How a generalist like me found a home at an investment firm

Hi, Justina here. Today I’m sharing my unconventional journey to Titanium Birch — and how my generalist skillset has been useful around here.

Why this post?

Lately, we’ve been analysing investments as a team. This work has been fun, challenging, and iterative. I don’t have a formal finance background, but my generalist’s toolkit has proven effective, and I’ve been learning on the job. Through this work, our team has grown confident in our collaborative approach and ability to develop skills in-house.

We’re publishing this to share our thoughts about growing our team. We’d love to work with more generalists who love learning, problem-solving, and building systems that make things better.

If you’re a generalist wondering if your background could fit at an investment firm, this post is for you. We know our culture isn’t for everyone, but for the right kind of person, it can be deeply rewarding.

Some early clues

The signs were there from the beginning.

I’m five years old. Our art teacher places a pear on the table and asks us to paint it. I mix colours, drag the paintbrush along the paper, and realise: I’ll never get this to look exactly like the real thing. But that’s okay, because painting is FUN!

I’m eight. We’re doing an experiment that involves dinging a tuning fork on a banister and recording our findings, learning about the scientific method. A process for anyone to answer questions about anything? How COOL!

I’m ten. We’re drawing penguins. Everyone else uses black permanent markers, but I think marker fumes are gross, so I cut strips of black construction paper and glue them on instead. My penguin is ugly but cute in its own way. I LIKE IT!

The thread was already clear: I like finding different ways of doing things, learning by doing, and I don’t mind if the output is odd, as long as it works.

Somebody: Draw a zebra crossing. Me: Challenge accepted.

My career so far

That same pattern has shaped every step of my career.

Hamilton, Ontario (5 years)
Undergrad: Arts & Science at McMaster. Thought I’d major in biochemistry but ended up with comparative literature. Played Ultimate, worked in library archives, wrote for the arts magazine, TA’d writing and literature classes.

Toronto (5 years)
Tried to break into children’s television. Interned at production companies, got an agent, wrote scripts that were produced. Took odd jobs, including putting contact lenses in people’s eyes on the set of Defiance.

Hong Kong (6 years)
Joined ExpressVPN (my twin recommended me as her vacation fill-in). Started with content strategy (had to google “content strategist” when I saw it on my contract!). Worked across marketing, product, hiring, and customer support. Made lots of friends. (Plus: a brief stint as an editor at M+ museum.)

Shanghai (2 years)
Took a break to study Putonghua. Freelanced as a content writer. Helped my brother-in-law build his personal brand on Twitter. Had writing published in a literary journal and anthology.

Singapore (today)
Joined Titanium Birch in 2023. Now I work on branding, hiring, office ops, and investment research. No two days are the same, and I hope to keep it that way.

What connects everything?

None of this was planned. If you’d told me in high school I’d have a TV writing agent, I wouldn’t have believed you. If you’d told me during undergrad I’d work for a VPN company, I would have said, “What’s a VPN?” But each step has built on the last, developing skills that work across contexts. Ultimately, I just want to make myself useful and build cool stuff with awesome people.

Writing
Arguably the heart of my skills, whether cartoon scripts, VPN support guides, creative pieces, or academic articles.
At TB: I write RFPs, internal guides, job posts, web content, due diligence memos, and more.

Piecing together information to paint a clear picture
For example, understanding a random spike in VPN usage by gamers in India or writing academic articles for university archives.
At TB: Pattern recognition, research, and critical thinking all come in handy during due diligence and candidate interviews.

Picking up and implementing tools quickly
Final Cut Pro, GitHub, LLMs… whatever gets the job done.
At TB: Peter and I have been experimenting with ChatGPT prompts to pull insights from hundreds of documents. We hope to get AI agents helping us soon!

Improving things with each iteration
If something can be done better, let’s do it that way!
At TB: I’m always thinking about presenting information effectively. One example: converting dense nested lists into clear tables with traffic lights to indicate performance or progress.

Staying curious and resourceful
Each new role has meant jumping into the unfamiliar!
At TB: Most of my work involves things I’ve never done before (like finding an office space and getting it fitted out), but I’ve enjoyed learning as we go, especially alongside great colleagues.

Not taking myself too seriously.
This one’s easy. ;)

These skills now power everything I do at Titanium Birch: shaping our brand, running hiring processes, managing vendor relationships, keeping our office functional, and contributing to investment research and due diligence.

There’s a bottomless pile of things to learn, but it’s exciting, especially with AI making our work more efficient. Slowly but surely, we’re automating the repetitive stuff so we can spend more time on the meaty questions. It’s not always clean or easy, but we like rolling up our sleeves and figuring things out together. I feel very lucky to be part of the journey.

A call for more generalists

We believe in building a team of people who care about what they do and the people they work with, who think (and write) clearly, and who love making things better — even if they’ve never done it before.

If you’re curious, thoughtful, and love tackling new challenges (especially ones you’ve never encountered before), send us your resume. We’d love to hear about your path, your skills, and how you might help us build Titanium Birch.