Peter Girnus 🦅@gothburz
I promoted Lorna Hajdini to Executive Director at JPMorgan because she understood something most bankers never learn.
Ownership.
Not deal ownership. People ownership. The kind of leadership where you don't just manage a pipeline. You manage the person building it. Their trajectory. Their compensation. Their future at the firm. Their references when they try to leave.
I taught her that. Not at NYU Stern. Not at Harvard. Here. In Leveraged Finance. In my corner office on the forty-second floor with the framed Tombstones from every deal that made this division what it is.
Lorna's handshake could restructure a cap table. That's not a compliment. That's a performance review.
When the complaint came across my desk, I read it twice. Not because it was disturbing. Because it was familiar.
Every behavior described. The direct communication. The after-hours mentorship. The expectation that juniors earn their advancement through demonstrated commitment to the team. That's the playbook. My playbook. The one I handed Lorna when she made Executive Director and inherited a book of direct reports who needed to understand the hierarchy.
"I own you."
I've said it to thirty-one analysts over twenty-two years. It means: I control your rating, your bonus, your promotion slate, and whether the next firm you apply to hears "top-decile performer" or dead air. It's in the HR manual under "direct management accountability." We call it alignment of incentives.
The complainant. A Senior VP in Originations who couldn't close. He alleges Lorna tied his advancement to "pleasing" her. I've read the promotion policy. An Executive Director has full discretion over direct-report advancement recommendations. Full discretion. We designed that authority. It incentivizes loyalty. It builds culture. It creates the kind of deep mentorship relationships that retain top talent.
If he interpreted "full discretion" as something other than what every Managing Director on this floor has understood since the division was founded in 1998, that's a communication gap on his end. Not a policy failure.
Harvard Business School profiled Lorna last month. "Leveling Up with Perspective, Practice, and People." She described a striking level of humility. A palpable hunger for knowledge. She talked about growing personally and professionally alongside her team. About being curious about perspectives different from your own. I wrote her recommendation for that program. I said: Lorna understands ownership the way very few people at her level do.
The profile is still live on the Harvard website. Nobody took it down. That's not an oversight. That's an editorial decision by people who evaluate leaders for a living.
The investigation lasted six weeks. I was consulted on a Thursday. They interviewed fourteen employees. Reviewed badge data. Calendar invites. Email metadata. Found no policy violation.
The complainant declined to participate. He was already on wellness leave by then. Unrelated.
Two witnesses are cited in the lawsuit. They were not cited in the investigation. I am told this is because the investigation's scope was determined prior to the filing.
Scope is important. Without scope, every investigation into a Managing Director candidate with eighteen active deal mandates and a direct line to three of our top-ten private equity clients becomes a fishing expedition that puts nine figures of annual revenue in jeopardy. We are not in the business of fishing.
Lorna remains employed. The complainant does not. His systems access was revoked on a Tuesday. I know it was a Tuesday because I approved the ticket. Standard offboarding protocol. The building badge, the Bloomberg terminal, the health insurance portal. All deactivated within the same four-hour window. He found out when his laptop locked at 2 PM and his key card stopped working at the elevator bank.
The threatening phone calls started that week. "Just wait till you're back in New York, Brown boy." Someone knew his personal number. Someone knew he was out of state. Someone knew the racial thing would land. Those are outside the scope of the firm's responsibility. We cannot police what former colleagues discuss on personal devices during personal time. We did advise him to contact local law enforcement. In writing. Via his personal email, since his corporate account had already been deactivated. I am told he received that email.
People keep asking if I'm concerned.
I thought about him once. The complainant. On a Wednesday, I think. I was reviewing Lorna's Q3 revenue attribution and his name appeared on a deal she closed after he left. His origination work. Her closing credit. Standard reassignment. And I thought — briefly — about what it must feel like to watch your work get credited to the person who.·
Anyway. Revenue attribution follows the active relationship manager. Policy is clear.
Am I concerned?
I built Lorna's career. I taught her how ownership works in Leveraged Finance. I watched her apply those lessons with a level of intensity I haven't seen since my own early years on the desk, back when nobody filed complaints because everybody understood the cost of being the person who didn't understand. If the system produced what that lawsuit describes, then I'm the system.
But the investigation found no merit.
So I'm just a mentor.
