Movers and Shakers: Shannon Vetto, Global Exchange Traded Funds (ETF), Russell Investments

By Gigi DeVault (Munich)

Knowing how to maintain a high level of productivity while sticking to a grueling travel schedule may have given Shannon Vetto an edge when she came to Russell Investments in 1997. Before then, at Price Waterhouse LLP, Vetto worked as a client service audit manager in the firm’s investment company group—in Boston, New York, San Francisco, and Seattle. Every few weeks she found herself in a new location, examining a new set of books and addressing a new set of circumstances.

For a financial asset firm seeking management capacity for a global product launch, itinerant experience like Vetto’s would prove to be a prescription for success. “It was pure luck,” she insists, “that I managed to get involved in an effort that was really Russell’s development overseas.” Vetto took a job as a manager in Operations at Russell, a role in which she was responsible for global vendor relationship management, fund accounting oversight, and financial statement preparation. She was quickly positioned to lead the development of operational infrastructure for Australian Funds products in Russell’s Sydney office, and in Russell’s investment trust business in the Tokyo office. Vetto recalls that she was new to the firm and wasn’t yet anchored in such a way that would make it difficult to relocate overseas.

Vetto’s tongue-in-cheek observation: The deal closer may have been that “I was okay with the travel.”

Identifying the Lift Factor

“For about the first seven years, I had one major product development assignment after another.” In a cycle that was reminiscent of the vertical velocity of a thermal updraft, Vetto helped to build out the firm’s operational development efforts overseas. By 2000, she had joined the fund structure group where she worked as a fund structure engineer. During this time, Vetto was able to keep one hand on the development and presentation of product design. “When I first started at Russell, there really weren’t product-specific titles or roles,” she said. Her work was recognized as adding substantive value to the firm’s international growth, but Vetto found she wanted to bring into focus what was actually providing lift to the effort. “People thought I was involved in an operations exercise. I told them that the value they were experiencing really had very little to do with operations, but instead was product development work. That was why what I was doing was working. I had a good understanding of how to work through a development cycle, and I was doing the operations piece at the same time.”

“I became very passionate and vocal about product development, insisting that it was a discipline and a skill set that needed to be evolved in the business and staffed with that kind of mindset. It took a long time for product development to become part and parcel of my job, but over time I was able to adapt my role. The evolution likely occurred to appease me since I was so determined that this thing had some legs. I basically said, ‘Just give me the job and I will show you what I mean.’”

Vetto explained that she and a colleague in London “were given the opportunity to deliver against a product development goal, but we were able to build more into our roles” as expectations had not been precisely outlined. With no exact guidelines to follow, Vetto and her colleague knew that whatever tack they took, it had to produce a very positive value-add. “Our biggest risk was not achieving success early on, so we decided that we needed to focus on what was highly visible and would deliver more immediate success.”

Vetto and a handful of colleagues formed a product development subcommittee and began to work globally to build Russell’s product line outside the U.S. For the next few years, the work definitely had more of a pull through feeling than a push through effort. Eventually though, Vetto explained, “A corporate infrastructure and governance process was developed which allowed us to be more adept at what we did.” As the committee carried out its work, it became clearer that they needed to ratchet up the business support for the funds they were building and launching. The message Vetto received was “Now that you have product development matured within the business, it is time to focus on product management.” Integrating her passion for product with the experience of many global product launches, Vetto came to lead the Product Development and Market Research group.

“Throughout my entire career I have maintained a passion and intention around the products within a business,” Vetto says. In 2007, she returned to Russell’s Sydney office to head product development, product management, and market research for the Australasian region. Vetto relocated to the U.S. in early 2009 to take the role of managing director for product services for Russell’s Private Client Services group. Today, Vetto is taking her product development and product management knowledge to another leading edge in Russell’s global Exchange Traded Funds (ETF) business.

Producing Different Better Outcomes

Vetto has long been a strong advocate of—and has worked steadily for—maintaining women in position at Russell’s upper decision-making levels. “The extent to which you can explore ideas and possibilities can only be invigorated with diversity. Diversity produces better, greater outcomes. And the thematic diversity between men and women produces amazingly different and improved outcomes.” A recent study, Women Matter, by McKinsey & Company would bear up Vetto’s observations. The study points to nine leadership behaviors that improve organizational performance, and are believed to be approaches that will help to effectively manage change and to capture global trends. Five of these leadership behaviors are shown to be applied more frequently by women than men. “I feel very strongly—and have experienced this directly— that the approaches that men and women take are different. I believe this is fact-based; I don’t even think you can argue it,” Vetto said. Being the only woman member of a leadership team generates both tangible and intangible dynamics, as those who have had this experience will attest. “The dynamics of decision-making bodies with and without women are very different, especially if there is more than one woman,” said Vetto. Certainly, diverse and complementary leadership behaviors matter, but proportion matters too. The McKinsey study found that there must be a critical mass of at least three women in the upper echelons of a company in order to challenge the dominant code of a firm’s culture, spread good leadership practices, and positively influence organizational and financial performance.

The paths that women take while navigating the differences between genders, across cultures, and among countries may result in very different career experiences from those of their male colleagues. “I personally think that today’s mandate to do more with less is producing really interesting outcomes, especially for women,” Vetto said, “Because I think that specifically in financial services women have managed to build careers in a highly successful industry without a lot of fat in it,” which serves as evidence of the willingness on the part of women to tackle whatever it is that needs to be done. Vetto believes that compensation models need to reflect this. “The financial services industry has been lucky enough to have very lucrative compensation models. But the companies that will win will be the ones that focus on their clients,” said Vetto. “We exist to build better outcomes for the investor.”

Taking Our Own Advice

”Work-life balance is a topic “very near and dear to my heart right now,” said Vetto, “The most important thing is that women have to take it upon themselves to find their own work-life balance as mothers and wives and women who run homes. The social stigma for a man doing that is very different so their approach is going to be different, the way that they think about it is different, and we can’t get advice from them. That’s just the way it is, as opposed to anything negative. It will never change.”

If they were to hear Vetto say, “Women just will not sacrifice certain things in their lives,” her co-workers might recall the cupcakes she proudly brings into the office on holidays—whimsical cupcakes Vetto has joyfully baked with her daughters. “We need to give ourselves the license to have flexibility and not feel guilty about that and to not feel we are something less than because of it,” Vetto said. “Never, ever apologize for needing flexibility. The minute you apologize for needing it, your mindset will change and your performance will be impacted. Current economic conditions may have unintentionally made it more difficult to demonstrate the value that we add while still maintaining the flexibility we need. Without really intending to, we might end up going backward instead of forward.”

When asked to offer some advice to other women in business, Vetto was ready with clear, bold guidelines. “Celebrate your differences rather than apologize. Accept the challenge of being a woman in business. Build the bonds with the women around you; we are here for each other.” Vetto is an executive to whom these adages are more than just words. She lives them, and if you are a woman within her circle of influence, she will expect you to do so, too—and she will support you on that path. “It is,” she says, “extremely important that you pay it forward.”