Investment Bankers Lend a Helping Hand on the Gulf Coast

by Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)

In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast of the United States, destroying countless homes and neighborhoods and displacing hundreds of thousands of people throughout Louisiana and Mississippi.    The images were all over the news.  There was an outpouring of money and support.  And some, including Caroline Finley and a group of her colleagues from the internal audit department at Credit Suisse in New York, headed down to personally help with the clearing and rebuilding efforts.

“My manager decided to get a group together to go down to help with the Katrina relief effort.  In January 2006, about half of our internal audit department – approximately 30 employees – flew down to New Orleans and then went by bus to Biloxi, Mississippi.”    A portion of the group slept in a local church, while Caroline and some others slept in tents behind the church.   “That was actually my first time in a tent.  I actually surprised myself that I could sleep in a tent for 3 nights,” she joked.  They did mostly demolition work during that trip, tearing down structures and piling up debris.

Then, just five months later, Caroline and a smaller group from Credit Suisse, along with friends and relatives went back – this time to start to rebuild. They rebuilt a charter school playground in New Orleans through an organization called City Year. “So basically the entire playground was leveled after the storm and when we arrived it was mainly all dirt.  We put up a fence and built the actual playground – the swings, the climbing wall, slides.  We dug holes, poured cement.”

Caroline and “Team Fun”, as the core Credit Suisse Gulf Coast volunteer group call themselves, have gone back every year in May for at least five days, working a few days at a Habitat for Humanity build site and another day at the charter school. “My manager and my manager’s college roommate, who is also a managing director at Credit Suisse, said to us, ‘We are both going down to the Gulf Coast every year until we are no longer needed.  Whoever wants to come with us, come.  That’s what we are going to do.’  And that’s what we’ve been doing ever since.” 

Counting this last trip, Caroline and the group have gone down to help the victims of Katrina five times.  “The thing that surprises me is how bad it still really is.  I think people don’t realize that because it is not in the news any longer.  You don’t really hear anything about New Orleans anymore.  Every year, the houses that we’ve built are typically in the lower Ninth Ward and New Orleans East   For the most part, many of the houses next door to the houses we are building are still abandoned.  They still have the waterlines on the outside of the houses.  So depending on where you are, entire areas are still so devastated.”

“Some friends of mine question how much I’m really accomplishing in just a handful of days each year,” explains Caroline, “But my thought is if we all said that, none of it would get done.  After only three days with Habitat this year, my group and I put up almost all the siding of the house. And our other group put up shingles on one of the other roofs at the other houses.  They finished the entire roof.” 

Caroline laughs that she and the rest of the auditors from Credit Suisse are particularly well suited to this work because of their “take charge” personalities. “I think we deal well with structure because of what we do for a living.  So when someone shows us what to do we are all just determined on perfecting it. When we can’t finish the job 100%, we are all so upset about it.  We want to see it to completion.  It becomes a personal competition.”

She added, “I’ve used power saws, power drills – things I’ve never thought I would use in my entire life. It’s scary at first because these things can harm you. I’m still not so comfortable with the saw – it is not my favorite piece of machinery. But it is amazing what you can accomplish once you set your mind to it.”  Using those power tools, Caroline and two other women from the group built a porch on one of the Habitat houses during one of their earlier trips.

The camaraderie among team members is part of what draws Caroline to this project.  “It is wonderful to be able to work with other Credit Suisse employees. The group this year was comprised of the most junior staff to managing directors – and you are all on the same team.  There are no corporate titles out there. It is wonderful for team building.”

For Caroline, however, the main reason for the journey down to New Orleans each year is the desire to give back. “I’ve been very fortunate in life   Not everyone is that fortunate. And then, on top of that, you can be thrown a curve ball every once in a while by Mother Nature.   I just want to help people and bring back some normalcy.”