In September, Paul Shoukry, the president and then-CFO of Raymond James Financial, visited North Georgia. He’d scheduled team and client meetings in Atlanta and Athens, but perhaps the highlight of his trip came when he addressed 30 students from the Terry College of Business.
A Double Dawg Terry grad, Shoukry BBA ’05, MAcc ’05 bonded with his audience immediately. This was the first year Raymond James, a global leader in financial management and services, formally recruited on campus. Some ofthe gathered students had interned with the firm. Others were new to the process. All of them focused on his advice.
“Your career path is not going to be a straight line. The role you fill 15 to 20 years from now may not even exist today. What you really need to focus on is what you learn in the two to four years after you graduate. What skills and relationships do you want to develop? Play the long game.” — Paul Shoukry, incoming CEO of Raymond James Financial
When he lowered the pressure of finding that first job, there was a collective exhale in the room.
“It’s a liberating piece of advice for them,” Shoukry says. “‘If I want to be a CEO someday, I don’t have to get this particular job right out of college.’ Even my own career path wasn’t linear. It was very organic.”
Shoukry’s career path will reach a new summit in 2025—he was selected as Raymond James’ next CEO. He credits his UGA experience for getting him started.
During his junior year, Shoukry attended a session of the Terry Leadership Speaker Series. Guest speaker John Allison, chair and CEO of the financial services firm BB&T at the time, was talking about free markets and client-first culture. Shoukry, who thought he wanted to be a tax attorney, was intrigued.
Shoukry introduced himself, and Allison gave him the card of an HR representative. The summer following his graduation, Shoukry got his first job as a commercial banker at BB&T’s office in Jacksonville, Florida.
Shoukry’s connection to the Terry speaker series is so profound that his family endowed it last year. It’s now known as the Shoukry Leadership Speaker Series.
“That’s another piece of advice I gave to the students: Go to as many events as possible,” Shoukry says. “One of the easiest and most effective ways to get exposure to different people, cultures, businesses, and functions is hearing from the people that are actually at those firms.”
Shoukry’s stay at BB&T lasted two years before he took a consulting job in New York and earned an MBA at Columbia Business School. In 2010, he joined Raymond James as assistant to the chairman. As Shoukry climbed the internal ladder, he worked in investor relations and started the firm’s financial risk management function. By 2020, he’d worked his way up to chief financial officer and then president.
When Raymond James CEO Paul Reilly announced his retirement after almost 15 years at the helm, Shoukry was one of four internal candidates considered to replace him. In March 2024, after a two-year process, Shoukry was the choice.
In the months since, Shoukry has spent a lot of time on the road meeting with financial advisors, stakeholders, staff, clients old and new, and UGA students.
“The role of CEO is not only about business results or financial results. I mean, those things are critical. But beyond that, it’s about what you and the firm have done for the lives of the people we touch,” Shoukry says. “What have we done to give back to our communities and make them better?
