SHAKA RASHEED ’93 Believe in Your Ability,Take More Risks, Have a Balanced Career So much has happened in the world in the 25 years since Sháka Rasheed crossed the graduation stage in May 1993. Rasheed has had a career marked with a meteoric rise and outstanding, sustained success. And he’s earned a reverential deference and respect from colleagues and peers the world over. The Liberty City, Fla., native is the head of sales for Bridgewater Associates, based in Westport, Conn. He’s also held a variety of ascendant positions at Lazard Asset Management, Citadel Asset Management, J.P. Morgan, and Merrill Lynch. The former Robert Toigo Foundation Fellow at Harvard Business School was an Oprah Winfrey Scholar, a Ford Foundation Fellow, a Woodrow Wilson
Foundation Scholar, and president of the 1992-93 Morehouse College Student Government Association. A born leader whose presence is felt, Rasheed answered questions on a range of topics including life, career, family, and Morehouse.
Reflecting on the 25 years since you graduated from Morehouse, how have you grown professionally and what skills have you acquired and or honed throughout your storied career? “I graduated from Morehouse with a tremendous sense of purpose and possibility. From that sound base, my thinking and skills have been further refined professionally (and personally) over the 25 years since. Professionally, I’ve evolved from a skill-building, analytically-centric orientation in my earlier years, to becoming more of a strategic thinker who considers first- and
second-order consequences to my decisions. I have sought to more preemptively address the questions being raised behind the questions being asked of me. I have become more curious and humbled by genuinely acknowledging the possibility that my brilliantly conceived ideas, may actually be wrong! Further, I have greater learned to appreciate the value of good counsel and weighing the benefit of divergent perspectives from my own, among many other professional skills. While still emerging, I have become a better synthesizer of complex problems and a leader with greater empathy.”
If you could offer your May 1993 self any salient advice, what would it be? “Take more risk, earlier on. Create and appreciate more quiet moments: Be still. Hold tight to prayer and meditation. Ask your wife to marry you earlier, you’ll be so