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It has often been said that if you do something you love, you will never work a day in your life. It is a philosophy to which John Gallo, Global Head of Sales and Head of Global Markets Americas, has subscribed throughout his 30-year career in finance, but especially now.
As a high-level finance executive for a bank that is the largest in Europe and one of the top five in the world, he exhibits the passion that enables him to prosper. It helps him power through 14- and 15-hour days. It helps him negotiate travel obligations that increased as the pandemic began to subside.
Now, as before COVID, he flies to Europe five or six times a year and Asia at least twice annually, in addition to some domestic business trips. That’s not at all surprising, considering BNP Paribas, a leading international bank, operates in 68 countries.
Such is John Gallo’s passion for his work that he has excelled in a variety of roles, in a variety of places. He came to BNP Paribas in 2017 as Global Head of Sales and Co-Head of Global Markets Americas (GMA), then was promoted to his current positions in 2022.
An expert in such areas as stocks, bonds, capital formation, hedge funds and asset management – expertise he shared in a recent Bloomberg piece – he served as the Head of Institutional Client Group at Deutsche Bank for two years before coming to BNP Paribas.
He began his career in the back office at Lehman Brothers, but quickly rose up the ranks, becoming the youngest managing director in the firm’s history. He would later serve as Global Head of Liquid Market Sales, one of the largest divisions at Lehman.
From there he went on to serve as Head of Investor Sales for Global Markets in North America at Citigroup.
Additionally, John Gallo has been part of the board at Clickpay, Adjuvance Technologies, AMN, Inc. and Hourglass. He serves on the executive committee and the board of The Cathedral School of St. John the Divine in New York City, and is chair of the finance committee at that institution.
Wearing that many hats is testament to the fact that it is essential to love what one does. It is one of the secrets to his success, as outlined in a July 2021 piece on the website Influencive: You have to be all in. No matter the field you’re in, you have to be passionate about it. It has to interest you and challenge you. And because it will require a greater time commitment than anything else in your life, you will need to be zealous about it.
That same piece mentions the value of going the extra mile, taking calculated risks, learning from one’s mistakes, surrounding oneself with great people and being a lifelong learner. But everything starts with passion.
Certainly he makes sure to spend a lot of time with his wonderful children – daughters Annabelle and Jocelyn and son Griffin – and is attentive to their needs when he is with them. All of them are good students, and all of them are athletically inclined (as their dad once was himself. A professional ballet dancer in his younger years, he also played lacrosse in high school and at Fordham University). He also makes time for self-care, devoting himself each morning to a workout, whether it be cardio, weight work, high-intensity interval training (HIIT) or Pilates.
But he devotes himself fully to his job, as indeed he must – as indeed anyone who hopes to succeed in any walk of life must. Passion must be regarded as the secret sauce for any finance executive, the secret of all secrets to their success.
