding that, though his memory of the moment is foggy, he thinks colleagues on the leveraged finance credit desk applauded.
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His mom was at the center of the day
Woodson said he took a few minutes during the work day to call his mom, dad, and brother. He rang his teary-eyed mom first, partly since he’d flown her to New York from his hometown outside of Vancouver, Canada.
“I flew my mom out because I figured either I’m not going to make it and I could use a shoulder to cry on, or I really want her there to be a part of it,” Woodson said. “I’ve lived a six-hour flight from my family for 12 years, so it’s nice to be able to show them it was worth it.”
His mom joined Woodson and Goldman’s larger credit business that evening in the private room of Monk McGinn’s, a pub near the office. She mingled with around 50 internal colleagues and 20 clients who came, meeting some of the people who have defined her son’s life for more than a decade. None of Woodson’s family works in finance, and he said his mom doesn’t know much about his job beyond the fact that it happens at Goldman, so it was special to bring her into his world.
The two of them ducked out of the pub earlier than most to have a quiet dinner at Woodson’s apartment, FaceTiming his dad and brother in Canada. Woodson celebrated again at a dinner with friends on Friday night, before his mom flew back to Vancouver and he drove to the Catskills alone. He spent Saturday by a lake, breathing air more similar to that of the mountains in British Columbia than of Tribeca.
How he got there
Woodson didn’t always expect to end up at Goldman, even though he studied finance in college. He grew up in a suburb 45 minutes outside of Vancouver and went to the University of British Columbia rather than the Ivy League schools that tend to dot Wall Street resumes.
“If you were a betting person, you probably wouldn’t bet that there would be a Goldman partner coming from that suburb,” Woodson said.
He was accepted into UBC’s Portfolio Management Foundation, a program that provides hands-on training in investing and finance to a small group of students. That program, with its strong alumni network and ties to Goldman, changed his life more than anything else.
Woodson joined Goldman in 2014, starting in investment-grade private credit. He was a distressed credit trader during the pandemic, and, as the head of US distressed credit trading, steered his team through the 2023 banking crisis, before becoming the head of leveraged finance trading this fall.
The trader feels some responsibility for representing those who don’t start as interns, or come from a target school, or tick most of the other stereotypical finance-kid boxes. He said he’s one of many at Goldman who want to ensure that the firm continues to invest in a range of young talent.
Continuing to execute
When he was one of those younger people, Woodson probably would have expected making partner to feel like a final, grand accomplishment.
“It’s almost the opposite. It’s just the beginning of growing into this role and continuing to operate at a high level,” he said, adding that most focused on strengthening his team.
Balancing the daily demands of trading and managing people “how they deserve to be managed” will likely become a bigger challenge, Woodson said, and may just demand working more hours.
Woodson is one of the rare leaders who is simultaneously respected and liked, a former boss told Business Insider last year. Part of that, Woodson said, comes from treating people, whether internal colleagues or clients, kindly and well, even when it seems disadvantageous in the short term.
“It was instilled in me by my mom and maybe Canadian culture that treating people the right way over time is the right thing to do for a number of reasons. It’s the right thing to do morally, but it also tends to lead to better outcomes,” he said.
Beyond setting a good example, his mom also gave him one of the best gifts he received: appropriately cheesy, multicolored, six-foot-tall balloons.
