Voice of Experience: Lisa Carnoy, Division Executive for Northeast and Metro New York U.S. Trust, Bank of America Private Wealth Management

Lisa Carnoy, Division Executive for Northeast and Metro New York U.S. Trust, Bank of America Private Wealth Management, is a persistent and self-described optimist. Carnoy is pleased to have both “survived and thrived in” the multiple market and corporate changes over the years, including the end of junk bonds, the tech crunch, and the 2007 crisis.

This summer marks her twenty-fifth year in the financial industry and also marks another career milestone as she advances her career from Global Capital Markets to the company’s wealth-management unit. Carnoy, who started at Merrill in 1994, has emerged as one of the top strategists in the company and was recognized by American Banker as one of the 25 most powerful women in finance.

Though she began her career as an investment banking analyst at Drexel Burnham Lambert, Carnoy acknowledges that it wasn’t until her third year in the industry that she decided to pursue an MBA in Finance from Harvard. “I was a history and American studies major, with absolutely no finance or economics classes – so it was all new to me.”

She also understood the impact such a change in career path could have on her ability to attain a job and the potential for learning the essentials of managing a business and then implementing them.

“Investment banking, to me, seemed like the place that was challenging, where you could do the most substantial work right out of school.”

Carnoy’s Path to Success

Five years after the Bank of America and Merrill Lynch merger was completed, Carnoy, who contributed substantially to capital raises, has been able to participate in both overall company and personal successes. Carnoy thrived in her new environment and in 2013 her efforts were further recognized. She received a Merit Award from the Women’s Bond Club, with her U.S. Capital Markets team ranking as one of the preeminent teams in the company this year.

Carnoy, a competitive runner since her college years, encourages her mentees and other women just starting out to remain open-minded when they envision their career paths and how they’ll advance saying, “If I had known then, that what felt like a sprint was, in actuality, a marathon – and that I would still be thriving and loving it twenty five years later – I think I would have fallen off my chair.”

Driving Change for Future Leaders

In April, Carnoy assumed her responsibilities as the Metro and Northeast’s division executive of U.S. Trust, Bank of America’s private bank. In this role, she will supervise the collaboration between wealth management and global banking and markets (GBAM) and continue to serve as a mentor, sponsor and advocate.

Carnoy’s impact will likewise be felt throughout the company as she promotes one of the hallmarks of her Global Capital Markets team; the “importing and exporting of talent.” This practice allows for greater mobility of employees between divisions and encourages the exchange of ideas around the globe.

“It’s a tremendous investment in someone’s career,” Carnoy asserted, “both in terms of retention and personal development and in the management’s commitment, that’s very well-received by our teams. And it makes us stronger as a company, because we share the best practices.”

Carnoy also extends her advising and coaching on an individual level, as a co-founder and executive sponsor of the company’s Women’s Leadership Council in Global Banking and Markets. She recommends that career-savvy women develop their own “personal board of directors” comprised of peers, mentors, and senior colleagues who share in their “esprit de corps”. She encourages personal board of directors to be sufficiently large in membership in order to account for the frequent career transitions both in and out of their company.

“Personally, I’ve always found it’s more successful when it happens organically,” Carnoy explained. “And for me, enabling people to achieve individually, whether they’re on my team or someone else’s, becomes a key measure of how I define my own success in a given year.”

Giving Back to Where You Came From
Although Carnoy maintains a significant presence both at the Bank of America office and at home, she knew, ultimately, that she would accept President Lee C. Bollinger’s invitation to join Columbia’s Board of Trustees when she received the call in 2010.

“I thought about saying no,” Carnoy admitted. “I was just embarking on this Global Capital Markets role and I’m the mother of four very active children, ages six and under, including twins. But here was a great opportunity, beyond even a life’s dream, and one that I find unbelievably exciting. From undergraduate education and Public Health and Arts, to bringing ROTC to campus and funding neuroscience research—almost everything we tackle is interesting and rewarding to me.”

That pursuit of valued opportunities and her efforts toward them, as Carnoy describes, are what enable her to constantly strive for improvement, both personal and in society.

“Even a woman who’s incredibly ambitious and motivated by her career,” Carnoy remarked, “is likely to have interests outside of the office, such as community service, religious practice, and athletic competitions, as well as family. And what I’ve found is that we need, as women, to have this multidimensional pursuit of our interests in order to be fulfilled and happy.”

By Jarod Cerf