By Emily Glazer
For about eight years, Ivette Agosto arrived each morning before
dawn at the Park Avenue headquarters of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.
and entered the skyscraper through the loading dock. She spent more
than two hours preparing for the arrival of hundreds of bankers,
knowing she played a crucial role in the firm's operations: Ms.
Agosto was J.P. Morgan's star barista.
Ms. Agosto, 36 years old, knew who wanted coffee black, and who
wanted a pumpkin loaf or a triple-tall mocha (a drink not even on
the menu) at the Starbucks in the J.P. Morgan lobby. She memorized
the names of regulars, many who dubbed her Happy Ivy due to her
habit of greeting familiar faces with "Happy Friday!" at the end of
the week.
Mr. Agosto's popularity got noticed, and now she is steering
customers toward debit cards instead of decaf.
Since November, Ms. Agosto has been working as a personal banker
at the Chase retail branch about 50 yards from the ground-floor
Starbucks within the bank's headquarters. In her new workplace,
which she enters through the front door, Ms. Agosto pitches
products to customers, helps them get new debit cards and figures
out why they were charged certain fees.
"I was pinching myself," she said recently, although she noted
that some of her friends in the Dominican Republic, where she grew
up, didn't fully understand her new role. She says she told them,
"Chase, the bank. I'm not chasing people!"
Ms. Agosto was plucked by Barry Sommers, head of Chase's
consumer bank, who was struck by her connection with customers when
he arrived each morning around 7:20 a.m. for his daily "red
eye"--an espresso shot she mixed with bold and blonde coffee.
"It was really impressive she knew people's drinks, that's one
thing. But I got a sense from her that this is someone who really
cares, and people care about her," Mr. Sommers said.
Ms. Agosto's boss at Chase, branch manager Tashi Sarhan, said
she has hired people from the hospitality industry as personal
bankers at Chase because of the overlap in customer-service skills.
She added that product knowledge and presentation to customers can
be taught.
Ms. Agosto, who studied toward an associate degree in business
administration at Bronx Community College, didn't aspire to be a
banker. She began working for Starbucks in 2003 on the New York
University campus and transferred to the J.P. Morgan building in
2006, shortly after the bank's chief executive, James Dimon, pushed
to have one opened on the second floor of the firm's
headquarters.
When the bank opened a second location in the ground-floor
lobby, Ms. Agosto moved there. Both locations are operated by
Aramark Corp. J.P. Morgan is the nation's largest bank by assets,
with $2.58 trillion, and has about 241,000 global employees.
Ms. Agosto was born in New York, raised in Santo Domingo in the
Dominican Republic, and later moved back to New York. She lives in
midtown Manhattan with her 14-year-old daughter and rides the
subway to work each morning.
Several years ago, she applied for an administrative job at J.P.
Morgan, but she didn't get the position. She took classes at a
trade school for medical professionals, but that didn't go
anywhere, either. Despite not being a coffee drinker, she liked
working at Starbucks, enjoying the interaction with customers, such
as when she asked if she could add a bit of sweetener herself
rather than having the customer do so.
"When I do it, it adds a little more love to it," she said.
Ms. Agosto said several regular customers who worked at J.P.
Morgan befriended her and encouraged her to pursue other
possibilities in the building. Not long after, Mr. Sommers pulled
her aside to talk about possibilities. "If an opportunity came up,
I'd grasp at the horn," she says she told him. Several
conversations and a few months later, she got a job offer.
Three other Starbucks baristas in the J.P. Morgan building have
recently asked Ms. Agosto for tips about getting in with the bank,
she says.
Ms. Agosto says she makes about $5,000 more annually than she
did in her old job; the average salary for a personal banker at
J.P. Morgan is from $35,000 to $48,000, according to
Glassdoor.com.
She said the real draw, however, is the potential to learn more
about the banking business and possibly develop a career. Her
uniform hasn't changed much--some of the clothes she wore beneath
her barista's apron work at her new office, though she has swapped
Starbucks green for Chase's navy color scheme. But she likes the
bank attire better.
"I wanted to look the professional part," she said. "No hair
nets."
Write to Emily Glazer at emily.glazer@wsj.com
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