Uptree

This Black History Month, the national theme is "Honouring Our Communities". At Uptree, we're marking it by celebrating former Black Uptree students who are opening doors for others as well as themselves.

First is Taym, who is currently a degree apprentice at JPMorganChase. A single work experience week through Uptree helped him decide that finance was the career path for him. Since then, he's completed his first year at the firm, supported boxing gyms for his community, built a platform advising thousands of students and works on hosting multiple of JPMorganChase's internal events, including Black History Month initiatives. For Taym, community isn't something you inherit. It's something you build.

Taym is the son of a Nigerian immigrant father and a British Pakistani mother. He grew up in Leicester, in a large family on a limited income, was on free school meals and was state-educated throughout. His college was under-resourced and offered minimal careers guidance. Taym also had very little work experience and no one around him knew the industry. All he knew was that he didn't want to go to university.

Finance was never his original plan. Taym's first love was sport. He played football, then switched to amateur boxing and took it seriously enough to be invited to interclub sparring with two British heavyweight champions. His family saw an athlete's future ahead of him and so did he. But when he researched where sports science or physiotherapy might lead, something didn't fit: "It aligned with my hobbies, but it didn't align with my personality. I was raised to maximise every opportunity and never leave a door closed. When I looked at careers in sports science and physiotherapy, the options seemed very limited. To me, that felt like the opposite of doors being opened."

At the same time, Taym realised the people around him weren't helping him grow. He stepped away from those old circles and sought out new ones, joining early careers group chats on WhatsApp and Discord, which were filled with diverse groups of students united by ambition. He also secured a place on a finance virtual work experience week through Uptree, after which he applied widely to degree apprenticeships, received three full offers and got the call from JPMorganChase on A-level results day.

"I had no guidance and no idea where to start. Uptree calmed my nerves a little, because it showed me there were things I could apply for to get my foot in the door. After meeting people on that work experience week who I'd never ordinarily have come into contact with, I felt more confident applying for the next opportunity. I finally had something to talk about."

A year in, Taym is a regulatory project manager for fixed income and rates trades, where projects can last two weeks or four years and no two are the same. Alongside his role, he's found several ways to give back.

Using his social media platform to offer careers advice to students like his former self, with some videos reaching hundreds of thousands of views. He has joined, supported and coached at multiple boxing gyms with members mostly from minority ethnic, low-income backgrounds, who use it as a space to switch off, train and connect. At JPMorganChase, as co-cohort representative for apprentices, he organised a football tournament uniting apprentices across every cohort and city. He also launched Fast Track, a speaker series where he platforms those who have found success through the apprenticeship route. This October, he's working on JPMorganChase's internal Black History Month initiatives, built around the same theme Uptree is honouring here.

When asked about his own community, Taym acknowledged that community is a choice. He believes that most people treat community passively, but we should actively seek out to surround ourselves with people who want the best for themselves and others: "Once you take a community from something passive to something you actively search for, it changes the dynamic. We can all push up the ladder together, instead of pushing others down to get there."

For Taym, honouring his community also means switching roles, from someone receiving guidance to someone passing it on, just as former mentors once did for him. He believes that sharing is how communities can rise together; and is how the issue of Black representation thinning out at more senior levels of the wider finance industry can be tackled. “Everyone has one gold nugget of information to give. It might not be gold to one person, but it could be gold to someone else."

Taym sees his background as an asset, one that allows him a creative perspective and shapes how he thinks. Growing up between Nigerian and British Pakistani cultures has given him a broader lens on the world. He recognises that race and socio-economic background can intersect to create disadvantages, often small setbacks that add up over time. But for Taym, those experiences became a source of strength.

"I don't want to call them disadvantages. They're factors that they shape how I think. I don't think I'd have my mentality if I hadn't had doors shut in my face early on."

When asked who he would most like to honour, one person stood above the rest: his mum. He describes their mentalities as almost identical and credits her with setting "the template and the blueprint" for how he builds his communities today.

His advice to students who feel success is out of reach is simple: keep your doors open. Have one conversation with one professional in each industry you're curious about, note down the key takeaways and repeat this across different industries until something clicks. Then put everything into it.