Women Who Earn Podcast

Transcript:

Kiran: Welcome to Woman Who Earn, a podcast dedicated to empowering young girls to thrive in the world of finance. I'm Kiran Bishop, and my interest in finance ignited during my freshman year of high school. However, as I joined financial clubs, I couldn't shake the realization that I was one of the only girls in the room.

Kiran: This effect extends beyond myself, as according to Girls Who Invest, only 1 percent of U. S. financial assets are managed by women. Join me as we dive into conversations with industry professionals tackling topics from breaking into finance to navigating the unique challenges posed by women in the industry.

Kiran: Through Women Who Earn, my goal is to equip young girls like myself with the knowledge and wisdom they need to succeed. I believe it's crucial that no one feels alienated by circumstances beyond their control, and I hope this podcast serves as a beacon of inspiration for all who tune in. So let's shatter stereotypes, defy expectations, and earn our rightful place in the financial world.

Kiran: Welcome to Woman Who Earn.

Kiran: On today's episode, we will be joined by Miss Irene Hong, who is a founding partner for CEC Capital Group and leads the Healthcare Industry Group. Under her guidance, CEC Capital has emerged as a leader in the healthcare banking sector, with the largest specialized team covering pharma slash biotech, MedTech services in digital health care.

Kiran: CEC Capital also has a strong cross border practice having worked in the past with several multinational companies including Zimmer, Charles River, and Teba. With an increasing interest in China outbound investment, CEC Capital has opened an office in the U. S. and Ms. Hong will be leading this cross border effort.

Kiran: Prior to joining CEC Capital, Ms. Hong was a manager for Accenture in San Francisco. Before receiving her MBA, Ms. Hong worked as an engineer for Merck and worked on several plant startups, including a technology transfer project in China for recombatant hepatitis B vaccines and for Merck's launch of Crixivan, a protease inhibitor for HIV.

Kiran: Ms. Hong has both her MBA and BS in mechanical engineering from UC Berkeley.

Kiran: Thank you so much for joining me today. We can start with my first question, which is how did you get to where you are today? And what moment are you most proud of in your journey? 

Irene: Right. So I think maybe it's good to go through my background so that you can understand how I got to where I am today.

Irene: So I actually didn't study finance. I studied engineering and I studied mechanical engineering. The interesting thing is I look back at when I was in high school, I actually chose mechanical engineering because at that time, I went to UC Berkeley for engineering and it was 5 percent women in mechanical engineering, and that was one of the lowest. I think it was electrical was fairly low, but mechanical was the lowest. And that was the reason I chose the major, which looking back was a ludicrous reason for choosing a major, but that was what was in my head at the time. And I was very good at math and the sciences, and so I thought, okay, I'll just tackle this because there are not enough women in it, which was very intentional at that time. Although I would have to say that as I've gone through my career, I realized how ridiculous that reasoning was. So I studied mechanical engineering. I ended up working as an engineer, The first job I got was with Merck, the pharmaceutical company, and they gave me the opportunity to go to China. At the time I was working on a humanitarian project to donate the hepatitis B vaccine to China. So I jumped on that opportunity, not really understanding what that was going to mean in my life.

Irene: So at 20 years old, I graduated and I moved to China to build this plant as a young engineer. I spent a couple of years in China and then after that, they moved me back to the U S where I worked on an AIDS drug. So that was a launch of one of the drugs that was in the cocktails at that time in the mid nineties.

Irene: So I spent another two years of my life working on that. So pretty much four years of my life was pretty wiped out by my job because those jobs are 24 hours a day when we were trying to build the plants. And then, after that, I spent a year flying around. My next job after the AIDS drug launched was to go and rationalize the plans overseas, meaning I was the engineer that was flying into the different international locations to see what would be required to technically upgrade them. And then I would send all the numbers and all the figures and all the requirements to headquarter, and that's what I made the big switch from engineering to to finance.

Irene: At that time, I had done that for a year, which was working with corporate to give them the numbers. And then they would make decisions about whether to shut the plant down or to keep it open. As an engineer at that point, I felt that I wasn't the one that was making these decisions.

Irene: And so I figured in my mind, if I went and got an MBA and tried to understand the business side of things, it wouldn't hurt me in my engineering. So I figured it wasn't something that was going to hurt me at all, I could only gain from that. So that's when I made the switch to study business.

Irene: So I did. I also went back to Berkeley to get my business degree. And then after that, I went into management consulting for a couple of years because I knew I was going to come back to China. I had met my ex husband in China, so I knew I was coming back. So I did management consulting. And then when I came back to China, my partner and I, he had started the firm, he was a Goldman banker.

Irene: It was an opportunity about 23 years ago. He was starting an investment bank that was working on raising capital, and doing M & A, sort of like a merchant bank. so I joined him. At that time it was ridiculous, in my mind bankers and consultants are sort of sister industries, but aside from the fact their service industries might attract similar people, it was very different work. But in my mind, I thought that it was something that was challenging and so I wanted to work with him. He was very transactional and I was very strategic, so it ended up working out quite well because I was the one that was doing the business plans, looking for targets, helping companies understand how to enter.

Irene: So I eventually, I became a banker just through experience over 20 something years. I wasn't trained in a bulge bracket bank. I just was hustling deals and understood the industry as it was growing in China. Some of your questions are around the path to where I am, whether it was intentional, my path into finance. And I think a lot of people that I work with, especially the women that I work with in banking, venture capital, private equity. Many of them, very few of them actually say, I am going to be an investor, I'm going to be a banker. I think many of them meander their way into it with other skillsets often.

Irene: I some do start off being auditors or being in some sort of financial role, but many come from industry and different places, which is the case for me. 

Kiran: Thank you. That was a very comprehensive overview. And so I understand that now you are working with CEC Capital Group.

Kiran: So as a founding partner of this, what aspects of your role do you find most rewarding and challenging? 

Irene: I wear a double hat, which is I started a business. I think that the most rewarding part about my job is that I can't cure cancer, but I can help fund the companies that cure cancer.

Irene: Right. So I think what keeps me going and what motivates me in my job. I think the first thing is really, I work with a lot of clients and their success in order to grow operationally is based on my success, right? So if they need capital, I'm the one that helps them find capital.

Irene: If they need an exit or need to be acquired or need strategic resources, I'm the one that helps them find that. So, it's very much like, we're still a service firm and many of our clients rely on us in order to maintain their growth or to have some objective that they need to meet.

Irene: So I think the most rewarding part is when you succeed to help them. The downside is it's very, banking and especially in M&A banking, you fail as much as you succeed often. So it's also very difficult and very challenging in that way. And of course, growing a business in China and watching China's growth over the last two decades has been immensely rewarding albeit challenging as well. 

Kiran: Thank you. And what led you to a career in healthcare banking? 

Irene: Fact, so when we started the firm in 2000, 23 years ago, there was no healthcare. So we were really working on a lot of internet at that time. So we were working with the CNS and the net eases of the China world when the internet was just taking off. We were also doing a lot of consumer and a lot of media. So I wasn't healthcare banking, I was just general banking, tech and consumer, but in 0 7, 0 8, when we started to see money coming in, because of my health care background, I was the partner that made sense to focus on health care.

Irene: So my firm does not only work in health care, we also work in tech and consumer, but my other partners are covering those fields. And I've been covering health care for the last 15 years. Yeah. Partially just because my background in pharma made sense that I covered that. And as an engineer, oftentimes a lot of the things that we're dealing with are, if it's not pharma, it's medical device.

Irene: So the way that I started off in Merck and pharma though is pretty random. So, when you ask about intentionality, I was working for Procter and Gamble as an intern making diapers in Modesto. And then Merck was like, at that time, it was Forbes number one company to work for.

Irene: So I thought, okay, I'll drop a resume in. Life sometimes isn't always that intentional, and I think, it's like you open a door, and then you go down a door, and then you have other doors to choose from. And so I think life is just not always that planned.

Irene: So that's how I ended up in pharma was Merck was recruiting and it was like the best company. So I thought I'd take a shot, which defined my entire career.

Kiran: So focusing more so on your identity as being a woman in this male dominated space, has there any, has there ever been a time where you were one of, if not the only woman in the room and how did you feel and deal with that situation, and in general, how do you work to navigate that situation? 

Irene: This is kind of a complicated question for me, to be honest, because I have a girlfriend who does a lot of woman empowerment, and she criticizes me a little bit because I'm not that, I'm not that active in terms of on her speaker list, and I don't participate that much.

Irene: And I was thinking about this. I mean, clearly I'm woman, clearly I am very supportive of women. But I think the thing is, I've always been one of the few women at the table. even in my engineering degree, when I was working as an engineer in the facility on the manufacturing floor, I'm still the only woman.

Irene: And so I always felt like I had to prove myself. I think women in general always feel like they need to prove themselves. That's a hallmark of women. I've had a lot of experience with working with both my, in terms of employees, my male bankers and my female bankers, very different.

Irene: But the thing is, I don't like to focus on the fact that I'm a woman and I don't like to, because I think that my success is something where it's despite being a woman. And so I think that the more that somebody focuses on the fact that, because I never consider myself less than equal, and I don't feel like I've ever been treated less than equal, to be honest.

Irene: And if I was treated, if anybody treated me less than equal, then I just wouldn't be at that table. So I just wouldn't be present. So when I discussed this also with some of my junior staff, they also said, well, partially it might be because you've always owned the business that you worked at, which is also possible.

Irene: You know, I never really worked. I did work in management consulting. It's not that I don't understand the challenges of being a woman in a male dominated field. Cause that's what I'm always doing, but I don't actually very consciously think about it ever. I think I've just become accustomed to being one of the few women.

Irene: In fact, the funny thing is. I notice when there are a lot of women. It's a very interesting thing. Healthcare banking has more women than other parts of banking and the healthcare industry in general has. I don't know. If this is I've just in my own experience, if I look at the business development heads in China of all the leading multinationals, they're all women and almost like 70 percent women, which I find very startling.

Irene: So I think it's more that I, I, I don't notice that I'm the only woman I notice when there are other women around. But I don't feel, I honestly don't feel like I've ever been discriminated against. It doesn't mean that there's not a boys club. There are many times when, especially in Asia, that the guys will go off and socialize differently, they'll do different things.

Irene: But I don't necessarily feel like that's hurt me terribly. I'm sure it has in certain ways, but I think that you compensate for things. If you have certain set challenges and you want to find certain solutions, you figure out a way. So I don't feel like it's been, I don't feel, I think part of it is, so when I think about it, I spent so much of my time trying to be equal that I just don't feel unequal and because of that, I think then it doesn't give people much room to treat me in a different way, if that makes sense.

Kiran: Yeah, thank you. Like being very confident in yourself so that you don't let people's opinions affect you. 

Irene: Right. I think that's just how it is in the boardroom anyway. If you aren't confident or you are weak, then you own the persona that you are.

Kiran: Thank you.

Kiran: I really resonated with your comment about how you always felt the need to prove yourself in any situation that you're in. And I experienced this too, but obviously to a lesser extent because I'm only in high school.

Irene: I think it's not that you experience it to a lesser extent. My daughter also went through high school.

Irene: I think it just carries with you, which is not an easy thing, to be honest. Later on in this podcast, we'll discuss words of advice, but I think what you feel now is that feeling of needing to prove yourself and be good enough and demonstrate your capability is something that I think a lot of successful and ambitious women struggle with.

Irene: And I think that that's something that you need to balance, to be honest. The other end of that is feeling that you're very deserving and you're worthy asking for what you need, asking for what you want, demanding to be competent, like demanding to be respected and getting what you need, that there's a lot of.

Irene: There are a lot of people who are very good at that, and they get what they want, right? Because they ask for what they want, because they think that they deserve what they should get. And there's always a double edged sword. Right to every sort of good person personality trait in it.

Irene: In its extreme. It really hurts. Yeah. 

Kiran: Thank you Did you ever have a mentor in your career who helped you and if so What was the greatest impact they had or what sort of impact? 

Irene: I did not to be honest and part of that was because I think that I was working in China so early and the industry that I was working in was basically nascent, right?

Irene: Banking didn't really exist at that time. And so there weren't that many people ahead of me that I, could admire. There were, of course, female entrepreneurs that I worked with that were older than me that had a little bit more experience than me that I admired.

Irene: It's not to say that there were not, but there was nobody that I was really close to that mentored me. There's always examples of people you could admire and be role models too but I wouldn't say that I had a mentor per se. 

Kiran: Thank you. Looking back at your career journey, is there anything you would do differently or any advice you would give to your younger self at the beginning of your professional life?

Irene: For the younger generation of women, I think being a woman and being in a very demanding career or being very ambitious is quite difficult. The one thing that I advice that I give to my sort of junior bankers is one, you need to work, you need to work so hard in your twenties. I remember, my life when I was in my twenties, I don't know how things are now for entry level people, but, I was working till 2, 3 a. m. I was working and it was pretty brutal, but in your twenties, you can do it because what happens is when you reach your thirties, you have to slow down. And it's not nice to say, but it's just different women have different biology, like having children is something that is very fulfilling.

Irene: I highly support it, but you can't work the same in when you have children than when you don't. So I think that my whole career path would go in different cycles. Right. So it's definitely pre children, marriage isn't an issue, but like pre children and post children.

Irene: And then now that I'm empty nest, it's a different time. And once the kids get older, it's different. So you need to work as hard as you can in your twenties and your life might feel a little bit out of balance. Then once you hit your, when you hit your thirties and when you start having children, then my advice changes. Life is a pie of four pieces, you have your your family, your friends, your work, and your personal life .

Irene: And these four pieces are not, they're not equal in priority, right? You wouldn't say your friends are more important than your children, or your work is more important than your family, but they are equal in importance in balance. So I would say that you cannot neglect any part of it or your life will fall apart.

Irene: And it doesn't mean that just because you spend time, let's say, taking care of yourself versus spending time with your kids or you need to work and you can't go to that play. It's just a matter of if you don't make sure they're balanced, then you'll be in trouble.

Irene: That's a thing that we're always struggling with. and the last example, there's anecdotal story that I want to give is one time I was in the gym and I was working out and there was a guy there and I was kind of showing, you know, the, there were these Instagram models that I thought, Oh, I would really like to have this kind of potty and he looks at me and he's like, Irene, you know, these girls train three hours a day.

Irene: Like you can't aspire for that. and I thought to myself, you know, you can't be the head of Goldman Sachs, be Martha Stewart and be a bikini fitness model. It's impossible to do all three things. Okay. So you just have to like, let go of any idea that you're going to be perfect in any of those things. A person who doesn't have children is always going to be able to be more committed to you than you can at work in terms of time. A mother who doesn't work will go to every event and you can't if you work. So you just have to not beat yourself up when you can't do everything.

Irene: And I think you learn that as you get older. So those are the Mhm. Messages that I would tell the younger ones, like try to fast track your career as fast as you can in your twenties. And then because later you'll have to, you'll have to rebalance. to be happy. 

Kiran: Thank you. And what's the best advice you've ever received?

Irene: Oh, the best advice I ever received was actually from, I had a counselor who told me that, and this is across every single thing, and I really thought about it, and I think about it when I hit problems, is that you cannot control what other people do or think ever. You can only control what you do and what you think. So it's a matter of, I might try very hard to try to persuade somebody, but I can't make them think what I want to think. And so it's really just a matter of in life, like whether it's your partner, whether it's your colleague, whether it's your children, you have no, you can't control other people.

Irene: You can only control yourself. And so that really made me understand. I think about that sometimes, when I get frustrated about something, I'll think about that. Then I'll be like, okay, so what should I do about it? And other people can respond based on your response, but you can only control you.

Kiran: Thank you. My next question is also along the same vein with advice, but what advice do you have for girls who are interested in pursuing your career? 

Irene: So it's hard to say because I don't know how you describe my career like there's I have the engineering part, I have the finance part, I have the entrepreneurial part. I would say so one thing, I know that you're studying math which is good. One thing is when I was in engineering my third year I really wanted to drop out I thought to my dad, Oh my God, this is because Berkeley is fairly theoretical and when you're doing thermodynamics, you're like, what am I doing? This is not fun. I'm not interested in this. I was like, I want to quit. This is like after my sophomore year, that's when they're trying to weed everybody out. You're taking math and physics.

Irene: My dad said, Irene, you can always go to law school, business school, you can even go to med school, but you can't go back and be an engineer. You can't go and get your PhD in engineering if you don't go through this. So he said, I suggest you stick it through. And I, I did, and it was the best thing I did.

Irene: Because I think that in some sense, and my son is also thinking about this as he's thinking about his major. Many things in life you learn later in life, or you learn along the way. I think that in college, it's very important to get an education within... I don't know how to explain what I'm trying to say, you know, like you can be in finance, you could have studied finance or you could study math, right? And math is a tool that will help you. It will give you a very strong foundation for other things. And really college is about learning how to learn. It's actually not about what you learn in college at all. Like nobody, I know very few people use what they learned in college in their job.

Irene: Unless you studied a PhD and you're actually doing research. Very few people did. So it's not about, you don't have to think, oh, if I want to go into banking or finance, I need to study economics or finance and the path doesn't have to be then I have to go and get the job, the internship at Goldman. I know a lot of people go down that path, but that doesn't necessarily have to be the only path. 

Kiran: Right, it's a very restrictive way of going about college. 

Irene: Yeah, and I think that it's easy. Well, I should say I ended up going down a very typical path, right?

Irene: I studied engineering, went to business school, I went into management consulting, I went into banking. So it also sounds like I did go down the good the good Asian child path, which was, always go for the bankable job. Always try to go and do the prestigious thing.

Irene: But I don't think college is the same. I don't think education is the same. And so I think, in the next 10 to 20 years, fundamentally, our jobs are not going to be the same. So trying to figure out the path that is so rigid and so direct is not going to work now because the paths are going to shift very quickly.

Irene: So I think it's more important to really try to get certain tools in your life, which is understanding, certain fundamentals, learning how to learn, learning how to be flexible, understanding how to be solution driven, being creative, right? It's not like whatever you study, whatever content you're studying, it's going to be probably not that relevant.

Irene: So I don't think you need to worry so much about, what it is that you're doing right now. Yeah. 

Kiran: Thank you. My final question is looking ahead. What are your hopes and aspirations for the next generation of women and how do you envision contributing to their success? 

Irene: Yeah, I think that when you look at the arc of women in the workplace and in society, there's still many societies where women are very unequal and don't have access, still, in the world.

Irene: If you look at the U S, I mean, I think the U S has come a long way. And then if you look at China, you know, women have come a long way. I haven't lived in the U S for a long time. I've lived in China. But I know that there are a lot of things going on in China about diversity and equality and all these other things.

Irene: I think it's really important just to focus on being successful as you, right. And being competent and I've never liked to focus on the fact that I'm a woman because I want to believe that I'm successful, not because I'm not a woman, not because I am a woman, just because the things that I've done equal to my peers who are men and women is valuable.

Irene: Right. Well, I should say, you know, back in the day, it is true that with, because there's so few women in certain sectors, women actually get an advantage, right. Meaning there'll be more easily hired because. Frankly, no one wants to work in a workplace that has only men, even the men or women don't because it's just not pleasant and it's not balanced.

Irene: So, this, this gender debate. People can say, well, it's not fair because a woman can get a job more easily than a man in a certain field because there are less women. And then the woman can say, oh, but you know what, because there are so few women the men crowd out the women and we don't have the same opportunities.

Irene: I think all those arguments can be taken, but really, I don't think it's productive or constructive to try to think about that too much in terms of when you're actually in your job or in school. What's really most important is, am I doing the things that I need to do, am I successful in accomplishing what I'm supposed to accomplish in terms of my annual goals and my KPIs. It's not that I'm dismissing the fact that there, there may be discrimination in certain places, and it might be difficult.

Irene: But I think that one really has to be very balanced. So it's very hard. I mean, I'm very supportive of women and trying to make sure that women succeed in fields where there are a few women. But at the same time, focusing too much on that is also very counterproductive.

Irene: In a way, I think it just means that if you hold on to it, and you remind yourself all the time of that, then you assume that role. The more conscious you are of it, I feel the more it becomes an issue. 

Kiran: Kind of like imposter syndrome in a sense. 

Irene: Yeah. and honestly, imposter syndrome, I have that all the time. The funny thing is the interesting thing about imposter syndrome is there was one time, because I wasn't a trained banker, right? I didn't get trained in a bank and I was sitting in a. In a meeting with a lot of I mean, actually, they were probably all men, but a lot of senior people.

Irene: And the guy was explaining something that I didn't understand, the lawyer. And finally I said, you know, so and so I don't understand what you're saying. Can you explain this to me? Right. Because, you know, it's very hard to admit that you don't understand something and look like you're not knowledgeable.

Irene: You always want to present yourself as knowledgeable, right? I mean, that's just human nature, but I basically said, I have no idea what you're saying exactly. Can you explain it to me? And he tried to explain it to me. I had this aha moment. He was the senior partner at a law firm and we were talking about a regulatory issue and it became clear to me that he didn't really understand it either. So what I understood, meaning things were shifting so fast that nobody really could understand what was happening at, in that particular time was that, I've suddenly realized I'm just, I'm the most knowledgeable person. Cause I've been doing this for now 10 years.

Irene: Just because I wasn't say classically trained but in China at that time I had been doing deals for at least a decade and so there wasn't there weren't that many people that were more knowledgeable than me because I had a lot of deal experience. So then I realized you know at some point you feel so insecure about what you don't know or what you think you don't know but in reality you always feel that you, there's somebody that knows more than you or will do better than you or people are judging you. And then eventually you realize that everybody else, when you're working the hardest and you're hustling the hardest, there aren't people that know more than you. So, yeah, almost every professional woman that I know will have hit that at some point. At some point in your life, you'll mature to the point where you'll realize, oh, actually, I don't have to feel this anymore. And hopefully you hit it earlier than later, right? Otherwise you don't get what you want and need because you're not feeling confident enough to ask for it. 

Kiran: Thank you.

Kiran: Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of Women Who Earn. I hope to see you next time.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit womenwhoearn.substack.com

Transcript:

Kiran: Hi, my name is Kiran Bishop. I'm 17 years old, and I became interested in finance during my freshman year of high school. As I became part of financial clubs, I realized that a great deal of the time, I was one of, if not the only girl in the room. This feeling of being disconnected from everyone around me while simultaneously being in a room full of people is what inspired me to create this podcast, Woman Who Earn.

I created this podcast to help young girls like me gain knowledge and wisdom from industry professionals on topics ranging from how to break into finance to how to deal with unique challenges posed by being a woman in the industry. It is important for me, and I hope that it is also important for you, that feeling alienated by a situation out of your control does not inhibit your motivation to pursue whatever you want.

This is Women Who Earn.

On today's episode, I'm joined by Ms.Scher, who is the Chair of the Global Financing Group within Global Banking and Markets at Goldman Sachs. She serves on the Partnership Committee, Investment Banking Executive Committee, and the Global Inclusion and Diversity Committee.

Susie is a global sponsor of the LGBTQ+ network and a senior advisor to the Investment Banking Council for Advancement of Racial Equity. Previously, she was co-head of the Global Financing Group. Before that, she was co-head of the Americas Financing Group. Earlier in her career, she served as Head of Investment Grade Capital Markets and Risk Management in the Americas Financing Group.

Ms. Scher first joined Goldman Sachs in 1990 as a summer associate and rejoined the firm as a vice president in 1997. She was named Managing Director in 2001 and Partner in 2006. She's a trustee of Little Red Schoolhouse and Elizabeth Irwin High School. She serves on the board of directors of the Posse Foundation and the board of trustees at Middlebury College.

She earned a BA in political science from Middlebury College and an MBA in finance from Columbia University School of Business.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I think we can just start with my first question, which is, how did you get to where you are today? 

Susie: Wow, I could spend half an hour answering that question, but I'll try to be concise and then we can move on to other questions.

So I had no idea what I wanted to be or what I wanted to do in my career, and when I was in college at Middlebury, you didn't have to be quite as organized as you do today. So, I had just started my senior year exploring job opportunities, and one of the areas I ended up becoming interested in was investment banking. I don't think I even understood what investment banking was at that point in time.

It's just that it seemed like a really dynamic industry. It seemed like the people in it were smart, hardworking, and fun to be around. And so, I set my sights on working in investment banking. And from there, I got my first job at a firm called Solomon Brothers, right out of college. I spent three years at Solomon and then decided I wanted to further invest in my sort of business and finance education. So I went to Columbia Business School, and it was there that I figured out what parts of the business were most interesting to me. And we can dig into that and talk about it a little bit. But the thing that most interested me was working with companies.

And I still do that today. Companies, big and small, are helping them achieve their business and financial objectives. And then, importantly, I also work in the markets. I really liked the way things that happened in the world affected me. Things that happened in the markets, whether that's the equity market or interest rates.

And so I built a career in something that we call capital markets, and we can drill into that further. I went from undergrad at Middlebury College Analyst at Solomon Brothers to longtime partner and business head at Goldman Sachs. 

Kiran: Thank you. That was very comprehensive. So having started as a summer associate in 1990 and progressing through various roles to becoming a partner in 2006, can you reflect on some of the key skills or attributes that have been instrumental in your career advancement?

Susie: Sure. I think the two characteristics you need to have to succeed in investment banking or really in any business are hard work and intelligence, maybe in that order. Okay. And so those are the very straightforward aspects of what can cause you to move over time at a place like Goldman Sachs.

But the other thing that I'd say is really, really important, and sometimes maybe doesn't get that much attention is high EQ. My job is to understand the markets and to help companies raise financing in the equity and debt markets, but those companies are just humans and they're my clients and understand who they are as humans and know what they may need and how they think and how they might react to us and our ideas is an incredibly important part of my job.

The other aspect of EQ or connection or sort of this personal aspect of the business is working at Goldman; even though Goldman is known as a star firm, we are not a star system. We are a collaborative system, and working with my partners and my colleagues, from our most junior colleagues right out of undergrad to people who run big businesses to my bosses, the CEO and president of Goldman.

Understanding how to work together and drive towards a goal for our clients is every bit as important as that starting point, working really, really hard and being smart and understanding what it is we do in the markets. 

Kiran: Do you think having good EQ is something that you came out of undergrad understanding, or was it really an attribute that you learned along the way?

Susie: So I didn't understand that I had it and I didn't understand that it was necessary for business. In fact, I just thought I'd need to be good at math, understand the markets, and understand complex concepts. But over time and looking back, I've come to understand how important EQ is, and looking back through my life, I think all of my success has actually been attributed to EQ in conjunction with the IQ and hard workpiece. I think it has not only made me successful at what I do but also chosen to do things where EQ is an important part of success, right? Not that you don't need EQ to be an engineer, but being an engineer is very IQ and technical and math-heavy.

I didn't choose to go into a profession where EQ wasn't the most important thing. Some people might argue with me that it's not the most important thing, but for my success, it's really been the fuel to my success over time. 

Kiran: Yeah. Thank you. Do you have any tips on how to form or maintain lasting connections or build up good relationships with your clients or with other people who you're working and collaborating with?

Susie: So I'm going to use an analogy. And I'm actually guilty of this too. So a lot of times when you meet somebody, and you hear their name, and you say your name, you then forget their name because you're so focused on your own name. The analogy and the tip in EQ are understanding when you're working in business; you're focused on whether you’re doing a good job and success and whether your content is good, and the most basic is my spreadsheet, correct? And is the model correct? And do I know how to do the job of the job? 

So the tip would be to hear the other person's name, meaning to see the other person, whether that's your colleague that you're working with or your boss or somebody who works for you, or very importantly, your client and understand where that person is, where are they if possible, even in their life what might they be dealing with? And also, what makes them tick? What are their goals and aspirations? So the tip would be: Don't forget the soft stuff, even though to succeed, you've got to have the hard stuff. You've got to have the modeling skills. You've got to understand finance. You have to work your butt off. You have to be intense and driven and all those things in trying to succeed, but you can't do that at the cost of prioritizing the human connection and the human relationships. The goal might be to win the piece of business, give the best advice, and execute the financing, but the human connection underpins it all. 

Kiran: Right. So make sure you remember the other person's name, but not at the expense of knowing your own.

Susie: Yeah. That's a great way to put it. I love it. 

Kiran: Well, thank you. You're currently the chair of the global financing group. And I was just wondering what aspects of your role you find most rewarding and or challenging. 

Susie: Yeah. So, at this point in my career, Because of what I'm doing day to day is working a lot with founder-led companies, either private companies or, recently, public companies.

And just working with those companies in general is really rewarding because, not that it's not fun to work with very, very big companies like the apples and the Procter and Gamble's and the Pfizer's of the world, that's rewarding too., But there's something really unique about working with founder-led companies because what you're doing is you're helping people with their baby, their brainchild, their passion.

And so in my current role, I'm just loving that, like tonight, I'm having a drink with one of my CEOs who, a company that we took public a couple of years ago, and I just love spending time with her and talking about how she's taken the business from an idea to now a relatively large public company. So that's a really rewarding part of my job. The other thing is, I've always loved being an expert. That's one of the reasons that's an itch that this job scratches. And when I started out in the business, the difference between your average human and the experts, that gap was huge, right?

Because there was no internet. All you had was the, if you weren't an investment banker and you didn't work on Wall Street, all you had was the Wall Street Journal, and maybe you've got the financial times. And if you worked in the business, you had access to other things like Quotron or Bloomberg.

So you were like a super expert. Now we have the internet, we have CNBC, and we have podcasts, but even so, I'm still more of an expert than most, and so I love it. Talking to people and helping them think through one, the art of the possible, like what they might be able to do to achieve, I need to raise capital, can I do it? How much can I raise? What should the timing be? I also love interpreting what's going on in the world and how that might impact the markets and, therefore, companies, either financing needs or business plans. And so, this period of time, I guess all pairs of time seem complex and fraught. There's a lot to talk about, but today, there's so much to interpret, right? We're now a couple of years out of the pandemic and this period of incredible equity and capital, the market created really by the government and the Fed to save the world from the pandemic economically and then backfired because the economy got overheated and interest rates were too low.

Well, then we went in the other direction and the Fed raised interest rates to try to slow down the economy and bring down inflation. And everybody last year predicted a hard landing, or, most people meant, a recession or a very high probability of recession, but that didn't happen. In fact, not only did it happen, but it seems like we're in a much better place than we thought we'd be from an economic perspective.

Interest rates are starting to come down and the equity market is very strong, but, there are a lot of buts, Russia, Ukraine, the war between Israel and Hamas, what's going on in the Middle East, China always out there, and then an election year, and a very complicated one at that.

So, you ask the question, what's fun or cool or interesting about my job right now? That's what I do every day, all day I listen, and I learn, and I read, and I talk to my colleagues, and I scan the world. And then, I try to interpret that and help my clients. I don't predict, I don't have a crystal ball.

That would be dangerous, but I help my clients navigate the markets and think about what might transpire and how they can set themselves up to succeed, whether all of the good things play out or all of the bad things play out. That's my job. It's really fun and interesting. 

Kiran: Thank you. You've been involved in various leadership roles with Goldman Sachs, such as being co-head of different groups and now chairing the global financial group. How has your leadership style evolved over the course of your career? 

Susie: Well, that's a very good question because although I think I had an innate leadership style, when I was younger, my leadership style was, I would say, leading with aggression more than calm relaxation. One of the reasons you can succeed in this business is because you're confident and you're driven.

And, the word that keeps coming to mind is bossy and in charge. I hate that word. But that was my early leadership style, this way of not asking people to do things, but telling them what to do. That is not a good leadership style to use to rise up in an organization, to manage large groups of people, to bring them along, to raise the next generation, and to find your successor.

And maybe it's just the difference between being in my 20s and my 30s and now in my 50s and being able to feel more relaxed. But I think I'm a much more relaxed and calm leader than I was 20 years ago. I don't let my anxiety get the best of me. And, I've always been collaborative.

I wasn't running around yelling at people. I was sometimes maybe less patient than I could have been, and in the last, let's call it, in my last few jobs in the last decade, I'd like to think I've become the kinder, gentler version of myself, and I think I like this version. 

Kiran: Yeah. And do you have any general tips for leading groups of people? 

Susie: One of the things we do, when we get a new job and a promotion, is this concept of the boss or the head or the manager or the leader and even our understanding of what a leader looks like, it seems like on TV or in books. I mean, it's kind of like when you ask kids, What does God look like?

Right? God is an old white man with a beard, right? Or you could say your God is Jesus, but in this country, in the U S, what does a leader look like? We grew up, especially my generation, and a leader looked like the president of the United States, the CEO of a company. And no offense to straight white men, some of my best friends are, and I have a couple of sons who are, but first of all, I think people, younger people, should find role models and see themselves as future leaders. And listen, we've now had a black president. One day, hopefully, we will have a female president. So, number one is to find your role models in all different sorts of leaders. That's number one, but number two, think of leading. I don't want to be as squishy as to say, like a lead from behind. I mean, sometimes you have to lead from the front.

But leading means developing the next generation of talent and helping people achieve, their goals and get to the highest level they can. And so some of the things I'm most proud of, in fact, the thing I'm most proud of at Goldman Sachs, is not like the deals I've done or the companies I've helped, although that's been very fun, it's the people I've brought up behind me and below me.

Some of those people are people in their late thirties and early forties who I've worked with since they were 21, 22, and 23 years old. That's leadership, helping those people get from the day they walked into the door for the first jobs to, and some of them now have jobs that I had. And I love that. That's been really, really important to me. 

Kiran: Thank you. As a leader, how do you prioritize work-life balance, and what would you give to other people who are aspiring to achieve the same sort of success in both their personal and professional lives? 

Susie: So there's one thing I always think about when I think about work-life balance, and that's a little bit of an old concept, especially in a world where we have mobile devices, the ability to log in remotely, and some people don't like that, that work and home have blended. I love that because it's given me the ability to be everything I want to be at work, but also take care of myself and be a parent to my four children.

A perfect example is, I'm home now because I knew we had this podcast, and I was in the office in the morning, and I told you already that I'm meeting a client for drinks later, but in between, I'm taking my 11-year-old to an orthodontist appointment and I'm going to my 14 year old's high school basketball game to watch her. Actually, it's a perfect example of work-life balance: the game's an hour, and the client wants to move drinks earlier, so I'm going to go to 45 minutes of the game. And so the way I have thought about work-life balance is, and I've always done this even pre-mobile device and log in remotely, is it's got to be seamless, and you have to sometimes be willing to make tradeoffs, and you have to have hard and fast rules.

So, for example, one of my hard and fast rules is I never miss a birthday, a kid's birthday. I'll miss my own birthday. I just don't, I won't. And if something comes up, and it's on one of my kid's birthdays, I try to move it or avoid it or get somebody else to go because that's important to me. That's sad.

I certainly miss a lot of things because sometimes you need to work and not be present at home. And so, I do think about these things a lot. One other thing, and this is actually the thing that, for some reason, popped into my mind. Often, when we talk about work-life balance, we discuss it with women.

We don't discuss it with men. And although in today's modern work environment, men care as much about balance as most of them do, and about seeing their children or their families. And the other thing is we don't talk about ourselves. We talk about work-life balance, so it's a women's thing, and it's about families.

So my 21-year-old, when she was by Mitzvahed, so this was a long time ago when she was 12, her parashah, her Torah portion that she read was about taking care of yourself so that you can take care of others. And in her little sermon that she wrote, she talked about finally understanding why when you're on an airplane and they say if the oxygen mask job drop, put your mask on.

Before you put on others, another mass, right? Because if you pass out, you can't put your kid's mask on. And so that self-health concept of taking care of yourself, these are all things you could find a million podcasts on now, right? Get enough sleep, get enough exercise, eat well.

That is as much an important part of work-life balance as balancing family and office. And so I know that sounds like a lot because you're going to work, you're going to take care of yourself, you're going to take care of your family, but like you're going to be the best employee if you make time for yourself.

Kiran: Thank you. Your commitment to diversity is evident through your role as the global sponsor of the LGBTQ+ network and participation in the global inclusion and diversity committee. What initiatives or strategies have you found particularly effective in fostering diversity and inclusion within Goldman Sachs and, more broadly, the financial sector?

Susie: Yeah, I mean, listen, we've been at this for a long time, and I've been at this for a long time, and if I think about when I graduated from college in 1986, the workforce on Wall Street was almost completely nondiverse. It was almost all male and it was almost all white. And actually, if you look at it, if you want to and you didn't ask this question, I'm going to answer it.

If you think about the business case for diversity, and you look at the market cap of the big banks, the big investment banks, and you look at how diverse they are today in every sense of the world, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation; we're way bigger. We're way more profitable. And that's because of diversity. What's been successful, in addition to, in a merit-based way, hiring the best people for the job and including a diversity lens as we hire the best people for the job, is also just giving folks that maybe don't or didn't fit into the mainstream, and what the mainstream is really evolving and if you came and walked around Goldman Sachs it might not even be that obvious what the mainstream is, but, certainly over the years, giving people who weren't mainstream support whether that's mentoring or sponsorship.

A lot of not just Wall Street, but business in general was an all-boys club, and if you didn't get the inside baseball, now I'm using a sports analogy, but that's all I can think of. If you didn't get the inside baseball, if you didn't get, I don't want to call it like the secret rules; it's just the unwritten rules, so it was hard to succeed. We over time, I have made sure that everybody gets those unwritten rules, and that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because it's much easier to get the secret sauce of how to succeed when there are people with whom you can connect. So, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy because the more diverse we are, the more we connect with each other, and the more younger people coming in and coming up with the organization are comfortable having the conversations you need to have to succeed.

And the other thing is just looking up and seeing people who look like you, that makes a big difference. And so, over time, it's been quite programmatic, whether those are programs around mentoring programs or sponsorship or recruiting to attract talent to the business who might not otherwise think that they want to work in the business, right?

Because it used to be that women didn't even think of finance as a career. And I think a lot of those things are working, and we will continue at it, and we will continue to evolve so that Wall Street or Goldman Sachs or business looks like the rest of the world. And back to the market cap comment, we'll be more successful for it. The more diverse we are, the more successful we will be. 

Kiran: Thank you. And my final question is, what's the best advice you've ever received? How has it impacted you? And do you have any advice for girls who are interested in pursuing what you do or getting into finance, for exploring their interests?

Susie: Yeah. I've been at this for so long, and I've received so much good advice. But I guess the best advice I've ever received consistently over time is to get and give real feedback. So we're nice people in general. And when people ask us what we could do better, We tend to give kind of light answers cause we don't want to hurt people's feelings.

Nobody's perfect. And the better feedback you can get on how you're doing and what you can be doing better, the better you'll get. So, if you're a leader or a manager, don't be afraid to give it, but importantly, don't be afraid to ask for it, and don't be afraid to push people to think about what you could be doing better.

So when you go to your boss and you're like, Hey, what can I be doing better? And your boss is like, all good. You're doing great. You're doing a great job. Well, that feels amazing. Maybe you are, but maybe you go to your boss right after a meeting and say, is there one thing in that meeting I could have done differently or I could have done better that would have made it an even better meeting?

And so, with that feedback, we get stronger. And I guess that's really the best advice that I've gotten over the years. 

Kiran: Thank you. And thank you so much for taking time out of your day to do this with me. 

Susie: Great questions! It was really fun. Thank you.

Kiran: Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of Women Who Earn. I hope to see you next time.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit womenwhoearn.substack.com

Transcript:

Kiran: Hi, my name is Kiran Bishop. I'm 17 years old, and I became interested in finance freshman year of high school. As I became part of financial clubs, I realized that a great deal of the time, I was one of, if not the only, girl in the room. This feeling of being disconnected to everyone around me while simultaneously being in a room full of people is what inspired me to create this podcast, Woman Who Earn.

I created this podcast to help young girls like me gain knowledge and wisdom from industry professionals on topics ranging from how to break into finance to how to deal with unique challenges posed from being a woman in the industry. It is important for me, and I hope that it is also important for you that feeling alienated by a situation out of your control does not inhibit your motivation to pursue whatever you want.

This is Women Who Earn.

Rachel Robboy is an experienced international development banker with core expertise in financial and non-financial risk management, portfolio management, deal structuring, and business development with a focus on Latin America. As chief risk officer of IDB Invest, Ms. Robboy oversees credit, market, and operational risk along with the environmental and social risk and special assets teams.

Ms. Robboy chairs and votes on multiple senior management bank committees, and as leader of sustainability; diversity, equity, and inclusion in corporate ethics in IDB Invest over the past two decades, Ms. Robboy has held senior-level positions at the Inter American Development bank group, including chief of the portfolio management division and advisor to the vice president for private sector and non-sovereign guaranteed operations, as well as other leading roles in the infrastructure division and the special operations unit.

Ms. Robboy holds an MBA in international finance and a master's in international affairs from the George Washington University and a bachelor's degree from Georgetown University, both in Washington, D.C. 

Thank you so much for joining me today for this podcast. I think we could probably just get started with the first question: how did you get to where you are today?

Rachel: So, first of all, I want to thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here, and it sounds easy. How did I get here? If you asked me did I dream of being a CRO, I would say absolutely not. Having said that, I belong here. It's my dream job, actually, and it really is a place that I belong in terms of all my skills and also my professional interest.

So, it all fits together at the end of the day. I think people have always said over the years that I belong in risk, and I think all the career moves that I made have really built a good background for me to be the CRO of an international organization. 

Kiran: All right. Thank you. And I mean, did you always know, or at what point in your life or in your career, did you realize you wanted to do something in risk? 

Rachel: It's a good question. Actually, I built a career in both finance and international development. And when you work in emerging markets, it's obviously about both the intersection of development, finance, and risk because to build something in emerging markets, you have to recognize both the opportunity and the risk. So, there are two sides to the coin, and I always worked on either side of that coin. And I think that's what made me a good fit on the risk side is that I did spend time on the development side as well.

And I think to have the full picture doing both things added significant value. And I think had I grown up in either just risk or just in development, I wouldn't have had the ability to and the vision to make some of the decisions that I'm able to take today. 

Kiran: Thank you. And I mean, which decisions are you most proud of in your career journey?

Rachel: That's a good question, too. So there are a couple of things along the way that I'm really proud of. And so when you work at an international organization, both at the intersection of development, finance, and in risk, it's a purpose-driven institution. So I believe that everything I do has an impact on the ground.

And really, that's what I grew up with. Truly trying to find a career where I could truly make a difference and have an impact. And so, working in development, I've really been able to have an impact, and that's what I'm most proud of. So, for example, when I was doing deals on the business side, I was involved in a lot of firsts for our institution.

For example, I help finance the largest wind farm in the region. At a time when actually using renewable energy was in its very early phases. Another example that I'm proud of is the expansion of the Panama Canal, where our institution played a fundamental role as a multilateral development bank, and we provided actually the largest of the loans to help make that a reality. So that's something I'm also extremely proud of.

I'm also extremely proud of having built the team. The various teams along the way because when people ask, how did I arrive here? It's not really something I think about as something I've done on my own. It's about building teams and relationships. So when I was a portfolio manager, building that team, and now as CRO, I'm most proud of the work that our team does in making decisions and also having an impact. 

Kiran: Right, thank you. That's very insightful. I know you speak Spanish fluently, and I was just wondering how that skill or that part of your identity really intersects with your career and how it's helped you along. 

Rachel: I think being bilingual is essential, I think, for today's business world, and especially in the field of international development. And I think it's really been pivotal for me. And, when I was growing up, learning another language, making that a priority in my education and a priority in my early career, I think helped me achieve the things that I set out to achieve.

And I didn't always know how I would incorporate the Spanish, but it was pivotal for me. I lived in Honduras, actually, when I was actually when I went to high school. In my freshman year of high school, I was an exchange student. And for me, that changed my life because not only did I have the opportunity to learn another language, but it also instilled in me the desire to work in development and really to have an impact, to do good, and to contribute.

Kiran: Thank you. Yeah, I think it's very interesting. I mean, especially, I think it's so funny. I wish I could have done an exchange year at some point during high school, especially in a different country that speaks a different language. 

Rachel: It's not too late. It's not too late. 

Kiran: Yeah, for college, definitely.

Thank you. And, I mean, just to pivot a little bit, I understand that finance is a very male-dominated field, and so, has there ever been a time where you were one of, if not the only woman in the room, and, if so, like, how did you navigate that type of situation and ensure that your voices, that your voice and perspectives were heard and respected?

Rachel: I've often had the experience of being the only female in the room. When you do basic infrastructure, when you do finance, when you're focused also on Latin America, I was often the only female in the room. And sometimes, I would walk into a room, and I don't realize that I'm the only female in the room. I own my position. I use my voice and my vote in all circumstances. And so I think you just get more comfortable in your position, and making sure that you're heard is the most important thing. It doesn't mean you have to justify yourself or , you know, to make a point of it. But I think as long as you use your voice and you advocate for yourself, increasingly, people will create the space for you. And if they don't create the space for you, then you need to figure out how to create that space. And that comes with being prepared. And that was one of the things that I always made sure is that when I was the only female in the room I was prepared to use my voice. 

Kiran: Thank you. Yeah, and I understand sometimes it's a little bit more difficult to create your space. And so, have you ever had any sort of mentors who've been able to guide you through your career?

Rachel: Yes. I think absolutely. I've been fortunate over the years. I've had a variety of bosses and colleagues who have been my mentors over the years. And what I've tried to do is extract from each of them something that I can learn from them. So, for example, an early boss could teach me how to sell something, how to be compelling, and how to be convincing of your view, and in a negotiation, that's extremely important.

I've had other supervisors who were extremely technically qualified, so I took from them their technical skills and so I think being able to extract value and actually learn from those around you has been very important. Also, I've benefited from colleagues who have seen my potential and have included me in various opportunities over the years.

So, for example, earlier in my career, when we were doing actually a merger, I was asked to be on the merge team and actually to try to put two organizations together. So somebody saw my potential and said, okay, Rachel, why don't you take this, try to lead this through? Another example was I actually created a risk department for our organization when it didn't have one. And so just because somebody saw, oh, I understood this area, I wasn't in risk, but I had been in a variety of areas of the institution, so when you asked me actually earlier, did I know I belonged in risk? How did I get here? Over the years, I had the opportunity to build on those things.

So those are examples of where I had gotten opportunities from mentors in the past. 

Kiran: Thank you. Yeah, and I was just wondering if you've had any opportunities to mentor other people through their careers or anything like that. 

Rachel: Good question. I love to do that, actually, and as a supervisor, that's something that I do for my own team. So, my own team and people within and also outside the organization. And what I do is I give people who I work with, I try to give them homework in the sense that I try to give them tangible goals that they need to try to reach because I do think sometimes being a mentor is about helping people think about certain issues, but also to push them forward. To get them out of their comfort zone and to help them

Grow, so I do a lot of mentoring: females and males, actually, my own team and also others. And so some of those examples are a particular female that I work with who was always preparing the bullet points and the talking points for her supervisor. And I said, what you need to do is find the conference where you become the speaker, where you sit on the panel, and what you need to do is ask to be invited to that panel and then ask if you can not only attend but to be the speaker.

So, really, to push people to do things that they wouldn't have otherwise done. 

Kiran: Thank you. Yeah. I think that's a very important insight to make, especially sometimes. I guess tough love is the best way to go. I'm not saying that what you're doing is tough love, but you can't always coddle people, especially if you want them to grow into more experienced professionals or just better people overall. 

Rachel: Absolutely. 

Kiran: My next question is that it must be interesting to lead as a woman across different countries and cultures, and how has that experience been for you? What are some differences? Between the U. S. and maybe certain countries in Latin America?

Rachel: That's a good question. I think being a listener is important, and understanding the needs and objectives of others is very important, and I think that that applies to making a decision now as CRO, but also in terms of finding solutions, because oftentimes, it isn't black and white, our decision making as CRO, and in the deals that we put together. So oftentimes, understanding how we can achieve a win-win is really important.

So I find in different cultures people have different styles as individuals, but also you talk about, you know, how does somebody approach a negotiation. Sometimes, in our culture, it could be being very direct. And in other cultures, it isn't so direct. So that's why I think being a listener is important, but also trying to remember that to achieve a win-win, you have to generate ideas and alternatives that could work for both.

Kiran: Thank you. Yeah, I think that's a very important observation to make, especially since you can't go into another culture believing that they have to follow your way of doing things, as opposed to really figuring out how to adapt to theirs. 

Rachel: It's a good point. I think absolutely. As Americans, we tend to be very direct and that can be actually good in business, but it can add to conflict.

And I think that's really important. It's, I can say no, and I can say no as I smile, but I also think it's important if you have to say no to explain why you have to say no. And making sure that there's mutual understanding in how we make our decisions. 

Kiran: Right. Thank you. And, just looking back on your whole entire career, is there anything that you would have done differently?

Rachel: That I would have done differently? Perhaps I wouldn't have actually worried so much. You know, I worry sometimes about the decisions I make because I know that the decisions I make affect others and have an impact, and I think it's really important, you know, so I think the decisions also truly weigh on me, but I would have owned it a little bit more.

And I think being confident, and again, it goes back to making sure that the views that I take and the decisions that we make are well founded. And that's why both doing the analysis and making sure that the decisions you make are well founded and then you have to own them, you have to own them. 

Kiran: Thank you. And I mean, I think it's very important to point out that you really can't worry that much because, in hindsight, it's never as bad as you thought it was, would be, or anything like that. 

What's the best advice that you've ever received? Either in terms of your career or just your life, and how has it impacted you?

Rachel: So the best advice I have ever received, and actually the advice that I give to all the mentees, is truly to be proactive and also to manage up and across. So, being proactive is really important. So, not just waiting until the work arrives at your desk, but making sure that you're always being proactive.

Is there more that you can do? Is there more that you can contribute? And I also want to talk about managing up. Something in my career that I think I always did differently, and my advice at any level, is managing up: what does the senior manager need to know and do, and whether that means having the bullet points and the analysis prepared, having the recommendation all ready to go. And that's what I mean by managing up. It's always very important. 

But I also think managing across. So managing across people use, I think, information as a way to control the conversation. And for me, I need to make sure, and I always try to make sure that I use information and I share information because it makes us a better team, and so I think managing across is really important as well, and I think people who are the most successful people are people who are able to manage teams across an organization well. So I think for me, when I look at the risk team, it's not just us as a risk team, but it's a risk across our organization. And that's the advice that I would give people Truly about managing up and managing across and being proactive. I don't think there are enough people in the career space who will truly say, what else can I do?

To make a difference. And I think that's what separates a lot of people, not just in my organization, but in career development, and people who grow in their careers are these people who really strive not only to do their job but to do their job and more than their job. And again, to make a difference.

Kiran: Thank you. I think that's very important to point out, especially because you can't just do what's expected of you and then expect to kind of move forward or move up in your career when all you're doing is the bare minimum. I think it's very important to take note of. And, I mean, do you have any final advice for girls who are interested in pursuing your specific career or anything like that? 

Rachel: I do. You know, a career in finance and risk doesn't really just happen. Having said that, I do think careers in risk and finance, there are other skills besides the core technical skills of risk and finance that add enormous value.

And I can give you some of those examples where Strong communication is really important. There are a lot of people with technical skills who can't take that technical analysis and drive it through to communicate the so what. The so what: what are your findings? What are your conclusions? So people can do the work, but they cannot bring it home.

So, the strong analytical skills and the strong communication skills that you grow in high school and college are really relevant to careers and risk and finance. And again, when you see people who are leaders in those fields, they're not only technically sound, but they're able to communicate what they know, how they know it, and their decision-making.

And so I would also emphasize that the skills that you need in risk and finance today are the traditional technical skills: math and science, but you also need the analytical, communication, and writing skills. And the writing skills. And those things are core competencies that will also add value to the full package of a girl and a woman in finance.

And so for those girls and women who don't think they belong at the table because they don't necessarily think, okay, I have all of those hard technical skills. They need to realize that their analytical skills are really equally important. And so, for me, when I was early in my finance career, it was my analytical skills that brought me further along.

I started with international development and then added on the MBA to continue to grow my technical skills. And my early career was analyzing transactions in Latin America from the financial, development, economic, and impact perspectives. And so I think that gone are the days when you can only see the field of finance.

I think that the career track is truly merging a variety of skills, and to be the most successful in our field, you need to have all those skills. 

Kiran: Thank you. Yeah, I think it's very important to note that in order to succeed, you have to have an intersection of not only those hard skills but also the soft skills as well. Thank you so much for joining me today. I really enjoyed this conversation. You bring a really unique perspective, especially with your international experience and your overall journey. 

Rachel: I'm happy to be here. 

Kiran: Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of Women Who Earn. I hope to see you next time.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit womenwhoearn.substack.com

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Kiran: Hi, my name is Kiran Bishop. I'm 17 years old, and I became interested in finance freshman year of high school. As I became part of financial clubs, I realized that a great deal of the time, I was one of, if not the only, girl in the room. This feeling of being disconnected to everyone around me while simultaneously being in a room full of people is what inspired me to create this podcast, Woman Who Earn.

[00:00:31] Kiran: I created this podcast to help young girls like me gain knowledge and wisdom from industry professionals on topics ranging from how to break into finance to how to deal with unique challenges posed from being a woman in the industry. It is important for me, and I hope that it is also important for you, that feeling alienated by a situation out of your control does not inhibit your motivation to pursue whatever you want.

[00:00:54] Kiran: This is Women Who Earn.

[00:00:57] Kiran: Caroline Lovelace, founder and managing partner [00:01:00] of Rose Hill Park, has nearly 20 years experience in financial services and 15 years experience in alternative investments, including direct venture capital, private equity, and hedge funds. Previously to Rose Hill Park, Ms. Lovelace was a founding partner of Pine Street Alternative Asset Management and co portfolio manager for its seed fund for emerging hedge funds with a focus on women and minority owned managers. Ms. Lovelace was also a key element in the successful fundraise of a 200 million dollar allocation for a large state pension plan.

[00:01:31] Kiran: Before Pine Street, Ms. Lovelace was a Managing Director of Provident Group Asset Management, where she was responsible for hedge fund research, new manager selection, and oversight of the due diligence process. In addition, Ms. Lovelace worked with the hedge Fund Research Inc to conduct the first comprehensive survey of the woman and minority owned hedge fund universe.

[00:01:53] Kiran: Previously, Ms. Lovelace spent several years with JPMorgan Chase and Co in New York. First in the [00:02:00] investment banking, then moving to JPMorgan Capital, the firm's direct private equity division to invest in and manage a portfolio of healthcare and financial services investments, she served on the board of directors for several private companies.

[00:02:15] Kiran: Ms. Lovelace holds a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University in Economics and an MBA in Finance from the Wharton School.

[00:02:24] Kiran: Thank you so much for joining me today. I think we can just get started. So my first question for you is, how did you get to where you are today? 

[00:02:36] Caroline: How do I get to where I work today? It's been a journey, to be sure. And I think that part of a career in finance is about one of the things that makes it a challenge, but also one of the things that makes it really exciting is that it's so big and varied in terms of the different roles that you can pursue and the different kind of industries within finance.

[00:02:57] Caroline: You can pivot. As [00:03:00] your skills develop as the market changes and as your interests evolve. So I started out doing economics in college. And I knew I wanted to do something kind of markets related, but I didn't really understand it. And I didn't really know what to do, but a lot of my friends were doing investment banking and investment banking is 1 of the fields where you just, you were as a junior person, you're allowed to Access to a lot of different things, a lot of different parts of the business. But you work really hard, but you learn a lot in a very short period of time. So I went, so I was able to get a job working as a best-making analyst at UBS in London. And that was a really fantastic experience. One because I was in London, had been to London, to Europe, and to London many times.

[00:03:45] Caroline: But it was really interesting because it was right at the time where, when the European exchange rate mechanism was coming into for, so that was the precursor to the euro, the precursor to the European Union. And that was [00:04:00] so that was an interesting time in the markets. But I also worked at a very small team where I was able to get access to a lot of senior people and see a lot of things that I might not have otherwise.

[00:04:11] Caroline: I think, how did I get myself where I was today is really taking advantage of a lot of those opportunities just to do a lot of different things. And then. After business school and starting back again at an investment banking and JP Morgan, I just randomly got an opportunity to move to the buy side, which basically is asset management as opposed to investment banking and an opportunity to start making investments for.

[00:04:37] Caroline: For both the bank and for outside investors. And so a lot of the skills that I had developed in investment banking were similar, but then I got to invest to make others create more different skills by working on the buy side. I think that's really it is that you need to the way you get some to where you are is by developing skills [00:05:00] that you can leverage across finance. And then when the opportunity to make a pivot, if you want to, you can do that. 

[00:05:09] Kiran: Thank you. I think it's very interesting that you say that finance is such a varied career and that it's pretty. I think easy to pivot and to learn and to develop these skills that can be useful across disciplines.

[00:05:24] Kiran: And you mentioned that in college when you were an economics major, you kind of knew that you wanted to work in markets. Did you at any point before that kind of know that you wanted to work or do something in finance? 

[00:05:40] Caroline: Yes, yes, only because when I was younger, middle school, high school, I actually wanted to work.

[00:05:47] Caroline: I thought I really wanted to be a marine biologist. I was fascinated by sharks in particular. I love sharks. And so I really thought that I wanted that's what I wanted to do as a career, and it just so happened that. We had a [00:06:00] family friend who was a broker, and he was just talking about casually what he did.

[00:06:04] Caroline: And he said, Oh, you should just look in the paper and find a couple of stocks that you find interesting and just, and follow them. And I remember one of them was Amarada Hess, which is like an oil services company. And and so you could, and so I just would watch it and. Yeah. Then I'd research it and find out and then through, through that, I learned about, a bit more about the markets and I found that it was a really dynamic and interesting career.

[00:06:29] Caroline: I was a math geek, so I liked that aspect of it. So a lot of, so it just grew organically that I thought this would be an interesting way to pursue a career.

[00:06:38] Kiran: Thank you. Yeah, that's very interesting. I'm also very into math. It's my favorite subject in school.

[00:06:43] Kiran: And that's part of the reason why I'm interested in finance right now. What moment are you most proud of in your journey?

[00:06:52] Kiran: I think it's interesting question. I think that what I'm most proud of for me personally, is having been able [00:07:00] to to learn a lot of interesting things. That's really what I. What I've always wanted, and what keeps me interested in finance, and in my career, I think on the buy side, 1 of the things that's interest me.

[00:07:13] Kiran: The most is just being able to perform well for investors. In the end, we are what's called a fiduciary and that means we have to take our make our. Take our clients interests at heart. That's got to be the the key and most important element of everything we do. And I would say I'm very proud of we've been able to over the course of my career produce returns for investors and those underlying investors are, their pension plans, foundations, endowments.

[00:07:45] Kiran: And that means that, because of, wait, Because we're able to produce returns for them. That means that they can achieve their mission, whether or not that's a pension plan, being able to pay the retiree benefits that they've earned or a foundation is [00:08:00] able to fund the program and services that it organizes and develop.

[00:08:06] Kiran: So those are the things that I'm most proud of professionally. 

[00:08:10] Kiran: Thank you. And reading your bio, I saw that you did some work with women and minority-owned kind of funds and stuff like that. Could you speak a little bit more on that? 

[00:08:24] Caroline: Sure. It's an interesting area.

[00:08:25] Caroline: As a woman and as a person of color it's something that I, it's certainly interesting to me. I've been certainly when I started my career it was not at all unusual for me to be the only person of color in the room and certainly one of very few women. And so it's not something that really struck me as so much, as much as it was just an interesting fact. It wasn't something that I felt as if it held me back, but it was interesting. But it was only later in my career where I really realized is that as you get more senior, there are fewer and fewer women, there are fewer people of color.

[00:08:58] Caroline: And particularly when I came back from the States from London, it was certainly more clear. One of the things that when I started I came back when I started in hedge funds, I was working in a firm called Provident Group and one of my colleagues a friend of mine who I'd worked with previously at J.P. Morgan had an idea to start researching women and minority-owned hedge funds. And I was I don't think there's going to be many of them. And I didn't really, I didn't know. I didn't know what that was going to look like, but we could, we'll try it. And we work with a firm called HFR Hedge Fund Research, which is probably one of the largest hedge fund research company providing data and databases around different kinds of hedge funds hedge fund different kinds of hedge funds, different strategies and so forth.

[00:09:49] Caroline: You can see it at hfr. com. A lot of these embassies. And so we work with them to to just do this which we think was the first comprehensive study of the women and minority [00:10:00] hedge fund universe. And it was fascinating because we realized that yes, it's a very small sector of the hedge fund universe.

[00:10:07] Caroline: Maybe there are only a few hundred at any given time when it's at some points, there's maybe there are thousands of, seven to 10, 000. Hedge funds in the world, but they are they, these hedge, these bonds tend to outperform the greater hedge fund universe. They tend to have longer track record although they also tend to be a lot smaller.

[00:10:29] Caroline: So it's a really interesting. So we found that it's really interesting. And then in that respect why aren't. More people taking looking at these managers if they perform better. And also it's something it's very interesting for certain types of investors. So say pension plans who have.

[00:10:45] Caroline: Any types of sort of municipal workers who often are say, teachers, for example, teachers tend to are more likely to be women. And a lot of public school teachers are more likely to be people of color. [00:11:00] So from their perspective, if you are a pension plan that whose underlying members are a relative more.

[00:11:08] Caroline: Female and people of color representation. The pension plan is thinking we would like to have a situation where are the investment side of our organization that provides for these pensions is more looks more like. The pensioneers that are the beneficiaries. So it's an interest.

[00:11:28] Caroline: From a business perspective it's, it was, it's really interesting way for us to provide a service that a lot of these plants want. They're also fiduciary, so they have to look for the best returns, but since these funds and these managers. Tend to outperform it's a way to have a win win.

[00:11:46] Caroline: So you're doing something that the pensioneers might like as well as provide for their pensions in the best way possible. So I think that is, that's really what it's about. And then you also have some foundation say [00:12:00] endowments that are that have that work for the. For colleges and universities some of whom are have more women.

[00:12:08] Caroline: So women's colleges or have more people of color who are their students. And then foundations who also work with who have programs, which benefit women or women and or people of color. So all those entities. Our constituents for this type of this type of investing. And I think it's also important to make sure that you're always looking at the broadest opportunity set.

[00:12:30] Caroline: So if you're only looking at the usual suspects, which often are white male then you're not looking, you're not looking at every opportunity to be able to To provide a return for your investors. 

[00:12:46] Kiran: Thank you. Yeah, I think that's I think it's very interesting that women in minority owned funds sent in for perform better than average. Do you have any theories as to maybe why? 

[00:13:00] Caroline: I think that there there are certainly some, if you as a woman or people of our person of color you could say that because there are fewer of you, it's a bit, it's harder. You don't have the same mentors. You don't have the same connections that that other people might.

[00:13:18] Caroline: So you have to work harder. If you work harder and you also, and you're still succeeding, then you're probably doing better than better than average. I think that's a, that is certainly a part of it and certainly most most of. A big part of getting ahead or progressing in finances has to do with your resume.

[00:13:38] Caroline: If you if you had to work harder to get into some of the best colleges, you had to work harder to get into the best business schools, you had to work harder to get into the best financial institutions then most likely. You are you're probably going to be a person who outperforms in general.

[00:13:56] Caroline: So that means that you outperform in your hedge fund. I think [00:14:00] that also seen is that because opportunities for women, people of color, sometimes not as much not as extensive as others. Something that often happens is that expectation that if you decide I'm going to leave by my successful career at a big bank and then go off on my own, that you don't necessarily have, you're not necessarily going to have the option to come back to that bank.

[00:14:27] Caroline: So if you. So if you leave, you know that you have that this firm that you create on your own has to be successful. So you're more focused on risk. You don't take you take more measured risk. You don't take. You don't take the ability to be able to just move on after a lack of, a mistake or something like that for granted.

[00:14:50] Caroline: So that's a big part of it. 

[00:14:52] Kiran: Right. Thank you. And you mentioned like mentors in the field and did you have any? [00:15:00] 

[00:15:01] Caroline: Mentors. Yeah, actually, I did. I had some people who were very helpful in my career. And and that was that was really key. My first job as I mentioned, was it out of college was at UBS in London, and there's no way that I would have gotten that without the help of an alumni. 

[00:15:17] Caroline: It was fairly unusual at the time for an American citizen to be able to get a job right out of college and invest in banking in London. And a guy named Mike Lehman, who was an alumni gave me that shot. And it wasn't a program. It was a job that he created for me so that was really key and he was really helpful earlier in my career, helping me to navigate different roles at UBS.

[00:15:42] Caroline: And he also wrote one of my business school recommendations. So he was definitely someone who was incredibly helpful. Colin West was my second boss at UBS. And he actually took me with me to. Me with him when he created a new group at UBS. So he was really [00:16:00] key.

[00:16:00] Caroline: Merrill Hartspan was the one who gave me the opportunity to move from investment banking to asset management. So without her and her guidance and really helping me to understand at the very beginning what all asset management entailed that would have been a really hard transition.

[00:16:17] Caroline: And, and then Howard Powers, who was my was the second head of Brian Watson was the guy who actually, created that role, which Merrill helped me, allowed me to fill who was the first global head to go, so first global head of JP Morgan Capital at, JP Morgan Capital.

[00:16:35] Caroline: When I started then Howard powers when he, when Brian decided to go back to Australia, Howard powers was one. So it was my first boss after him. And that was, so that was really and he really took me under his wing and I was at a port in my career where I really needed to be able to develop some new skills and to take the next step.

[00:16:54] Caroline: And he actively. Helps me get those skills. It's, I've been really lucky to have [00:17:00] people along the way who've taken a real interest in me, but also saw my success as also reflected well on them and to found that to be a really, so making sure that they're the people who work for them had really.

[00:17:19] Caroline: Interesting and fruitful and and develop skills that were a real benefit to the broader team and the broader group. That was really important to me and important to my success. Thank you. 

[00:17:33] Kiran: Yeah. And you spoke a little bit about the role your mentors played in kind of the trajectory of your career and your overall successes.

[00:17:41] Kiran: And I was just wondering, how do you get the recognition that you deserve in a field that often overlooks women, especially like minority women? 

[00:17:52] Caroline: Part of it is, you have to ask for it. And that's something I learned later in my career rather than early on. I think as a, when you 1st start out, you [00:18:00] just want to sit and do the work and learn and, get your, get the job and done.

[00:18:04] Caroline: And you're not really thinking about being more actively engage with networking and going to, Industry events and things like that. I think that as a junior person, you're it's a good idea to always be thinking in ways that you can make sure that the broader as many people understand what you're doing and how you're doing it.

[00:18:28] Caroline: That you're doing a good job. Certainly I was lucky in in early stage of my career that I didn't necessarily need to do that because I had great bosses and great mentors who who recognize what I was doing and were willing to be and really to really help me. But I would say that's not always the case.

[00:18:46] Caroline: So you really do need to ask for recognition. You have to make it clear, not necessarily being a. Clearly you don't want to be obnoxious about it, but making sure that people at your firm in the broader industry, you know who you [00:19:00] are, know what you're doing LinkedIn is good for that.

[00:19:04] Caroline: Industry events, industry organizations being active with them. Certainly now there are a lot of work more for a lot more organizations for women and people of color focused on those groups. In the industry, so things like 100 women in finance or IDF there's also Blacks Hedge Fund Professionals Network or Black women in asset management.

[00:19:30] Caroline: So there are a lot of groups where you can really make sure that you're engaged and and access to the broader community. So they know who you are and what you're doing and how well you're doing it. 

[00:19:41] Kiran: Thank you. Yeah. And obviously you took a lot of risks getting to the point that you are now in your career and kind of what were those risks and how did you go about picking which ones to 

[00:19:57] Caroline: take?[00:20:00] 

[00:20:00] Caroline: Yeah, I suppose I have taken a lot of risk in my career. I think it's risk that's calculated. However it may not seem that way from the outside, but I'd like to think that I've always, and this is the way I think I'm investing as well, is that you always understand what the risks are, what the potential rewards are and try to mitigate as much of the risk that you can and not just recognize, but also mitigate.

[00:20:25] Caroline: Thanks. And then understanding that there are certain risks are, risk is important in terms of rewards. There's no reward without risk unless you're buying a lottery ticket. So I think that's how I've decided and over time, how I've chosen the risks that I thought made the most sense to take.

[00:20:44] Caroline: When I left decided to leave JP Morgan and move to Spain to to To focus on my Spanish skills to get fluent there. And then I was able to also pivot further into into hedge funds from private equity. That was part [00:21:00] of allowed me to just to meet a lot more people and make that transition over time.

[00:21:04] Caroline: So that was part of it, I think. So that was that was a risk certainly, but I feel as if it was a calculated risk. So those are the kind of, and those that's what I've tried to do throughout my career. Thank 

[00:21:15] Kiran: you. Yeah, I think it's very interesting that you mention your Spanish skills. How do you think?

[00:21:23] Kiran: Becoming fluent in Spanish has helped you along your career. 

[00:21:30] Caroline: It's interesting. I don't actually use my Spanish nearly as much as I would have liked in my in my career, my actual professional career it's helpful though in terms of rounding out my. Me as a person, as you get old, as you get further along in your career I will talk a lot about the skills that you develop.

[00:21:54] Caroline: Those are the financial skills, the analytical skills, those sort of those hard skills. But also there are soft [00:22:00] skills. And as you get. Further on your career, what people want to also know is that that you that you're interesting as a person. They want to know who you are as a person.

[00:22:11] Caroline: They know that you're going, they're going to be working with you more directly on an ongoing basis. So who are you as a person? Are, and do, is this the type of person, are you the type of person that you, that people want to work with? And so I think my international experience, both having lived in London, having lived in Madrid speaking Spanish and a willingness to have made that move speaks to the kind of person that I am and that is certainly.

[00:22:39] Caroline: Helped me in my career. My most recent move is I became the CIO of Reservoir Partners, which is a multi strategy hedge fund based in Memphis. And and that was people recognize that was a little bit of a career risk. And but when people look at my background having done the things I did before it was entirely[00:23:00] consistent.

[00:23:01] Caroline: With the person that I was and investors could know that this wasn't, I understood what I was doing. I understood the risk I was taking. And they also understood that I would be the type of person who would be willing to to really work as hard as possible to be successful on the new role.

[00:23:20] Caroline: So that's something. That's that creates a level of consistency that you want. So you understand so everyone knows who they're working with, who they're dealing with. And that provides a lot of comfort and confidence going forward. Thank you. 

[00:23:35] Kiran: And just looking back on your career as a whole.

[00:23:40] Kiran: If you could do it all over, would there, would you do anything differently? 

[00:23:47] Caroline: Oh one of the things I mentioned is that I probably would have understood that I needed to be more out front in my career, more vocal in my career as a really junior person. As I said I early on, I really [00:24:00] just focused on doing the work and letting other people I don't sing my praises for me or help me along in my career. I could have been more proactive, certainly. And I would have done that more looking back. And so that would be the biggest one, I think. And what else would I think that I would have also, broaden, even maybe even more broad going even more broadly about skill set and opportunities that sooner.

[00:24:31] Caroline: I was actually speaking with a woman who is very senior at black walk. And one of the things she said was I should have taken more risk sooner. I've certainly taken a lot of risk in the latter part of my career, say, from mid to later career. I think that as a junior person, you can't afford to take more risk.

[00:24:48] Caroline: Because people don't worry the people particularly now employers don't think it's odd. If you try a few different things, or a few different firms, when you're more junior, whereas [00:25:00] I think in the past the 3 year. In two to three year investment banking analyst program, if you had, if, for that was and then you wanted to get to be an associate and so therefore you're on this five year track in some ways business school after three years, that's a that's a specific track as opposed to taking a bit more risk in terms of creating your own path.

[00:25:23] Caroline: I think that. Yeah. You can do that more now. Again, always a calculated risk. But understanding, creating your own plan as opposed to having it imposed upon you externally. I think that's something that I might have considered earlier on. 

[00:25:38] Kiran: My final question is what's the best advice you've ever received? How has it impacted you? And do you have any advice for other people? 

[00:25:49] Caroline: Best advice I've ever received? I think that you have to, the best relax I've ever seen, really.

[00:25:55] Caroline: I'll bundle it up in terms of the the theme was trust yourself. If [00:26:00] you have, I've taken the time and consider all the factors and made, and researched as, as much as you can, an opportunity in some ways you have to go with your gut a little bit.

[00:26:15] Caroline: So trust yourself. I'm not, I wouldn't call myself a particularly spontaneous person. I wouldn't, I don't and I don't take risks lightly. But as I said, I think it's more calculated risk. So that's the best advice I've given and the people have given me is just being open to the possibilities.

[00:26:34] Caroline: Be open to opportunities that you never would have thought of certainly moving to the buy side from investment banking was not something that I, even though it was out there, it's not something that I was considering, but I'm. Extremely glad that I took advantage of the opportunity when it came to me.

[00:26:52] Caroline: That's generally the best advice I've gotten. And that would be the advice that I give is that, it's okay [00:27:00] to have a plan, but it's also don't yeah, don't not plan B and plan because plan B. It could be the plan A what should have been plan A. So plan B should have been plan A if you had known it existed or you knew it was up, it was open to you or you knew all of the benefits of it.

[00:27:19] Caroline: So I think that's the best advice I could give. Thank 

[00:27:24] Kiran: you. I think that was very insightful, especially really be flexible and open to all the possibilities and not just, you know, be set in your ways and have something in mind that you want to do And see it as if you if things don't work out exactly how you had envisioned them It's not a failure so much as a change in your trajectory.

[00:27:48] Caroline: That's exactly right 

[00:27:50] Kiran: Thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate this conversation. 

[00:27:55] Caroline: No, it's a pleasure thank you very much for having me.

[00:27:59] Kiran: [00:28:00] Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of Women Who Earn. I hope to see you next time.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit womenwhoearn.substack.com

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Kiran: Hi, my name is Kiran Bishop. I'm 17 years old and I became interested in finance freshman year of high school. As I became part of financial clubs, I realized that a great deal of the time I was one of, if not the only girl in the room. This feeling of being disconnected to everyone around me while simultaneously being in a room full of people is what inspired me to create this podcast. Women Who Earn. I created this podcast to help young girls like me gain knowledge and wisdom from industry professionals on topics ranging from how to break into finance, to how to deal with unique challenges posed from being a woman in the industry. It's important for me, and I hope that it is also important for you, that feeling alienated by situation out of your control does not inhibit your motivation to pursue whatever you want. 

[00:00:47] Kiran: This is Women Who Earn.

[00:00:50] Kiran: Hi, and thank you so much for joining me for today's episode of Women Who Earn. Today, we are joined by Christina Kim, head of Partnerships at Girls Who [00:01:00] Invest. Christina manages partners for Girls Who Invest. In this role, she supports the current partner community of over a hundred asset management firms to build engagement, coordinate internships, facilitate partner events, and drive communication. She's focused on expanding these relationships as well as leading other fundraising initiatives to support the G W I program. Before joining Girls Who Invest in 2021, Christina was a portfolio manager in the multi-asset class investment group of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, working with endowment and foundation clients. Prior to joining G S A M, she worked as a portfolio manager at Family Office ArcherOak Capital Management. Previously, she was a partner and senior research analyst at hedge fund Andor Capital Management. Christina earned a BA in Economics and at MA in Sociology from Stanford University. Outside of work, she enjoys international travel, foreign films, trying different kinds of coffee, [00:02:00] and taking too many photos of her kids.

[00:02:04] Kiran: Thank you so much for joining me today. I think we can just start off with you telling me a little bit about yourself, like maybe your career trajectory and how you got to where you are today. 

[00:02:16] Christina: Yeah. And thanks so much for having me. It's really a pleasure to be here with you and, to share a little bit. So, I started my career in financial services right after graduating from college. I was an econ major and I think, I didn't really know what I wanted to do professionally, but most of the econ majors pursued either consulting or investment banking out of undergrad. So those are the two tracks that I kind of interviewed for and ended up as an investment banking analyst for my first job out of undergrad in San Francisco.

[00:02:48] Christina: And it was around the time of the first kind of tech bubble just getting started. So it was really exciting time to be in technology and in finance. being based out on the West coast, after less [00:03:00] than two years of banking, about a year and a half in I, there was an opportunity to join a hedge fund, which I didn't know really anything about at the time, but it was through word of mouth, through, someone that I was working with.

[00:03:12] Christina: And I ended up joining, a technology hedge fund, less than two years out of undergrad. And that's how I sort of got into the next stage of my career, which was being a hedge fund investor, covering the technology sector, which I did for the next, about two decades at different firms.

[00:03:30] Christina: And then most recently I joined Goldman Sachs in asset management, so kind of transitioning from the hedge fund industry to something related, but a little bit different. So there I worked primarily with endowments and foundations in helping to manage their assets. After about four years there, I was looking for something a little bit different and ended up at Girls Who Invest, which we can talk a little bit about.

[00:03:52] Christina: But I've been doing that for about two and a half years as the head of partnerships supporting their mission. So that's been, it's been a really [00:04:00] great transition. 

[00:04:02] Kiran: Yeah. Was there a single experience that inspired you to join Girls Who Invest or was it an organization that you stumbled upon?

[00:04:10] Christina: Yeah, so I had heard of girls who Invest for a while because the founder, who is Seema Hingorani, we actually worked together, gosh, over 10 years ago, at a hedge fund that we were both at at the time. That was before she started Girls Who Invest. But over the years I had heard about the organization was really inspired by the work that they were doing.

[00:04:30] Christina: I think the mission really resonated strongly with me because having started in a sector hedge funds, which was very underrepresented in terms of women, I really felt the mission on a very personal level. And so when this opportunity came up, I was curious. I never really thought about doing nonprofit work before. Always thought I would do something related to finance, but I met the team and really was inspired to by the mission and the work and the opportunity that I would have as in the partnership [00:05:00] role. And that's what motivated me to join. 

[00:05:04] Kiran: Right. You said that you always thought you were gonna do something in finance. Does that mean that in like high school or college you were really set on the path? 

[00:05:12] Christina: No, definitely not. Not that early. so I grew up, my parents worked for the government and I never really had exposure to finance as a profession growing up. Really the first time was when I started interviewing for my first job when I was in college. And that was like, I don't know, my senior year. I'd heard about different careers while I was in, in college, but never really had a strong direction one way or the other. But as I started interviewing and learning more about what investment banking was or what type of work that I'd be doing it.

[00:05:43] Christina: I ended up finding a firm that I thought was really interesting and I just joined. It was kind of a leap of faith. 

[00:05:52] Kiran: Well, I mean, I guess it worked out, right? 

[00:05:55] Christina: Yeah. Most of the time it works out. Even if it's not, you know, a permanent decision [00:06:00] you'll learn something from it. 

[00:06:02] Kiran: Right. Thank you. And what moment are you most proud of in your journey?

[00:06:08] Christina: Yeah, I think I'm most proud of the work that I'm part of now as part of Girls Who Invest. So I really strongly believe in the mission. I think I spent the first two decades of my career really just focused on my job and performing well in my job and really like progressing and advancing in my own career.

[00:06:28] Christina: And it's only through this transition to or joining girls who invest that I really, I feel like I've had the opportunity to start giving back and helping others as their. Starting their careers. And that's been really personally rewarding for me. I think there have been moments along the way in my career where I've been proud of an individual accomplishment.

[00:06:47] Christina: Like when you make an investment call that goes well, then of course you're proud and you're excited. But kind of on a deeper, more meaningful level of like personal fulfillment, I think the world that I'm in now has been that, [00:07:00] in terms of kind of being proud and feeling really, inspired by the work that I'm doing personally and professionally. 

[00:07:07] Kiran: And what sorts of things does girls who invest do? Do they perform a lot of outreach? 

[00:07:12] Christina: Yeah, so girls Who Invest just a high level overview of the organization is that our mission is to bring more young women and gender binary individuals, into investment management.

[00:07:22] Christina: Through a combination of education, internships, mentorship, and community. And the way that we do that is we have a program for undergrads. We have our flagship program is the summer intensive program, which is for rising juniors. So scholars who are in their sophomore year apply and then participate in an 11 week program in the summer right after their sophomore year.

[00:07:46] Christina: And it combines four weeks of in-person education with a seven week paid internship in investing investment management. We also have an online intensive program, which is, as the name would suggest, it's asynchronous and self-directed [00:08:00] learning, which covers a lot of the same fundamentals that we do in the four week curriculum, but over a longer timeframe.

[00:08:06] Christina: And there's more flexibility in how scholars can do that program. So the goal of both is to really introduce young people to the field of investment management as a career, which is kind of half the battle of getting more people to apply, is just awareness and knowledge that this is out there.

[00:08:21] Christina: It's a really rewarding career and giving access to a greater number of young people than may have historically been the case by providing these opportunities. 

[00:08:31] Kiran: Right. Thank you. And what's the most valuable lesson that you've learned at Girls Who Invest? 

[00:08:40] Christina: I think one of the lessons has been just the power of an individual, of a small group of individuals to really make a difference. Our vision at Girls who invest is 30 by 30 or 30% of the world's investible capital to be managed by women by 2030, which is a really ambitious [00:09:00] vision, I would say. And at first glance you might say that's unattainable, but I think really rather than kind of the the literal kind of achieving that vision is really, it's our North star.

[00:09:12] Christina: It kind of inspires all of the work that we do to date. And I think I've seen that play out in a number of ways. I've seen how individual mentors can really make a difference in a scholar's trajectory. I've seen how individual firms that are really mission aligned with us in giving these opportunities can make a difference.

[00:09:30] Christina: And the power of a community of firms, of individuals, mentors, our team coming together. We've now reached, after this summer we'll have over 2,400 young women and gender non-binary individuals who have gone through the program. And that's a significant number. We started with a class of just 30 in 2016, and now we've reached over 2,400, which is pretty powerful. Wow. And we have a lot, a long ways to go in the industry, but I think every year, every individual, every partner firm[00:10:00] is just one step closer to moving towards that vision.

[00:10:03] Kiran: Right. And do you have a personal opinion on why there is such a big gender gap in the industry?

[00:10:13] Christina: Yeah, I think there's a number of reasons for that. I think historically, Perhaps not as many women went pursued this as a career. And I think the roots of that probably start early on in terms of the gender gap, in terms of who's pursuing stem and STEM-based fields, but I think even when you apply for your first job, perhaps not as many young women were looking or interviewing for entry-level positions, I think that's changed a lot over the years where now if you look at certain investment banking analyst classes, they're much more balanced.

[00:10:47] Christina: But I still think there are fields where not as many women apply. For example, private equity probably, and even hedge funds. Based on the feedback that we're hearing is that. They just don't see as many female applicants as as [00:11:00] they would like. So I think that still remains the case. And then I think there's a retention issue.

[00:11:05] Christina: So for women that do go into investing as a career. I think at some point there are there's a natural drop off for a number of them, and that can occur at different points in a career. But retention has been a really big issue in the industry. So that's kind of the next area for our organization is not just getting more young women in, which is the first step, but how do we help support to keep them in the industry once they make that decision to enter? And that's that's an even more ambitious challenge, but one that we are we know is necessary to address the gender imbalance.

[00:11:36] Kiran: Right. And you sort of touched on how there are a few different reasons there are retention issues. Yeah. Would you mind going into a little bit more detail about what these reasons are or what they may be? 

[00:11:49] Christina: I think there have been a lot of probably studies on these reasons, but anecdotally there's probably a few points in which attrition happens just at a larger level.

[00:11:58] Christina: I think one point is [00:12:00] maybe two to three years out of undergrad when you've had your first job as an analyst and you're trying to think about whether you go back to business school or you consider you, you try to achieve the promotion to associate or the next level. So I think that's kind of one decision point where people might make a change in their direction. 'cause once you go to business school to, I think oftentimes you may see a change of direction. Like if you were in banking and then you go to business school, that might be because you wanna try something different coming out. I think another natural attrition point might be for women who maybe after you settle down, you're at a different point in your life and you have kids.

[00:12:39] Christina: I would venture a guess to say that would be another point where you see women making those decisions to potentially leave the industry. And there are probably others as well, but those are two that come to mind. 

[00:12:51] Christina: Right. Yeah. Especially with the other guests that I've interviewed for this podcast, a lot of them have also mentioned the second reason as [00:13:00] why some women choose to leave the industry. Keeping onto the topic of being a woman in a male dominated industry, but more so on your personal experience, has there ever been a time where you were the only woman in the room and maybe how did that make you feel, or how did you go about navigating that situation and ensuring that your voice and perspective was heard?

[00:13:24] Christina: For sure, particularly earlier on in my career, there were times when I was one of the only, if not one of very few women in the room that might've been at an industry conference or like at a company dinner with management teams. And it is intimidating, especially when you're starting out early on in your career.

[00:13:42] Christina: And so you're one of the younger people in the room and you might be the only woman in the room. So that was definitely at the time, somewhat intimidating. I think I addressed it by just trying to be as prepared as I could be going into those [00:14:00] situations, trying to ask good questions, kind of trying to fit in and I think things have changed a lot since those days where at that time I think I just wanted to try to fit in with the other, like men investors in the room. Right? I didn't want to be different. I didn't wanna be noticed. I did, I just kind of wanted to blend in and be a chameleon. And the way that I did that was I tried to just be friendly with my peers, whether they were men or women, be prepared for the meetings. I think now there's a lot more appreciation of being different, and I think that can often work to your advantage. Being the only woman in the room, right? Whether that's because you stand out, they remember you, if you are assertive in that meeting, you make great points. I think you're more likely to be remembered. So I think now I think I would approach things a little bit differently if I were starting my career over again. Because I definitely think there's advantages, but I think as someone early, starting on and being the only in the room, that is definitely a challenge. And that's something that we work with our scholars on as well, is[00:15:00] how do you transition into a professional environment where that is the case?

[00:15:04] Christina: And oftentimes you might feel excluded in certain ways. So it's something that we work with our scholars and one way that we address that is the community that we help to form through our programs. So when you're in the program, you're with over 200 other scholars who are like you, and you're really going through this intense experience together.

[00:15:23] Christina: And we find that community extends even beyond the internships. But even as people progress into their first jobs, they help each other find jobs, they recruit each other they're friends, they're roommates. And so really they are the first kind of go-to when you're having a bad day at work or when you need advice on negotiating your compensation. Those are the people that are there for you, and I think that makes a huge difference in helping to support and retain women. 

[00:15:51] Kiran: Right. I love the community that Girls Who Invest has created, it's sort of like a mentorship program between you guys and the younger women [00:16:00] who are trying to get into the industry. Did you ever have a personal mentor when you were getting into the industry and did that help?

[00:16:07] Christina: Yeah, I was thinking about that question. So I don't think I had the traditional, in the traditional sense of the word mentor, as in a more senior individual kind of takes you under their wing and gives you career advice. But what I do think I had a lot of were peer mentors and so, not all mentors have to be more senior to you and kind of that model that we traditionally think about. I heard someone recently say that your peers are your greatest mentors, and I think that was the case for me. I had many different kind of peer mentors over the years, whether they could have been colleagues that were working with me at the same firm. They included other peers that worked at other firms in the industry that I would go to with certain questions or if I just needed to kind of talk about; I was having a bad day or a bad stock call and just kind of needed someone to commiserate with or get advice around or you know, when I thought maybe I should look at other opportunities kind of going to them.

[00:16:59] Christina: So I would [00:17:00] say that my mentors were my peers. And I would really encourage people to think about mentorship that way. It doesn't have to be just kind of one model, it can come from a lot of different places. 

[00:17:10] Kiran: Thank you. That's very beautifully put. No, it's true. It is. And I guess if you could do it all over again, would you do anything differently or would you take the same path? 

[00:17:23] Christina: Yeah, I think. What I would do differently is I would've taken more risks. I think I was really risk averse, especially early on in my career, and I thought I was the kind of person that was gonna stay in a role as long as that role was there for me, whereas I don't always think I.

[00:17:41] Christina: I don't think you should move around constantly, but I do think you should be open to taking different risks, especially if you think maybe you've outgrown a certain role or you're not learning as much, or, your goals and ,your professional goals may evolve over time. But I think I was too risk averse and I wanted to kind of hang on to what I had, which was [00:18:00] pretty good, versus thinking about taking that risk that might have felt uncomfortable in that moment, because when you're young, that's when you have ample leeway to take those risks. One of our board members who is, Kim Lew, who's the CEO of the Columbia Endowment, she said it really well. She had a boss who let her fail upward and kind of her boss said, you can't make any mistake that, I'm paraphrasing here, but you can't make any mistake that I can't undo or I can't fix so feel free to take those risks, those professional risks and learn. And I think that's really empowering. And so I think finding those types of opportunities where you can take risks and you're not so scared to do that, that if you mess up you're scared to fail. I think that that's really important. So that's something that I would do. And also know your worth. So I think a lot of times I was very grateful for the opportunity, which I still am, but at, you have to kind of know your worth and the value that you're bringing to the table. And so if you feel like [00:19:00] that isn't being recognized fully, or there's opportunities to kind of get.

[00:19:04] Christina: More recognition for that or more appreciation of what you bring to the table. Feel confident in that because that you have to also acknowledge and be aware of what your value is. 

[00:19:14] Kiran: Right. And would you have any advice for going about getting this recognition?

[00:19:21] Christina: That's a good question, and I don't know that I did the best job of this in my career. I'm certainly still learning. I thought that if you just kept your head down and you did your job, that would result in automatic recognition. But that's definitely not the case. You do have to kind of make sure that people are aware of your contributions because they're all busy doing their jobs.

[00:19:41] Christina: They're, they probably have multiple people reporting to them. So one thing we tell our scholars is to first you have to perform, right? You have to be a performer, you have to be steeped in a culture of high performance yourself, but also take notes on kind of what you've done, you know, all of the things that you've accomplished, and then at the right moments, whether that's when [00:20:00] you're doing your self evaluation or you're having a talk with your manager, you can make sure that you bring those things up in those conversations because you have to be assertive in making people aware of what you've accomplished and not just assume that it will be recognized because you did it, which is not the case, it is not always the case.

[00:20:18] Christina: I think other things you can do are recognizing other people, not just yourself. People are worried about being self seeing, self-promotional, but kind of in the context of recognizing other people's work. I think naturally your involvement in those projects also comes to light. But yeah, I think that's something very important to do, even starting early on in a career.

[00:20:39] Kiran: Right. Thank you. And what's the best advice that you've ever received? It doesn't have to be career-wise. It could just be life advice. 

[00:20:49] Christina: Yeah, I would say don't worry too much. I mean, it's very contrite, but what I guess what, when I first started my job, I think I had just had a [00:21:00] really bad stock call. I. I was like, maybe a few months into the job, and I think I missed an opportunity and I was so scared that I was gonna get fired because I was working in a tough culture.

[00:21:12] Christina: It was a really very performance driven environment. And at the time, my boss, who was my manager, he said, What's the worst thing that's gonna happen? I was like, well the worst thing that's gonna happen is I could get fired and lose my job. And he's like, yeah, you'd go out and you would find another opportunity.

[00:21:28] Christina: That would be great. Obviously we don't want you to get fired, but always kind of think in that way is that if you're somebody that does their best and you are someone that does good work, that will be recognized over time. So don't be too scared about what might happen. I think you kind of just have to realize that even when things don't go the way that you had initially intended or the way that you'd planned out for your life, other o opportunities show up.

[00:21:56] Christina: There's always a plan B, which ends, which could end up being the best thing that [00:22:00] ever happened to your career. So the other thing is kind of don't plan too much. It's good to have a plan, but I think you have to also be open to the other opportunities that pop up when you're busy planning for your life.

[00:22:11] Christina: And sometimes those are the most fortuitous ones that end up being great for you to pursue. 

[00:22:19] Kiran: Yeah. Thank you. And my final question is, do you have any closing advice for girls who are interested in pursuing your specific career, and what advice do you have for building meaningful connections and collaborations?

[00:22:33] Christina: Yeah, so my first plug is apply for Girls Who Invest. I think it's a really great opportunity to have exposure to the industry, meet an amazing community of peers, mentors. It's really a great way for. Young people who are curious about the industry may not have, we don't require any kind of prior experience.

[00:22:54] Christina: It's open to women of all backgrounds, majors, experiences. So please think about [00:23:00] applying if you are a sophomore or the online program is also open to first years. The other thing is in terms of developing relationships, as I heard someone say once, is don't think about what other people can do for you.

[00:23:12] Christina: Think about what you can do for others. So it's all about kind of relationships at the end of the day, any kind of professional. Career is about relationships and investing is no different. So when you meet somebody and you wanna stay in touch with them don't just email them when you need something. Email them when you see an article that you think they'd be interested in and say, Hey, I thought of you. Or keep in touch, drop them an email and say, you know, I just wanted to drop you a short note, let you know how I'm doing in school. Or, I'm interviewing for this internship, even if it has nothing to do with what they're doing.

[00:23:42] Christina: Because I think those little things, Oftentimes it's the little things, as much as it is the big things that kind of make you memorable and help to kind of develop that relationship. So it's really about staying in touch with people and kind of thinking of ways to connect with them outside of when you need something from them.

[00:23:59] Christina: It's [00:24:00] just investing in them. And that goes for peers, that goes for more senior people. And just remember that your peers could be your greatest asset going forward in terms of that community. 'cause today they may be in the same boat as you, but you never know where life is gonna take you in the future.

[00:24:14] Christina: And I think those relationships are where I've seen really playing out in the future in terms of helping move advance you and maybe one day you can help them. But those, investing in those relationships is something that's really important. And that I wish I did. I did that early on, but I think I could have done even more of that early on.

[00:24:34] Kiran: Right. Well, thank you so much for joining me today.

[00:24:37] Christina: Thank you, Kiran, for having me. Really appreciate it.

[00:24:40] Kiran: Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of Woman Who Earn. I hope to see you next time.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit womenwhoearn.substack.com

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Kiran: Hi, my name is Kiran Bishop. I'm 17 years old and I became interested in finance freshman year of high school. As I became part of financial clubs, I realized that a great deal of the time I was one of, if not the only girl in the room. This feeling of being disconnected to everyone around me while simultaneously being in a room full of people is what inspired me to create this podcast. Women Who Earn. I created this podcast to help young girls like me gain knowledge and wisdom from industry professionals on topics ranging from how to break into finance, to how to deal with unique challenges posed from being a woman in the industry. It's important for me, and I hope that it is also important for you, that feeling alienated by a situation out of your control does not inhibit your motivation to pursue whatever you want.

[00:00:47] Kiran: This is Women Who Earn.

[00:00:50] Kiran: Today I will be joined by Shannon O'Mara. Shannon O'Mara is the Associate Director of Credit research at Loomis, Sayles & Company, [00:01:00] where she is also the senior analyst on the home construction and building materials industries. Additionally. In 2015, Shannon founded the Undergraduate Women's Investment Network, UWIN, a mentorship program whose mission is to inspire, develop, and recruit undergraduate students who are underrepresented in the investment management industry. In 2019, Shannon was recognized by InvestmentNews as a Woman to Watch honoree for her leadership, contributions, and impact in the industry.

[00:01:29] Kiran: She began her investment journey in 1993 and joined Loomis Sayles in 1998. Prior to Loomis Sayles, Shannon was a credit risk manager and lending officer at JP Morgan. She earned a BA in Economics from the University of Rochester and management certificates in finance and accounting. From the William E. Simon School of Business at the University of Rochester. She is a CFA charterholder. Thank you.

[00:01:59] Kiran: [00:02:00] Well, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate you setting aside time for this. And we should probably just jump right into this. First off, I feel like you should just go over your career trajectory and how you got to where you are today. 

[00:02:16] Shannon: Sure. Kiran, thank you so much for doing this. It's such important work that you're doing, so I'm delighted to help get the word out so we can get more women into finance. So, my name is Shannon O'Mara. I'm associate director of our credit research group at Loomis Sayles. I have been at Loomis for quite some time, and here I wear a couple different hats. I'm associate director, so I partner with our director of research in managing and leading the group globally. We have offices in Boston, in Chicago, and London and Singapore. I'm also a senior analyst, so I do have sector coverage for some consumer cyclicals. And I also manage our investment undergraduate Women's Investment Network program, which we refer to as UWIN and I can talk a [00:03:00] little bit more about that. But prior to Loomis, I was with JP Morgan, where I was there for about five years. I went through their training program, got credit trained, and then, ended up moving from New York to Boston. I graduated from the University of Rochester with an undergraduate degree in economics. 

[00:03:19] Kiran: Great. Well, thank you. Did you always think that you were gonna do something in finance or economics, or was that more sort of you decided in college that you wanted to major in it. 

[00:03:31] Shannon: So I may have shared with you earlier that I thought it was gonna be pre-med, which is just so completely laughable now knowing myself and what I currently do. I really liked sciences, so I thought, oh, this would be a good track for me, and then ended up taking a bunch of science classes and thinking, no, this is not my trajectory. But then I decided that, okay, maybe I'll be a math major. And I really liked my math courses and thought, no, I don't wanna be a professor. I'm not really sure what I could do with a math [00:04:00] degree at the end of this. So tried to figure out how I can combine some of the things that I liked and ended up taking a lot of finance, accounting, economics courses. And that's really how I ended up with that major. I would say coming out of school I had. Pretty much no idea what I wanted to do. I thought maybe I'd be an actuary. And because I was gonna be a math major, I did go down that path and I took an actuarial exam. I did an actuarial internship at an insurance company in the summer between my junior and senior year. Lovely people, great project, but thought again, this is not where I wanna go. I knew a couple things. One is, I liked finance. I liked thinking about investing. Those were the classes that I enjoyed the most. I also knew that I had a boatload of student loan debt that I needed to get a job that was gonna pay me well. So I ended up going to a career fair in New York City and I thought, let's just see how I can parlay this. And it was a bunch of investment banks and some [00:05:00] insurance companies and other financial institutions, and ended up getting in line with JP Morgan and, they liked my spiel, and before I knew it, I was interviewing with them and accepted into their training program. So that's kind of how I, I don't know if I stumbled into it, but I was able to identify some of those skills and areas of interest that I really liked and to see how I can actually leverage those into a career.

[00:05:21] Kiran: Yeah, I think that's very interesting. I think most people don't really know what they wanna do until they sort of just stumble upon a career that kind of seems fit for them and. I mean, I don't know 'cause I'm still in high school, but I feel like your career is very flexible and it's not like one thing that you're set in and you can always change.

[00:05:40] Shannon: Absolutely. And you know, when you're in school, you know, in high school you're concentrating on like getting good grades and taking AP exam and doing all your extracurriculars. So you get into college and you get into this good college, and then it's the same thing. It's all about like, How do I do well in school? What courses do I need to take so I can figure out what my major's gonna be? And I almost wish that college was [00:06:00] more than four years, 'cause I wish that students had time to really explore. But it seems like almost by the end of freshman year, it's like, okay, what course do I need to take so that I could take this course at my major and this major? And you're constantly thinking about checking off those boxes. And then when you get to your first job, you know you have to make the decision for your first job. And there's so much stress involved in it. And what I would say is like your first job's not gonna be your last. You know, you're gonna, maybe you'll fall in love with your first job. I am envious of those people who knew I'm gonna be a doctor, or I'm gonna go to law school, or, you know, I wanna be a biomedical engineer. Like, I don't even know what that means. I find that so admirable. I definitely was not one of those people. And I think, you know, if you're not one of those people, like your first job, you're gonna learn something from it. It may not necessarily be what you love, but I think with each job it's an opportunity to learn something about yourself. What do I like to do? What don't I like to do? I think about my daughter who did an internship this summer. It [00:07:00] was an electrical engineering internship. Great company, great people, had a wonderful experience, but she said, I'm pretty sure this is not what I'm gonna do for the rest of my life. And I was like, well that's great. So you can check that off the list. But she learned some things like, oh, I really like X, Y, and Z. So hopefully your next job you'll be able to do a little bit more of those things and bring you joy and less of those things that you find out, nah, not really interested in that.

[00:07:24] Kiran: Yeah, I think that's a very important thing that maybe is not talked about that much, where there's so much stress placed on like, oh, you need to be this when you grow up or you need to do this, this, this, and then as a result you'll get this great job that pays however much and whatever. There's so much, and I guess you get put in this box and we really need to just break out of it. Along the same topic of like your career and your trajectory, what moment are you most proud of in your journey?

[00:07:54] Shannon: It's hard to distill one moment over the course of 30 years. But I [00:08:00] would say, and this is gonna sound super simple, but when I look back on those things that I'm most proud of are those things that really took me outside of my comfort zone, which is really scary to do, right? To do something like go into the unknown. You know, I did something, when was this? This is probably a few years ago now. I did a podcast and it was with Candy O'Terry. The story behind her success, and I don't know if anyone knows Candy O'Terry, but she was this beloved radio voice in Boston for years, and she did a keynote and was facilitating a huge fundraiser that I went to. And someone introduced us and said, oh, you know, you should be on her podcast. And I was like, oh, that's really funny. Like her podcast is huge. And one of my colleagues said, look Shannon, you know, you just gotta do it. You gotta get comfortable being uncomfortable. And that has stayed with me for so long. So when I think back to. Those kind of defining moments in my career, and again, this might seem really simple, but it was finding a [00:09:00] mentor and at the time, like I didn't know this guy was a mentor, but it was when I was at JP Morgan and a few of us young women decided that we wanted to start a women's network. What the heck did we know about starting a women's network? But we did it and I dunno, there were like maybe eight of us. We got an advisor who was a more senior banker, a woman, and we were, we would host these town hall meetings with like very senior people. And here I was 20, I don't know 25. I had to facilitate this panel of three MD bankers and one of 'em, again, I didn't know it at the time, but I struck up a relationship with him and he would bring me into his office and he would have ask me those tough questions like, Shannon, what do you wanna do with your life? You know, what do you like to do? And he really helped define, you know, the trajectory of my career at a very young age where he helped plant some of those seeds. So I don't underestimate the value of mentorship. And if anyone asks me, like you, Kiran to reach out, [00:10:00] to get some time on my calendar, usually the answer is yes. And it's usually a lot of young women like yourself, but anyone who wants to, for a reason, I'm usually willing to have these discussions. And then I would say the second thing, that I'm really proud of is this Undergraduate Women's Investment Network, and our mission is threefold. It's to inspire, develop, and recruit underrepresented folks into investment management. And we do this through a mentorship program and internship program, and we provide professional development and technical skills that are needed to succeed in the industry. And I identify this as a need years ago when I was having difficulty finding a diverse slate of candidates for some of my junior research positions. And I was like, if I could just find these women and bring them into the office and show them that we exist and show them that this is a really rewarding career and it's a place where they belong and can contribute and add value and be respected, then maybe we can make a difference here. I've really underestimated the impact that that's had, not only [00:11:00] on the women who've been in the program, which is now close to 250. But also on my colleagues who support it pretty broadly, you know, they're getting something out of it as well. 'cause mentorship is usually a two-way relationship, right? The mentee is the one who's learning a lot, but it's also the mentor who gets something out of it as well. So I would say those couple of things, stepping outside of your comfort zone to do something that maybe you wouldn't necessarily think of doing. Kiran, looking back on it, when I do these things, Kiran I would say I, I'm never like, ugh, I wish I wouldn't have done that. I wish I wouldn't have put myself out there, because that's how you learn and grow. 

[00:11:34] Kiran: Yeah, I think that's a very important lesson to be learned. And I guess talk a little bit more about the difference between UWIN and maybe the program that you ran when you were at JP Morgan. I guess maybe lessons you learned at the first one and how it translated over to this one.

[00:11:52] Shannon: Yeah, so it's funny to think about. JP Morgan, and now it's been a long time since I've been there, so to draw any [00:12:00] comparisons to now might be a little bit unfair, but I do remember when I went into the analyst training program at JP Morgan, and even when I got to my group in Global Credit, I never felt like I was out of place. I never felt like a minority. I mean, JP Morgan did such an incredible job kind of creating a very diverse analyst class, and I never felt that I was one of a minority, and even when I went to Global Credit, there were four managing directors in the group. Two were men, two were women. My group was very diverse, ethnically, gender wise, but we wanted to start this network and, when I think about it, we didn't know what we were doing and we just really wanted to kind of meet people, network, get access to maybe more senior level folks in the organization. When we started we wanted a clever name for it. So we decided to name it WIN, which is the Women's Interactive Network, which was kind of dorky, but whatever. We went with the acronym of WIN. And [00:13:00] it's funny, I was looking recently at the JP Morgan website and they still have an employee resource group specifically for women. Now. It's been renamed, I think it's called Women on the Move. And the mission is very, actually, very similar to what we do for the UWIN program, which is to retain, develop, and advance women. We have a women's employee resource group at Loomis Sayles for Loomis Sayles. And I would say the mission is not quite identical, but very similar to that. So a lot of these things are sort of converging around the same thing, which is increasing representation in the industry. 

[00:13:30] Kiran: Yeah. What's your opinion on the overall gender gap in the in industry? Like why do you think it's there? Why do you think it's so big? Where do you think it starts? 

[00:13:39] Shannon: That's a good question and I wish I had an answer. I wish I had the answer so that we can go and solve the problem. And I've talked to a lot of undergraduate women about representation and you and I had this conversation about your investing club. You know, you're the only woman. And when I talked to all these undergraduates that have [00:14:00] participated in the UWIN program I ask the same question, what percentage of your class, your finance class, your accounting class, your corporate finance class, econometrics, whatever, it's what percentage of women. It's usually somewhere between 20 and 25%. So clearly something's happening before college. So you're experiencing in high school, maybe we need to go back to middle school. I don't know. But I have been involved in mentorship programs for high school students. There's an organization called Invest in Girls, not to be confused with Girls Who Invest, which is another very successful program. But I think representation matters. You've heard people say, if you see it, you can be it. And I think that it's uncomfortable to be the only woman in the room, like period. It is, I mean, I was talking to my daughter about it just, over the weekend where she's working in this internship and there's a lot of men, and she happened to be in one meeting where it was all women. She's like, wow, what a difference. Like, it just, I felt like I could let my guard down a little bit. It's just different. Like you can't explain it unless you've actually experienced that. [00:15:00] I think with investment management, which is the firm, the industry that I'm in, I do think that there are some, again, this is just talking to some of the students that I've talked to that they maybe confuse investment management with investment banking and look it, investment banking, its different connotations. Look it, I worked there, I had a very good experience, but, hopefully you're not watching like crazy, movies like Wolf of Wall Street and things like that, and all you think are, this sea of a trading room. But it's much more than that. Things have certainly changed, but even so, investment banking is not investment management. So I do think that is, part of it. Like, oh, no, no, no, I don't wanna go into banking. No, no, no. This isn't banking, this is investing. You know, this is a very different role than investment banking. So those are a couple things and I don't know if it's, we have to go back to high school, middle school to start changing some of these gender maybe there are stereotypes, but I think you know, what you're trying to do is great with this podcast. What I'm trying to do with UWIN is great and hopefully collectively we can start to make a [00:16:00] difference.

[00:16:01] Kiran: Yeah, I think, I personally think that it starts in high school and I think a very big reason I. Is probably some of those movies that you mentioned like Wolf of Wall Street, where they, like some of the guys, they'll watch the movies, they'll develop this idea of what it means to go into finance, and then the vibe that they create is hostile, I would say, or I don't know if that's the best word for it, but they definitely create like a hostile environment and like an unwelcoming one at that. It's not so fun if you're a girl.

[00:16:36] Shannon: Right. And I don't know if it's necessarily creating a hostile environment or the perception of it being unwelcoming because you are the only girl, or the only woman, or one of very few people in the room and it's, it can be uncomfortable. 

[00:16:50] Kiran: Right. And I know that, not many women go into investing, first of all. But as you progress throughout your years and throughout your [00:17:00] career, have you ever seen the pattern where women begin to leave the career, or leave the industry? Like as you progress in your roles? And do you have an idea of why?

[00:17:11] Shannon: So, you know, I guess I would leave that to, maybe some of the experts who study those things, like Deloitte has a big study on that, McKinsey has a big study on that. I think about my own experience at Loomis, have people just left the industry? I haven't really seen that. I mean, we've had folks that have gone to, say, competitors, maybe gone to business school, maybe gone to the sell side. You know, investment management's buy side, investment banking is, is sell side. And that's sort of normal and to be expected. And I think, maybe the bigger question is, why do women drop out of the workforce at a certain period of time? And I truly don't believe it's because they're less ambitious or less successful. That is definitely not the reason. I think back to when I first had kids, so I have two kids now, [00:18:00] and before, I think maybe when I was pregnant, I don't know where I found this book, but it was something like The Working Woman's Guide to Life or something like that. And there were three things that they said you needed to be a successful working mother. One was to have a very supportive partner. Okay. Check. Second was to have a supportive employer check, like good benefits, flexibility, et cetera. And then the third thing is excellent childcare so that when you are at work, you don't have to worry about what your child's doing. And I really focused on making sure that I had, obviously I was married and had to have had very supportive spouse and I would be the early person to work. So I would arrive at work at seven and then I would have to leave early. And I asked my boss, I'm like, look, I can't stay till 5, 5 30. I need to leave at four, whatever, because the train, my train schedule was such that . What I ended up doing is, the markets are the markets, if you don't finish your work and something's gonna happen the next morning when the market's open, like you better be ready for it. So, [00:19:00] you just do work from home after the kids went to bed and that's what you know, you would do to make it work. My employer was very supportive of this. And then excellent childcare. Like I had excellent childcare. I, we first used a daycare center and then I had an Andy once I had two kids and I just didn't have to worry about any of that. And those three legs of the stool are so important. It's not like you can have two. Or one, you literally have to have all three. So to me that was a non-negotiable. Obviously child bearing is a defining moment in a woman's life. Like she has to take leave, you know, she has a, she's having a medical event, you know, she has to take herself out of the workforce. But being able to openly provide that support to allow women a successful ramp back on is really, really important. But, it's frustrating to see the numbers as, you know, we've seen some of the McKinsey studies that as you go up from entry level, it's, the population as I know is 50 50. And in fact, when you look at university degrees and you probably, are gonna see this as you're starting to [00:20:00] apply to colleges. When you look at the diversity statistics, it's more women, they're in college than men, and I think it's something like 55% of undergraduate degrees today are given to women. So they're becoming, a greater portion of the educated population. And not to say you have to go to college to get a job, but it certainly is one statistic out there that you would think that as you continue to go through an organization that it should be equal representation and it's not. So I think programs like UWIN and some things that you're doing to shed a light on this will certainly help to make a difference collectively. 

[00:20:32] Kiran: Yeah, I agree. I mean, there's not really much else to say besides for that being a mother, in addition to also being part of the workforce is a different sort of struggle that many men don't have to go through. And yeah, you do need that sort of support if you wanna also be successful. Many women maybe don't have that sort of support, or they only have two out of the three legs of the [00:21:00] stool. That kind of hinders their ability to continue in the workforce. Continuing on the topic of women in the workforce. Is it the case that, or do you think it's the case that most of the times women support each other in the workforce? Or is it like as you progress, it becomes more competitive and because of the lack of diversity and there's sort of like this toxic environment that begins to grow. And I know that you have these sorts of programs that are very supportive, but I mean like on a person to person basis.

[00:21:39] Shannon: So I would say supportive. Absolutely. I see, at my organization, women Supporting women very openly. And at the end of the day, we need more women. We need more representation. So we need diversity of thought, experience. Gender is one component of that clearly. But I have observed nothing but [00:22:00] women supporting each other, cheering each other on celebrating our successes. And I think we've evolved. We think about managing your brand, like what do you wanna be known for? Right? You wanna be known for my investing acumen, my research recommendations, and part of your personal brand is what do people say about you when you're not in the room? Right? I try to make it a practice, whether it's a man or a woman, to talk about all the good things that X, Y, Z is doing when they're not in the room. To shine a light on that, you know? 'cause I want more women. I wanna be a proactive advocate of that. I don't wanna be shunning people. I don't wanna be saying they're less than, I welcome those people and I think together we can be more successful than trying to say, oh, well there's only room for one woman or two women. No, that's not the case. If you're in an organization that values diversity, then this is something that will be supported. Like my company, we have a lot of diversity programs. We have a lot of employee resource groups that, that service [00:23:00] different populations of the company. When I think about the UWIN program, the Undergraduate Women's Investment Network program, when I rolled it out, like what did I know? Like I'm this, research person trying to do this diversity program. And I remember going out to my first college thinking like, what if we build this and nobody comes. Well, they came and then I was a little concerned like, well, I need colleague support. Like I need 40 mentors like now. And the response from my colleagues, both men and women, I. In some cases more men, because we tend to have more men in the organization than women raising their hand. And I had more mentors than I had students, and then I would have some mentors that would say, oh yeah, I wanna be a mentor again the next year. And then we'd have new people who would raise their hand, and then the returners or the folks who had been a mentor the year before, they're like, wait, I just saw the list come out. Why? Why did I get a student? I want a student. I'm like, well, that's great. Like we have to take turns here. And most people, whether you're a [00:24:00] man or woman, doesn't matter. Like they remember being. 22, 23, 24 in college. 19 thinking, trying to figure out the world, like what do I wanna be when I grow up, and how do I utilize my skills and interests to translate that into a career? And my colleagues say, gosh, I wish I had somebody like that I could talk to. Yes, I support this. And they support. They're like, yeah, absolutely. We want more women, in the organization. We want more representation. So I would say, at least for me, people who talk to me and maybe they say things to other people, but I can only judge it from the response that I receive and the interaction and engagement that I have with my colleagues and women alike. This is a forum that we use to shine a light on the need. And then also we have an employee resource group specifically for women. And their mission is to sort of help retain and develop as well. So they're collectively working together. It's mostly women that are part of this network to provide professional development, communications, [00:25:00] training, access, panel discussions, community outreach. I mean that these are just ways that women are supporting women universally. 

[00:25:10] Kiran: Right. And, continuing or focusing more on your UWIN program, is there anything that you would've done differently or like anything that you've learned that going forward might be helpful? 

[00:25:24] Shannon: So I would say thinking back, and this goes back to like my JP Morgan days, and I'll never forget when I was in our first. Group meeting, meeting with our managing director, and there was a bunch of us around the table and there was a colleague sitting right next to me who was in my training class, and I was nervous, scared, just don't say anything. Just write some notes down, like just, keep to yourself, speak when spoken to kind of thing. It was literally like the first meeting and she's raising her hand, contributing things and I'm like, get a [00:26:00] load of this. Oh my gosh, I can't. And not that I was like, how dare she? It was sort of like, wow, how brave. I wish I could be brave like that. I wish I could use my voice like that. And I wish so nervous. I was nervous of saying the wrong thing. I was nervous and like, oh, I'm gonna say something stupid, or I don't know. A hundred percent of the answer. I only know 99.9% of it. So clearly I'm not gonna say anything. And once I got outta my comfort zone and started doing that a little bit more, it builds confidence. And confidence begets confidence. I just wish that I would've found my voice sooner. And I know that's, it's, it's not necessarily a tangible thing like, oh, what do I wish that I would've done? I just wish that I could have. Developed that voice, develop that confidence so that I could be more engaged; showcase that I knew what I was talking about, 'cause I think for a long time when you're a student, it's all about getting the grades, putting your head down, getting the marks, getting the aps, getting the National Honor Society, like you have all these accolades and they speak for [00:27:00] themselves. And that's true for sure. But at some point, you need to start speaking up and letting people know, like, I've done this, I can do this. And letting people know the value that you bring to the table, not just letting your work speak for itself, because yes, your work speaks for itself for sure, but you have to be your own advocate as well.

[00:27:19] Kiran: Right. Do you have any advice for someone who wishes to find their voice or any tips?

[00:27:27] Shannon: Well, first of all, I would say practice. We have communications coaches that we work with third parties, and they are invaluable. A lot of what I do as an analyst is just communicating my investment ideas, whether it's in writing or in presentations. But if you're looking to become an effective communicator, practice your elevator pitch. Everyone should have an elevator pitch, like when you get on that elevator. And someone says, oh, hi Kiran, how's it going? What are you working on? Or what's keeping you busy these days? Or, oh, you just joined, tell me about yourself. You're like, what do I say? Be prepared, you know, [00:28:00] be prepared for when those things happen. And I would say be brave. I just wish that I could have been braver and part of it was maybe I was in classes with a lot of men and they have deeper voices and. I also have three older brothers that would always talk over me at the dinner table, which drove me nuts. That has something to do with it too, but practice. Just practice getting outside of your comfort zone. 

[00:28:23] Kiran: Yeah, I think that's some very great advice. What's the best advice you've ever received? 

[00:28:30] Shannon: Oh, gosh. So best advice I've ever received. Hmm. So part of is advice and then part of it I think is just observations that I've made. And they're really twofold, and they kind of go together. Yeah, maybe they go together, but about building relationships and listening. I think these are universal themes, but when I think about my own role as an analyst, like as an [00:29:00] analyst, you are called upon to be the expert about. Your industry, the companies, the investment recommendations that you're making, like you are constantly like telling people what they should be thinking, right? And it takes a while to build up that expertise. And then when you transition to being, or at least when I transition to being a manager and a leader, I. Guess what? I didn't have all the answers in the room. I wasn't the expert, so I had to surround myself with people who know more than I did, which is humbling, especially when you come from a certain perspective. And not to say that I knew everything I was to know. Certainly I didn't, but I was an expert at my area of expertise, and now I was being asked to do something completely new, and I really had to work on listening and reaching out to people and listening rather than doing all the talking rather than saying like, oh, I have all the answers. And I guess with that is, is the value of relationships. And this cannot be underestimated. And I find that, your generation or the millennial generation, who grew up on technology, they're [00:30:00] very comfortable communicating over an electronic platform, whereas business gets done in relationship with each other. So I will never forget, this was years ago and I asked an associate saying, oh, can you call the trading desk and ask them whatever bond is trading. And his response is, oh yeah, I'll send them a message. And I said, no, no, no. Pick up the phone and call him. And he was kind of annoyed a little bit, but after the third time of saying this, he kind of came around finally and said, I'm really glad you pushed me to do that. And I said, yeah, because you have to form a relationship with this person because you're gonna be recommending a bond to them, and they wanna get comfortable with who you are, that you know what you're talking about, that they can rely on you. You're smart, you know that you've got the information that they're looking for. So it's an opportunity to make that impression. And I think building relationships is just super important. And sometimes you have to be strategic about it, but also whoever you end up meeting. 'cause you just never know when you're gonna be in a position where you might need somebody's help or you might be in [00:31:00] a position to help somebody else. So I'm not sure if those are necessarily like advice, but they're probably things that I've learned along the way that have been really helpful in serving me in my career.

[00:31:12] Kiran: Well, thank you so much for your time. My final question is, do you have any closing advice or ideas for girls who are interested in pursuing your specific career, and advice you have for building meaningful connections and collaboration?

[00:31:32] Shannon: So for girls who are interested in finance, I would say be curious and reach out to people so you can really, truly understand what it's like. Part of it is being brave. Part of that is getting outta your comfort zone, utilizing your network. Like look it, my mother was an accountant at a university and my father was in the Army. I had zero perspective, zero, coming into [00:32:00] this. So I really encourage people, young women in the UWIN program to have informational meetings, talk to people about what it is that they do, and I advise them to just reach out to people, get connected, and be prepared for that meeting; be prepared for that discussion. And I would say there's a few crucial questions you should be asking of somebody. And it doesn't matter if it's finance or another industry, another role, whatever it might be. But please explain what it is that you do. What is your, there's no average day, I recognize that. Like, describe an average week, like who are you talking to? What are you doing, what are you producing? And then I ask like, can I see an example of that? Like if it's not proprietary, but like, what does that look like? And then I ask you like, why do you like what you do? Like what brings you joy about this? Like obviously I'm spending a lot of my hours at work with people, spending way more hours with my people at work, doing work than with family, friends, et cetera. And it, and I've done it for a long time. [00:33:00] So what brings you joy? And then I say like when I look at investment management, I could be a trader, I could be a portfolio manager, I could be a strategist. You know, I am not one of those things because of X, Y, and Z. So what brings you joy? And then, to make it more tangible, like, okay, so what's your secret sauce? Like, what does it take for you to be successful? Like, what are those skills, those tangible skills, attributes, characteristics that you need to be successful? So then you can really paint a picture because when you just get Investopedia or the Vaults, the career guide, you're reading this, you're like, it's a little bit of gobbledygook. Like you're just like, I can't understand what this means. But to talk to somebody who's really in it and to delve a little bit deeper, get curious and find out what it is that they're doing, and hopefully you're gonna find something with somebody that resonates with you. Like, oh, I could totally see you doing that. That sounds super cool. Or, oh yeah, I really like coding as well, and I didn't realize I could use it to do X, Y, Z, whatever it is. That [00:34:00] process of getting curious and meeting people, and it's called networking, and people think like, oh, networking, ah, it's really scary and I gotta go to a networking event, and you gotta prepare. Like everything is about being prepared, but networking is something that we do. It's a lifelong skill that you have to just start developing and keep going because the network, once you start to build it, is something to be nurtured. Otherwise it's gonna die in the vine. So, it kind of goes back to that building of relationships that we talked about earlier. But don't be afraid to ask those questions. I wish I didn't have as much fear as I did back then, and sometimes I'll, and look, now I use my stupidity to my advantage sometimes because I'll be talking to management teams, like, I don't understand what you're talking about., Can you understand, how this flows to your income statement, like, Help me understand this. It's the first time I'm looking at this like, I'd much rather be honest and upfront at the beginning and you can say like, look, this might be a stupid question, but this is why I'm asking it. I'm trying to really understand something. As I say to young analysts, I'm like, use your stupidity to your advantage, which is not necessarily a criticism, [00:35:00] but it's that message of just being curious, like trying to get your questions answered. 'cause the last thing you wanna do is, if I'm having a conversation with you and I tell you what's going on, you say, oh, okay, thanks. And then you walk away and you're like, I have no idea what she was just talking about. Like, for me, I'm like, I'm cool, we're good. She understood it, but it's really up to you to make sure that you understand the information that's being presented. So, A little bit of rambling there, but those are some things that I certainly share with some of the folks in the UWIN program and some of the more junior analysts that join us.

[00:35:29] Kiran: Well, I think that was some really invaluable advice, and thank you so much for joining me today.

[00:35:35] Kiran: Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of Woman Who Earn. I hope to see you next time.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit womenwhoearn.substack.com

Transcript:

Kiran: Hi, my name is Kiran Bishop. I'm 16 years old and I became interested in finance freshman year of high school. As I became part of financial clubs, I realized that a great deal of the time, I was one of the only girls in the room. This feeling of being disconnected to everyone around me was while simultaneously being in a room full of people is what inspired me to create this podcast: Women Who Earn. I created this podcast to help young girls like me gain knowledge and wisdom from industry professionals on topics ranging from how to break into finance, to how to deal with unique challenges posed from being a woman in the industry. It is important for me, and I hope that it is important for all of you, that feeling alienated by a situation out of your control does not inhibit your motivation to pursue whatever you want. This is Women Who Earn.

[00:00:47] Kiran: Today on Women Who Earn, we will be joined by Maya MacGuineas a renowned economist. Maya MacGuineas is the president of the bipartisan Committee for a responsible federal budget. [00:01:00] Her areas of expertise include budget, tax, and economic policy. As a leading budget expert and a political independent, she has worked closely with members of both parties and serves as a trusted resource on Capitol Hill.

[00:01:14] Kiran: MacGuineas testifies regularly before Congress and is published broadly, including regularly in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Atlantic, and numerous other outlets. She also appears regularly as a commentator on tv. MacGuineas oversees a number of the committee's projects, including the grassroots coalition, Fix the Debt, the Committee's Fiscal Institute, and FixUS, a project seeking to better understand the root causes of our nation's growing divisions and deteriorating political system, and to work with others to bring attention to these issues and the need to fix them. Her most recent area of focus is on the future of the economy, technology, and capitalism. Previously, MacGuineas worked at the Brookings Institute and [00:02:00] on Wall Street. In the spring of 2009, she did a stint on the Washington Post editorial board, covering economic and fiscal policy. MacGuineas serves on a number of boards and is a native Washingtonian.

[00:02:11] Kiran: Thank you again for joining me. 

[00:02:13] Maya: Sure. Happy to. 

[00:02:16] Kiran: I guess, we can get started. I mean, I feel like first maybe just give an overview of like sort of your career trajectory maybe and how you got to where you are today.

[00:02:27] Maya: Sure. So I've run the Committee for Responsible Federal Budget for about 20 years, and it's a group that's bipartisan very important to me because I'm a political independent and it focuses on fiscal responsibility, which is an issue I'm passionate about, because I think it underlies all of the other economic and budgetary issues that we have in our country. So I think being fiscally responsible is really, really important. how did I get here? So after college had a big decision to make, whether to take a job at the Brookings Institution as a research [00:03:00] assistant or go to London and work in a pub, and it was very, very close, but I went with the Brookings Choice. And I thought that being a research assistant was really one of the best first jobs I could have because basically they paid me to learn new things. So I absolutely loved that. I wanted to then take that research knowledge and apply it in the private sector. So I went and worked in Wall Street for a few years, and while I was there, it's where that's when I discovered this issue, I became very, very fascinated with how, bond markets, stock markets and the things going on in New York City related to public policy and the things going on outside of Washington and why they seemed so disconnected. So I learned all about budget deficits. I even wrote a book, but they ended up bouncing the budget before it could get published. And from there it was just kind of this group came along. I was gonna start my own organization actually doing this, and this group already existed and their founder and CEO was stepping down, so they came and recruited me to run the group. I've been doing it ever since and, it's kind of a dream job.

[00:03:59] Kiran: Well, thank you. That [00:04:00] sounds really interesting. I mean, did you ever, I mean, I guess imagine in high school that you were gonna sort of grow up and get super interested in like economics?

[00:04:11] Maya: That's a good question. I didn't, in high school, I don't know how it is for you, but we didn't have economics classes. And so I didn't study it. Then actually what happened was I went to college and I was a math major or mathematical methods in the social sciences to be specific, and after about two of the three quarters, I was on the quarter system, I realized it's too much math for me. Like I couldn't get my head around it anymore. And so from there I switched into economics, which I loved. I think it's just a really useful way to look at the world and. Not even that. I love it so much. I think everybody needs to study some economics. There's a lot of emphasis on different policies and people wanting to do really good things in the world, but without an understanding of economics, I think it can tend to fall short. So I think it's a necessary thing for everyone to study, and I found it [00:05:00] so interesting. I really liked it. I did double major. I also studied psychology because I wanted to understand both how. People worked and how markets worked and kind of combined the two. 

[00:05:10] Kiran: Thank you. I mean, I think Sidwell has sort of changed a little bit. I mean, now there is an economics class. 

[00:05:15] Maya: There is. Oh wow. 

[00:05:17] Kiran: But it's a history of economics class that you can only take as a senior if you somehow get slotted into it. And it's a semester long course. 

[00:05:25] Maya: But that sounds like a really thing. Interesting thing to get to study. So I'm glad they have something on it. Yeah.

[00:05:30] Kiran: Yeah. But then it's like, some kids drop history class after junior year because they want to double up in another class, so I'm not gonna be able to take it next year because it's also one of the most popular classes. So no one ever gets slotted into it.

[00:05:44] Maya: Yeah, well there's lots of time in college for economics. Yeah. And there's lots of good books to read. 

[00:05:49] Kiran: Yeah, I'm interested in studying it, but like you, I'm also very interested in studying math, so we'll see. 

[00:05:55] Maya: Yeah, the math. The math is a lot. I loved my Sidwell math, that's for sure. 

[00:05:59] Kiran: [00:06:00] Yeah, me too. It's why I like math so much.

[00:06:03] Maya: But actually when I was there, they started a new program where a number of us took math twice a day, and I thought that was awesome.

[00:06:10] Kiran: Yeah. It's really fun. Yeah, I mean, I was trying to double off in math senior year with this one specific course, but then not enough people signed up so it wouldn't run. But I'm taking another math class instead, so I'm still happy.

[00:06:22] Maya: Good, good. 

[00:06:23] Kiran: Yeah. , I mean, what moment are you most proud of in your like whole, entire journey? I guess from maybe graduating college all the way up until now. 

[00:06:33] Maya: Oof. That is quite an interesting one to think about. You know, the things that I've most liked and been most proud of is coming up with some of my own ideas and writing about them, usually for op-eds. So one of the things I learned to do while I was at a second think tank called New America Foundation was write a lot of op-eds on different ideas. And I find it's a great way to kind of succinctly describe anything from my head. An idea on how to make private [00:07:00] accounts as part of social security in a progressive way to why the traditional thinking about marriage bonuses and marriage penalties and the tax code was wrong to, different ways to reform tax breaks, to help raise new revenue, lots of different ideas, and getting to write about them both as op-eds and, I've written a couple articles in the Atlantic. I always found those really satisfying. Probably my most interesting moments are when I go off on special learning projects and want, like right now, like everybody else, I'm obsessed with ai, so I'm spending a lot of time studying and learning more about ai. I've done a little presentation that's really just for myself, but just to think through all of the thoughts I'm having on the topic and I'm gonna go take a class at MIT on it. So I think the things that make me proudest have been that even when you have a career in one area, you can keep learning other areas and that I've really enjoyed.

[00:07:51] Kiran: Right. Yeah. I think, I guess life long learning is something that's very important and just never really disappears no matter what [00:08:00] specific industry you go into. 

[00:08:01] Maya: It's really well put and it's gonna be more important because the pace of change is so much faster than it ever used to be. But it's also important just on a personal level, to stay satisfied in your work, to have something that's really fulfilling. Definitely. That is not, oh, I know how to do everything, and now I can do it really easily. It's, how do I keep finding new challenges? 

[00:08:18] Kiran: Right. And I guess, even though I assume that you're pretty fulfilled with your work at this point, has there ever been a moment where maybe you have felt intimidated from being like the only woman in the room or from being maybe from feeling like you are looked down upon or that you're underestimating?

[00:08:39] Maya: You know, it's a really good question and people have such different takes on it. I am not someone who gets particularly affected, like I am in a field that is almost all male do dominated. It really is. And so even when I host things, I try to figure out where I can, you know, make a really good, diverse group. And I do this great job on diversity [00:09:00] of, ideology or politics. Like, everything I do is very bipartisan, but it's almost always male dominated. And so honestly I don't even notice it that much. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it or worrying about it. There are times that people make assumptions and you just go in and you know you're gonna disprove it. Like if it's on the budget, I'm gonna be able to talk about the issue. It's what I've been doing for decades and I know it inside and out. And so, I look at it as motivation more than anything else. But I also try not to get too caught up in worrying about the gender breakup and just like, it's the quality of the work. It's the quality of work and how you surround yourself by the absolute smartest people you can in any field that you're working in. And, you know, I hope more women will get into economics and finance and budgeting. One of the reasons I probably was drawn to go to Wall Street back then as my, as a young 24 year old was I didn't think enough women went to Wall Street, so that kind of drove me. But once I'm there, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it. I just [00:10:00] kind of think about what it is that we're doing and trying to accomplish and, and very feel very motivated by that. 

[00:10:05] Kiran: Right. I think that's a very interesting perspective that, I guess a lot of women who are in very male dominated industries hold because I feel like it's sort of a perspective that you have to take on if you're willing to, or if you're going to maybe not survive, but thrive in one of these industries. Because I think it's very easy to get caught up in this idea of being like underestimated. And then that in turn, might, you know, make you have a lack of confidence in your own abilities, which sort of maybe will mess you up in the long term. 

[00:10:37] Maya: Some of the really standout women in this field, Janet Yellen, Alice Rivlin, bell Sawhill, all of them were really kind of trailblazers because they rose to the top in an era when not that many women did. And when I talked to them about it, it's not something they gave a lot of thought to. They just kind of put their nose down and worked probably three [00:11:00] times as hard as everybody else. They're super, super smart, but they didn't get caught up in the kind of like, Oh, this is so much harder. Cause I'm a woman, they just, they just, they did the work and they broke out and I think they're kind of inspiring for that. They're inspiring for a lot of reasons. 

[00:11:15] Kiran: Right. And I guess along the same vein, do you maybe have any ideas for how to encourage more women to get into the industry?

[00:11:21] Maya: Let's see. It's interesting. My daughter right now is off studying finance. She's a high school student also studying finance and economics. And I think that came from both her father and I being in that field. So, and from talking about the issues, I think we have to make sure, certainly you have to avoid sexism in the educational system where you don't expect that girls wouldn't want to go into these fields. And I think it comes from probably focusing on how we teach everybody and make sure that those of us who are kind of having impact on people aren't going in with any assumptions that link gender to what fields you might be interested in. Then, I think it also come from within where people just find [00:12:00] something they love and they're driven. For me, I was never, ever given the impression that it would be something I wouldn't do as a girl or a woman. I remember that like from the youngest time at Sidwell, I had teachers who encouraged me on math all the time and never entered my mind that it would not be fields that girls would go into. And that's probably what made the most difference, both parents and teachers who never, ever even discussed that it would be a problem. So we just, I just assumed I could do anything I wanted. 

[00:12:29] Kiran: Right. I think that's a very important thing to have, to have all this like environmental support from everyone around you. I think it makes a very big difference, especially even now, like with me being in high school, I feel the support around me and I feel like if I didn't have it, I might have a different outlook on all this stuff. Maybe what I want to do in the future or this sort of things I'm interested in now.

[00:12:53] Maya: It's so interesting because I think that we probably talk about gender much more now than we did when I was growing up, and I don't know whether that's gonna make [00:13:00] it easier or harder for girls to assume they can break into things, because I worry that too many times people hear how sexist it is out there. And quite frankly, I bumped into much, much less sexism than I would think that I would have. From the descriptions I hear these days, it's not something I encountered very often at all.

[00:13:19] Kiran: Right. Yeah. I feel like there is a lot more talk about sexism and even now, like at Sidwell, there's an investment club and my personal opinion is that a large reason that a lot of girls don't really join the club is because they hear about how there's this giant lack of diversity. And since everyone's talking about sexism so much more, they feel a lot more intimidation than maybe they would if it wasn't pointed out in the first place.

[00:13:44] Maya: I, that's what I wonder. I mean, I don't wanna jump to an assumption, but I wonder if it, this well-intentioned focus on how important it is that we get girls and women more engaged, which is a hundred percent true. But I wonder if it isn't almost backfiring in some ways of pushing people away from where they would've gone if they'd never given a thought [00:14:00] about it being something that girls didn't do. 

[00:14:03] Kiran: Yeah, I think it's a very interesting conversation to be had, even though the best way to maybe trailblaze in an industry with a lot of men is to just kind of keep your head down and work very hard. Did you ever have a mentor in the industry who kinda supported you throughout?

[00:14:20] Maya: You know, I didn't, I don't know if I have mentors cause I don't know if they would call themselves mentors. I have people who I looked up to massively. And one of the things that I have found the most helpful in my career is to see someone who's doing either a job I want to do or acting the way they, acting in the world the way I wanna act and just be able to watch them. There have been three of them. They were all parts of my board of directors here, Bill Frenzel and Alice Rivlin, who have both since died. And Leon Panetta, who's still alive, but they've all been on my board and watching the three of them sort of similar. Um, watching people who, one, they, they were always very good to me [00:15:00] and have to put their trust in me and also been able to tell me kind of politely when they think I could be doing better on things. And I like, I like feedback and I like negative feedback cause it allows you to get better, but they also do it very diplomatically, which has always been, a useful skill to look at. But they're all people who have big commitment to issues in a way that's principle based, have a real humility in understanding that their point of view isn't the only one that matters, even though they have a very strong point of view, treat people incredibly decently, even though they all rose to kind of the top ranks. Incredibly successful. Always, always so decent to all the people they work with, and really, really smart. Really, really hardworking. So really, I think watching them and other people too, but, but three, those three stand out for me. Watching how they've conducted themselves professionally and what they've accomplished and becoming friends with them have been the greatest things for me. Because what scares me is to walk into [00:16:00] a situation I've never seen before. Don't know what to expect, especially if I have a leadership role in it and know how to behave. But I can do anything the second time. Right, like throwing, and we have a big annual event. The first time I threw it, it was terrifying. The second time I know how to do it. Big speeches, big conferences. The second time around was always easy. So having people I admire to watch and kind of try to emulate in different ways, that's been the most inspiring and helpful thing for me. So I feel like they, they inspired me. I don't know if they would say they were my mentors, but I look to them as the people I've really, really admired along the way, and it's been incredibly in, it's been invaluable. Helpful. 

[00:16:35] Kiran: Right. Yeah. I think it's also very important, even if you don't have a mentor to have sort of, I guess an idol or someone that you can. 

[00:16:44] Maya: Yeah. Well, here's a story. I was working maybe at Brookings first, one or two jobs. And there was a guy, Gene Sterling, he's also my board now, who was very politically independent, knowledgeable in tax and budget policy, wrote great books, easy to read. And I called him up outta the blue and I said, [00:17:00] so this might sound weird, but I wanna be you when I grow up, could I take you to lunch? And he very, very kindly said, yes. And it's people like that, especially in Washington. I think there's a lot of that, but once you see somebody who's doing something that you think you'd like to do, that to me has been a great way to build my career. I used to have, One, three and five year plans. None of them ever worked out. Nothing ever went according to plan. So I dropped that. I might still have some, and they still don't work out. I kind of find them comforting, but they, they don't usually happen because the real trick is being open for opportunities when they come along. Knowing when to take risks and knowing when something's too risky and you shouldn't, don't, don't eff with happy is another thing I call. I just, it's in our family, it's in our job, but if you're happy, don't always walk away from that cuz that that's a pretty good sign. But I think knowing who the people I admired and having that, be able to help me figure out what jobs I wanted was really great, and so picking up that phone and asking [00:18:00] someone if you could take them to lunch, it worked for me really, really well with Gene Sterling.

[00:18:05] Kiran: Yeah, I think that's also a very interesting story. Like I think it requires like a lot of confidence to just be able to call someone up, especially so early in your career. 

[00:18:14] Maya: I mean, confidence might be a nice way to describe like stupidity. It was probably something, and there are a lot of things I did that I didn't know better. And so I even got some jobs by calling up CEOs of Wall Street banks. I would call the head of the bank and ask for a job and they answered the phones back in those days and then they'd send me to the right people. But that's how I got interviews at all sorts of firms. So sometimes I didn't, just didn't know what I should have known. That's not always a good thing. 

[00:18:38] Kiran: It worked. 

[00:18:39] Maya: That could be a bad thing. It worked in those instances. There's also probably some pretty bad stories. 

[00:18:44] Kiran: Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess maybe it's a little different now, but I think it's still a very interesting way to go about your career or go about getting things that you want or, you know, discovering things that you're interested in.[00:19:00] Sort of along the same vein, throughout your career, is there anything that if you could do differently, you would've done?

[00:19:09] Maya: Hmm. It's hard to say because I do kind of look at life as all the mess ups, all the things that are terrible, all the tragedies, traumas, challenges are what bring you to where you are. And I'm super, super happy. So it's hard for me to say that I have any regrets. There are a lot of specific things that wouldn't make interesting stories, but on, on policy things where. I made the wrong call, did the wrong thing. If I could go back, I would have used a different strategy, knowing now what I knew then. I think managing a team of people, which is very different than being a spreadsheet analyst, which is what I always was, has proven to be one of the bigger challenges. So I probably would've gone and taken some leadership and management classes. I think a lot of things in the world they let you do without studying how, I can't believe they let me be a parent without making me take parent classes. So it's the same kind of thing, but honestly, I [00:20:00] think. One of the best skills I've been able to develop for myself is doing my best out of every time I screw up and make a mistake, which is a lot, using it as a learning experience. And one of the things I've tried to teach my kids and other people is if you'll make so many mistakes, what you have to do is go and really apologize to whoever you made it to take responsibility for it and vow that you're gonna learn from it. And then it's hard to, then, it's hard for anybody to be too upset about it because we all, we really, we make mistakes every single day. But taking the time to think about what you would've done differently is really helpful. So too many to tell. None of them would be that interesting cuz they're specific to the moments and just making the wrong call. But, using them as a way to learn and strengthen along the way can be very helpful. And it, it helps take the sting out of every time you make a mistake as well. 

[00:20:55] Kiran: Yeah, I would have to agree. I guess that's sort of the same way I look at [00:21:00] things I've done in the past. Maybe the sorts of mistakes I've made because it's, it's impossible to go back and change the past and so there's no real use. 

[00:21:07] Maya: Right. Ruminating on it just makes . You feel terrible. And the best, the best answer is, I won't do it again, or I'll make up for it by doing something great. And you use it to push you to wanna do something even better next time.

[00:21:19] Kiran: Right. And I mean, well this is, I guess this question is sort of similar, but I mean, what's the best advice that you've ever received? It doesn't have to be, you know, career wise or like anything could be. Like a perspective. 

[00:21:33] Maya: Easy. It's easy. My dad, who gave very little advice when we were all brought up, our parents were just kind of not paying attention. It was a different, different era. He just gave me one piece of advice and it was surround yourself by the smartest people you can find, and that's what I've done. The people who work with me are just the smartest people I ever could imagine. The jobs I've had along the way, I always like being like, you gotta not be scared to be the dumbest person in the room because that's how [00:22:00] you learn, but. Finding, finding the smartest people you can work with and also good, decent people. But that was the best advice. One thing my father ever said, well, when I was doing really badly in college, he told me to try not to flunk out and to shape up. That was also decent advice, but the most important thing in the long run was surround yourself by the smartest people you can find. It makes work just so exciting.

[00:22:21] Kiran: Yeah, and I agree, and I guess there's so much to learn from someone who's, I guess, so smart. 

[00:22:27] Maya: And smart is in lots of different ways. I mean, we have people here who are the smartest number, numbers, people you ever meet. But the other thing that you don't realize until you're really working is what strategy really looks like in a job. But there are people here who are so good at helping to run an organization thinking about how to position ourselves, what the right thing to do to get a certain outcome, are so smart, comes in all sorts of shapes and forms, and being able to put together teams where they compliment each other is also really useful. Yeah. And surrounding yourself with people who are good at the things you're not good at.

[00:22:58] Kiran: Right. [00:23:00] Yeah, I agree. I would have to agree with that. My closing question is, I'm gonna sort of come back to the theme of empowering the future generation of women, so, I mean, do you have any advice for girls who are interested in pursuing the career that you're in or doing this?

[00:23:18] Maya: Ah, I absolutely do. And I, and I think, I think it's more advice to girls who are interested in pursuing lots of different careers. It doesn't apply just here, but it's two-sided. So the first thing is do the work, work so hard, go deep, really learn these issues, whichever they are. Pick something new that other people aren't studying. The reason that my career has been so satisfying to me is I found an area I absolutely loved federal budget. But not that many people were working on it. So I was able to really help an organization that, that had been around Blossom and get bigger and have us stand out and figure out how to position it. But that was all from really doing the work and learning the issue, and I spent a summer before I went to graduate school, reading every single thing I could, [00:24:00] writing that book that I wrote, just digging down, nobody was paying me. It was just on my own. Learned the issue really well, and then applied everything I was doing in graduate school to that. But the flip side is, Once you become an expert, and I put it this way because you shouldn't do this before, you've really built your expertise. You don't wanna be young, I tell my kids this all the time, you don't wanna be so young and go push your ideas on people. Like, my son has an internship this summer and I, and we keep saying like, okay, what would you do differently? What do you think about the company? How are you learning things? But you never go and push your ideas until you really, really have a wealth of knowledge. But once you do, go share your best ideas. Go. Push your, don't push yourself. Try to get in those meetings. Try to sit at the table figuratively, not literally, but like try to be in the space. And I think my single best piece of advice for people who are starting out, look at what you wanna do. Look at the person who's doing it, and look at it from their position and figure out how you can help them. [00:25:00] So don't go into a room and say, this is what we're doing wrong. Go into a room and say, this is what we could do better. And everybody who's working is always desperate for somebody who can help them to improve the whole organization and operation. So really trying to be solutions based, but with the humility that you take the time to learn the issue really well. Think about how it's working, not just from your own perspective, but everybody's, and then go try to find solutions and offer how you can help. Play in them. Those for me, I've watched so many young people with meteoric rises because they've done that. So that wasn't, that wasn't like a bumper sticker advice, but I hope it was. If I were giving a bumper sticker, I would, I would guess, I would say is make solutions, not problems. Recognize problems, make solutions, something like that. 

[00:25:46] Kiran: I think that's very important advice that, like you said, can be apply very broadly, not just to, yeah. Maybe like your career, but also just like anywhere in life.

[00:25:57] Maya: And question things. I mean, just because things have been [00:26:00] done one way, there's always room to think about different ways to do them. Like I said, some of the things, the best things for me came out of not knowing how I was supposed to act or do it, but so did some of the worst things. So don't pursue that one too much. Try to apply it to the right situations. That's my advice. 

[00:26:17] Kiran: Well, thank you so much for joining me for this. I really appreciate it.

[00:26:22] Maya: Absolutely. So, so excited that you're doing it. I will look forward to hearing how your whole project goes. 

[00:26:27] Kiran: Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of Women Who Earn. I hope to see you next time.

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Transcript:

Interview with Jenny Tian

Kiran Bishop: [00:00:00] Hi, Ms. Tian thank you so much for joining me today. My first question is about your overall journey into finance. So, how did you get to where you are today?

Jenny Tian: I started my career in banking with Nomura after law school in Japan. I worked there for two years before I realized it was just simply impossible for me to make a career out of that as a foreign woman in a quintessential Japanese company. So I decided to make the move to the U S , got accepted into Baruch college with full scholarship and received an MBA in finance and investment in 1997. So in the summer of 1996, I interned, at Lehman brothers where, towards the end of the summer internship, I talked to, I remember it was dozens of [00:01:00] people for career advice and every single one of them said, Jenny, you should go to the buy-side. And I did. After working in New York for five years, as an analyst, an equity analyst and fund manager, I moved to Asia in 2002, exactly. 20 years ago. I spent my first eight and a half years in Beijing and followed by the next 11 years, in Hong Kong. So right now I'm living in Hong Kong.

Kiran Bishop: Thank you. That's really inspiring. I really love how you, decided to change career paths because you went through this realization that Japan just wasn't right for you, and you had the motivation to apply and get accepted and get an MBA. so what moments are you most proud of in your journey.[00:02:00]

Jenny Tian: I think there were a couple moments that I was most proud of. I think one of them was the time when Springs capital, the company that I, co-founded, successfully won the first Asia investment mandate from a Canadian pension plan investment board back in 2013 out of more than 80 contenders. And we were still a very small fund back then and competing up against the likes of the bulge bracket as a management firms from both Hong Kong and China. Yeah, it was a moment I'm still very proud of until today. Another moment that I felt proud of was the time I was awarded as the best female hedge fund manager in 2015 in recognition of my contribution to the Asian hedge fund industry.

Kiran Bishop: Wow, those seem like really big accomplish. Thank you so much. And I understand that you currently work in Asia. So how [00:03:00] has working in finance there compared to the working in finance, in the U S and in Japan, besides for those cultural differences

Jenny Tian: I think in terms of business practices, these three different places have different business practices, like, you know, different, security laws for sure. Different, business environment and the way people interact also is a little bit different. but I think there are some things that are in common. You know, working in these three countries, I think the, the principle of managing a business and running a fund is actually, pretty much this. Say like, you know, alignment of interests between the managers, with clients, for example, is all the same. So this is something that we should always stick to, you know, when it comes to alignment of interest between the managers and the clients. Also the fact that, [00:04:00] you know, people should be focused, persistent, you know, all these qualities is, you know, run the same unit with any culture in any country.

Kiran Bishop: Thank you and keeping in spirit. Are there any differences between. Working and operating in Hong Kong compared to mainland China like Beijing?.

Jenny Tian: I think Hong Kong, you know, it's probably, you know, the most, you know, Westernized city apparently, you know, in Greater China. Hong Kong is very westernized. Although, you know, we are Chinese, but, being a British colony for the past a hundred fifty six years, definitely, you know, left a mark, on the psyche of the Hong Kong people here. So I think the working environment is very westernized, but culturally, you know, we are all Chinese. I think the legal environment is also, you know, very different, in Hong Kong, you know, compared [00:05:00] to what we have in Beijing.

Kiran Bishop: Thank you. And, I understand that since now you work in Asia, this question doesn't really apply, but while you were working in New York, did being an Asian woman, working in finance, really pose any challenges that you had to overcome.

Jenny Tian: Well, I didn't really see myself particularly in that light. My first mentor on the buy side, was a female fund manager who really taught me how to rise up to the challenges in a male dominated world. On the buy-side I thing working as a front manager also helps us. Performance is the ultimate name of the game and is, I think is a lot less tricky than sell side investment banking, which is more relationship driven. So I think, you know, the fact that I have been working on the buy-side all this time, you know, also helps me put things in perspective. And I think if [00:06:00] it, if you work on the sell side, you know, in the investment banking world, you know, things might have been different.

Kiran Bishop: Thank you. That's a very interesting insight. my next question is sort of related. Has there any been, has there ever been a point in your career where you've been, oh, one of the few or the only woman in the room. And did that make you feel intimidated? How did you deal with that?

Jenny Tian: Oh, yeah. I remember when I was in a company visit a trip, a group company, visit trip with a Japanese, robotics company, where I was the only woman in the room, filled with, analysts, PMs and corporate executives. I think, Japan at the time, you know, was very much a male dominated corporate corporate world. And at first I felt a bit intimidated because I felt like, you know, I felt immediately singled out, but quickly I pulled myself together [00:07:00] and tried not to think of my gender and focus on my. I think it's just, you know, down to, you know, how you react. I think people will look at you in different ways.

I think it's up to yourself, you know, how you react to people's emotions.

Kiran Bishop: Thank you. I think that advice can be applied to many different facets of life. And I understand that finance is a very demanding profession. So my next question is about how work-life balance differs for a man in comparison to a woman in the industry, since oftentimes women are expected to be, you know, the caregivers.

Jenny Tian: Oh, yes. I think, you know, my advice, is if you decide to stay in the industry long term, you should try to find a partner that supports you. I think I have friends who have very, very supportive spouses, which have made things a lot easier, I think it definitely, you know, our [00:08:00] society has different expectations about women, which is, normal and understandable, but I think, you know, If you would like to stay and work in the finance, longterm it's it's, it's, it's a, it's a demanding profession. So I think our supportive partner would be would be ideal.

Kiran Bishop: Thank you. And did you have a mentor in the industry who helped you?

Jenny Tian: Yes. As I mentioned, you know, when I first started out my fund manager I think, you know, she taught me a lot of things, you know, as to how to deal with colleagues in the industry, and also, you know, how to right up to the challenges. She was one of the few, you know, female fund managers at the time. I think she was, she also, you know, was a role model for me.

Kiran Bishop: Thank you. And since finance is such a competitive space, how did you get the recognition you [00:09:00] deserved in such a field?

Jenny Tian: I think, the buy side is more of, if you accumulate enough experience, you know, your experience will be more recognized. It's not like investment banking, it's field driven and project driven, which basically you need to start, you know, from scratch, you know, after you finish your project and you need to constantly look for another project. In the asset management industry, it's the, I think it's the persistence and focus and the lifelong learning that matter the most. Fund management is a marathon, and you need to constantly be on the trail running and, you know, if you haven't, you know, done a good job, last year, just forget about it and everything will get restarted, you know, in the, in the new year, on January the first. So it's more of a long long-term game, like a long running, you know, like a marathon rather than a short haul in a run. It's more like a marathon. So I think persistent focus and lifelong learning matter at the most. [00:10:00] And that's how you get the recognition you deserve in a field.

Kiran Bishop: Thank you. And my final question is. If you could do it all over again, what, if anything, would you do differently?

Jenny Tian: Good question. Probably, no, Kiran, I know it's hard for me to, you know, for anyone to say that, but I think I have taken the right steps to get my self, you know, to where I am today. I think I have had the best experience, in, in the three countries that I have lived in Japan, us and mainland China, Hong Kong. I wouldn't trade anything for that experience because, I think I was at the right location at the right time. because in Japan it was also at the peak of the market. And then I left. In the U S it was a unit after the bubble burst. And then I left for China, you know, where I had the best of the 10 years of the fund management industry development. And right now, I mean, Hong [00:11:00] Kong, I think Hong Kong is at the crossroads of East and West. And you know, with all the challenges, you know, it's still a flourishing financial center in Asia, which allows us to expand our businesses both, you know, onshore and offshore. So I think I wouldn't trade anything for that experience.

Kiran Bishop: Thank you so much for joining me today, Jenny. I really appreciate it.

Jenny Tian: Thank you. Thank you, Kiran.

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