How a five-year hiatus shaped Barrenjoey's Jo Masters' career
Jo Masters describes her experience as chief economist for start-up Barrenjoey as "crazy". But not in a bad way.
When Barrenjoey's chief economist Jo Masters was at university in the 1990s, she didn’t have the typical summer experience expected of a student. Instead, she was in Hong Kong cutting her teeth on currency markets and economic research alongside some of the top currency market minds in the world.
Masters studied at the University of Auckland, focusing on both economics and geography (she had originally wanted to be a town planner but fortuitously took her father’s advice to consider another path), and then continued with a Masters in economics at the University of Sydney.
During this time, her parents relocated to Hong Kong for her father's work as a land surveyor.
“Being in Hong Kong, my parents always had a very open house, people from that finance oriented part of the world,” Masters says. “I spent all my summers up there.” And when she visited, she took up roles and internship opportunities. This included a stint at Lehman Brothers and a summer internship at GT Funds Management focused on econometric modelling and research.
