Voice of Experience: Alison Sanger, Chief Operating Officer, Ironwood Capital Management

by Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)

The last nine months have been the toughest of Alison Sanger’s career. As COO of Ironwood Capital Management, she has worked incredibly hard to help the firm navigate the choppy waters of the financial crisis. But Sanger had an additional challenge as she had her third child right in the middle of the chaos. “It was a kind of a crazy intersection of all things. I’m a ‘put one foot in front of the other’ kind of girl, so I think that, right now, I’m most proud of having survived and come out the other side.”

Sanger hails from a small town in Michigan, and majored in accounting at Miami University (Ohio). But when she first entered university, accounting seemed the least likely path she would take. “I tested out of all the English classes but into remedial math going into college. So how does someone like that end up in accounting? I’m really competitive and considered it a challenge. So I got to work and took a lot of math classes. And, as I took the classes, I realized I was good at them and enjoyed them. That, combined with the idea that I would be employable in a very slow job market, is what got me into accounting.”

Upon graduation, Sanger joined the hedge fund practice in the Chicago office of Arthur Andersen LLP. “On the first day of work at Andersen, the man who picked me up at the door and said ‘you’ve been assigned to me’ was the person who has been my main mentor throughout my career.” She continued, “I think that so much of what your career path looks like comes from the people who groom and mentor you. My blessing, career-wise, was to have landed with the greatest mentor any person could’ve wanted.”

The Benefit of Taking Chances

After five years at the firm, Sanger took a two-year position as a performance manager doing hedge fund valuation at one of her largest clients, Grovernor Capital Management. She and her team from Arthur Andersen then joined Banc of America Prime Brokerage (now BNP Paribas) to help launch the Chicago office. Banc of America provided support for the investment process, including custody, clearing, and reporting. But what Sanger particularly enjoyed was providing the small business support services. “We were the first ones to do hedge fund hotels, the outsourcing of IT and infrastructure…the things other people weren’t doing. It was innovative and exciting.”

When asked by Banc of America to relocate to the headquarters in San Francisco, Sanger agonized over whether to leave her much-loved Chicago. “Moving out West was a difficult decision. But I wasn’t married at the time and thought that if there was ever a time to make a leap and have some sort of an adventure, it was then. I knew it was going to be a career opportunity, but it was also a huge gamble—one that ultimately paid off.”

In 2005, Banc of America began to eliminate the value-added business support services she had enjoyed providing. Sanger, who had gotten married a few years earlier, also had her first child around this time and was starting to struggle with the extensive travel required by her job.

Still, when she was given a lead on a potential job opportunity with San Francisco-based fund of funds Ironwood Capital Management, she spent the meeting trying to convince the two principals that they shouldn’t hire her as their new Chief Operating Officer. “I said, ‘You don’t want me. I want to have more kids and I’m getting ready to do that soon.’ They came back to me and said they were still interested. It was just such a great opportunity: a great job with significantly less travel. And I hadn’t done anything like the COO position before.” She decided to go for it, joining the firm in the fall of 2005.

Work-Life Balance in Fund Management

Now, four years and two more children later, she couldn’t be happier with the move. “It’s been a good fit for me professionally and personally because I’ve been able to work New York hours (I’m in the office around 5 AM and home around 3 PM). It works out really well in terms of division of labor. My husband gets my kids up in the morning. I pick them up in the afternoon, have dinner with them and put them to bed. It is a nice balance. Even though my job is not what I would call a part-time job at all, in my kids’ eyes, it is like one.”

Sanger sees the entrepreneurial spirit endemic in the hedge fund industry as a key ingredient of an environment in which women can—and do—thrive. “I’ve never perceived that my career path has been impacted at all by my gender. If people are willing to take risks and get out there and go for it, they have a lot of chances.” She added, “It is definitely now an opportunity rich environment for women.”

As the co-founder of the West Coast branch of Hedge Funds Care—a charity raising funds within the hedge fund industry for the treatment and prevention of child abuse—Sanger takes issue with those who perceive the hedge fund industry as bad guys. “That is currently the biggest negative about the industry. People who don’t know what you do sort of jump to conclusions about what you believe in and what sort of a business you work for.”

Asked how has she has been able to thrive despite the mounting work and home pressures during these last months, Sanger credits her fine-tuned ability to prioritize. “I’m always trying to figure out which thing needs my attention first. There were definitely some things that I didn’t personally deal with [in the past nine months] that I would have normally handled. But I took care of the things that were most important. Whether it was putting my kids to bed every night, taking them to the doctor or specific projects at work, I did these things personally, but let the others go. If it didn’t need me, I wasn’t going to be involved. In hindsight, I think I pretty much picked the right things to be involved in.”