FAMU alumnus Aaron Gray has joined Global Payments as director for Corporate Development and will help drive the company’s domestic and international corporate development and mergers and acquisitions initiatives for worldwide expansion and growth.Global Payments is one of the world’s largest electronic transactions processing companies. Gray began his career as an investment-banking analyst for Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., where he evaluated strategic alternatives for clients across the technology, media and telecom sectors.
“It felt amazing when I received the job offer,” said Gray. “I was glad that my collective work experiences in investment banking at Goldman Sachs and my operating experience at a number of other firms positioned me well for the role.”
Prior to joining Global Payments, Gray served as manager, strategic business development/corporate strategy for The Home Depot. He executed extensive research on market trends to identify key issues and their impact on core business strategies and also provided analysis and recommendations on strategic business and operational initiatives to the executive leadership team.
Gray has also served as business development analyst for Fandango, Inc., where he performed detailed merger analyses and through his competitive intelligence and
identification of strong strategic partners, was responsible for the execution of major deals for the company.
Gray graduated with honors from FAMU’s School of Business and Industry (SBI) and has a master’s in business administration from Harvard Business School.
“FAMU and the School of Business and Industry prepared me for this job because I learned my core accounting and financial principles in class,” he said. “I was also exposed to great professors who encouraged me to read outside of class to gain an edge of my competition for jobs. Additionally, the professional development taught in SBI helped me become comfortable presenting to c-level executives. As we speak, I am in Asia with our senior vice president of mergers and acquisitions as well as the company’s international president and I feel totally at ease. I have a lot to be thankful for.”