Movers and Shakers: Triinu Magi, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Neura

happy man with womenTriinu Magi, Co-Founder and CTO of Neura, a company leading the trend on the Internet of Things, has always believed in paving her own path. Growing up in Estonia, Magi was instilled early on with the idea that everyone had the opportunity to create their own successful future. This mentality and entrepreneurial work ethic has shaped Magi throughout her professional development.

“This established the foundation that made me the leader I am today,” said Magi.

Drawn to Innovation
Magi entered the workforce at the young age of nineteen and she noted that in every role she held, innovation and technology were always two key focal points. Before she branched out on her own to create Neura, Magi spent over fifteen years working in various computer and network security related positions.

During the period when Estonia was establishing their independence from Russia, Magi played a key role in developing the Estonian e-government services and she was instrumental in creating an independent security analysis for Estonia’s e-voting system. Later in her career, Magi worked in research and innovation for Israel’s RSA Security.

“Without these experiences, I would not be able to hold the role I do at Neura. I consider each of these roles to have been stepping stones that have led me to where I am today,” said Magi. “I definitely feel like I was in the right place at the right time,” added Magi.

While Magi acknowledges the part that her previous roles have played in her success, she is proud of the fact that she had the courage to follow her passion and her heart by forming her own company. “I encourage every woman to follow their passions by doing what they love,” said Magi, “and this will involve a lot of hard work, but in the end it will be extremely rewarding.”

Magi has always gravitated toward innovation throughout her career, which is why it is no surprise that she started Neura one year ago. “We are excited about the work we are doing with the Internet of Things and exploring the interconnectivity of technology that will ultimately make our digital experiences more personalized and more human,” Magi explained.

She continued, “I believe that Neura will be the solution that enables the Internet of Things movement to provide trustful, intelligent and adaptive services to connected devices’ users. This is the future of technology, bringing intelligence to connected ecosystems, and we’re very excited to be a part of it.”

Women in Technology
“Do whatever it is you love to do,” advised Magi. According to Magi, women need to be careful not to create their own barriers by self-selecting out of opportunities. “By doubting our abilities and lacking confidence, we enable the negative stereotypes that surround women in technology,” said Magi.

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Movers and Shakers: Mary Ruane, Senior Manager, Assurance, PwC Ireland

Women workingOne of the most important lessons that Mary Ruane, Senior Manager of Assurance at PwC Ireland, has learned throughout her career is that if you do not take the initiative and express your interest in new opportunities, they might pass you by. “If you want to try something new or different, just speak up,” advised Ruane. She continued, “There are endless opportunities and you will find that taking initiative and displaying an eagerness to learn can go a long way.”

With this attitude, Ruane has been able to enjoy a variety of different roles and experiences at PwC, where she is currently responsible for establishing and building strong relationships with clients, internally and externally. “It is an interesting time in asset management right now, partnering with our Clients who have weathered the storm of the credit crisis and are now dealing with the wave of regulation that followed,” said Ruane.

Career Path at PwC

Ruane graduated from Dublin City University in 2001 with a degree in Accounting and Finance. Shortly after, she joined PwC and planned to complete her auditing qualifications while working full-time. “I joined Assurance and was assigned to the asset management department, which was more by accident than design at the time. However, I quickly recognized that asset management was a growth industry that held a lot of different opportunities and that a chartered accounting qualification would provide a great basis for any professional career in Ireland or internationally” she recalled.

Ruane had a lot on her plate as she was learning the asset management industry, assisting clients with their audits, and studying for her professional qualifications exams, but after she passed her exams Ruane expressed her interest in supporting the development of young PwC professionals facing the journey she had just completed. . “Every year, we receive training on both technical skills and soft skills, and when the opportunity to get involved in the learning and education department presented itself, I took advantage of it,” said Ruane.

She trained and worked as a tutor in the learning and education department for about two months where her role involved teaching the intensive training course to new associates. Ruane enjoyed training so much that she continued to teach courses for the next four years. “At one point, I had trained the same group of people for three years in a row at different career levels, which was an extremely rewarding thing to do,” Ruane noted.

As a result of her commitment to training and on the job coaching, Ruane recently received a coaching award to recognize her developmental impact. “I benefitted greatly from coaching, and it is something that I have always believed strongly in from my first day at PwC,” she noted.

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Movers & Shakers: Stephanie Weimer, Regional Vice President, ING U.S. Investment Management (ING U.S. IM)

 

women shaking handsWhile attending Pennsylvania State University, a friend’s father, who was President of Sun Life Financial Distributors, told Stephanie Weimer that she absolutely had to get into financial services. “I looked at him like he was crazy,” Weimer laughed. He said, “‘You’re smart and there aren’t enough women in the industry. If you enter it, you’ll be really successful.’”

He was right, of course.

Weimer is now Regional Vice President where she wholesales various mutual funds and separately-managed account products throughout the New England area. This is Weimer’s sixth year in the role and she has consistently ranked as one of the top salespeople for the company, despite covering one of the smaller regional areas.

From CIA to ING

Even upon entering the industry in 2006, Weimer still had no idea that financial services would be her career path. She had every intention of being a field agent in the CIA. When her friend’s father – the same man who urged her to enter the industry – offered her a job as an internal wholesaler with Sun Life, she gave him a one-year commitment as she waited for a background check with the CIA to clear. The problem was that her clearance went through quickly. As a woman of her word, she decided to maintain her commitment with Sun Life.

“It worked out for the best. I don’t dwell on it and I’m truly happy with where I am – and I’ve really come to love this industry,” Weimer said. “I learned the ropes with Sun Life, beginning as an internal wholesaler. In less than two years, I was offered a job as an external wholesaler with ING U.S. IM. That’s a quick move from internal to external.”

Interestingly it’s the skills that Weimer believed would make her successful in the CIA that have proven to be the most helpful in her success in financial services.

“I love to figure out what makes people tick and find out what they need and help them find a solution. Effective communication has proven to be one of my strongest assets,” Weimer said.

The Business of Golf

Weimer says that when first starting out in the industry, she wishes she would have understood the importance of having a good golf game. In first grade, her mom enrolled her in a junior golf league, but she had no patience for it.

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Movers & Shakers: Rhiannon Wood, Senior Manager M&A Private Equity, PricewaterhouseCoopers

women on boardsWhen Rhiannon Wood began in PricewaterhouseCoopers’ audit department as a graduate in 2004, there was no way for her to know that she’d be part of the world’s largest professional services firm’s most pivotal global program. Though she’s spent the last six years in the firm’s M&A tax team working with a variety of private equity houses and corporations on international transactions, it wasn’t until this year that she was asked to join PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Genesis Park program, designated for the firm’s top five percent of senior performers.

“I’d say it’s the biggest thing that’s ever happened in my career,” Wood said. “It’s a 12-month program that enables us to spend six-weeks working on personal development and strategic projects for our global board. It really feels like being a part of change for our business in the UK and globally.”

Wood’s six-weeks were up in September and she says the most important takeaway was the focus the program had on authenticity.

“There are a lot of discussions happening about what it means to be authentic or how to be an authentic leader, but what does that really mean? Oftentimes it’s just talking in concepts,” Wood said. “In the program, we spent a lot time focusing on the question of what is authenticity. We discussed how knowing your own values is central to the idea and how we can spot values in others and perhaps most importantly, how to live by our own values on a personal and professional level in order to be a more authentic leader.”

Now that she’s completed her time in the program, Wood says that the most exciting thing she’s working on is helping the firm invest in the future and the “next generation of leadership.”

“PwC is trying to be at the forefront of the industry when it comes to leadership, talent development, and diversity. It’s an exciting time to be with the firm. So many people are receptive to these groundbreaking ideas,” Wood said.

Don’t Let Your Plans Get In The Way

As a senior manager reflecting back on her first years in the industry, Wood says she wishes that she would have understood earlier that there is no one way of doing things. Ambition, she says, is a good thing, but becoming too fixated on your plan rather than on the journey can prove to be problematic.

“You can let your plans get in the way of unexpected opportunities that come across your path,” Wood said. “You need to recognize things as opportunities, rather than diversions. In the end, you’ll regret what you didn’t take, not what you did.”

Embracing Strong Personalities

Before entering M&A, Wood also says it’s important to understand that it’s a field inhabited by strong personalities and strong opinions, both of which require working with and navigating around.

“The most overlooked portion of this job is the people management piece,” Wood said. “There are a lot of ideas as to what an ideal transaction should look like versus what it actually looks like. You have to get stakeholders on board with everything you do and sometimes that means working with 20 stakeholders with very strong personalities and different agendas. The end goal is the same for everyone, but it makes getting a transaction done incredibly tricky. It’s just a matter of getting where we all want to be.”

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Movers and Shakers: Nicole Douillet, Vice President, Credit Suisse

 

women smilingAccording to Nicole Douillet, Vice President, Credit Suisse, when you are young and high achieving coming out of college, entering the workforce can be a difficult transition, especially in an environment like Wall St. “It can seem disappointing if your career trajectory is not progressing as quickly as you imagined, but it is important to remember that a career path is very rarely a straight line,” advised Douillet.

“Take a breath, have patience, and look at the bigger picture,” she added.

Douillet was the first woman hired on the block trading desk at UBS in 2000. “My career in trading has been pretty tumultuous since I started in 2000,” said Douillet. “In fact, my very first day on the UBS desk was the last day the NASDAQ 100 closed above 4,000,” she continued. Douillet left UBS to pursue a job in quantitative trading at Credit Suisse where she eventually moved to the systematic market making group. She said, “I have been able to see a lot of different cycles in the markets from the beginning of 2000 through today.”

In 2007, Douillet was promoted to VP a year ahead of everyone in her class and was selected to be a part of the inaugural class of Credit Suisse Emerging Leaders program. Through this program, Credit Suisse identifies high potential associates and vice presidents and tasks them with creating solutions for problems the executive board is struggling with.

“My group was given the question, ‘how does an investment bank push innovation?’” said Douillet, “which is difficult considering the regulatory environment in which investments banks operate.” The challenge was to figure out how to inspire innovation among employees while staying within the regulatory framework. Douillet explained, “We devised a system of encouraging and rewarding innovation and presented our idea to the senior leaders running the program. The idea was rolled out as a pilot program in the IT division and later became a bank wide initiative due to the success of the pilot.”

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Movers and Shakers: Maya Venkatraman, Vice President, Senior Research Analyst of ING U.S. Investment Management

women on boardsWhen Maya Venkatraman, Vice President and Senior Research Analyst at ING U.S. Investment Management graduated from college with a degree in Painting & Fine Arts, she never envisioned a career path that would lead her toward financial services. “There is no road map in the arts the way there is in many other fields,” she said “and I was fortunate enough to recognize this as I was finishing up my undergraduate degree.”

Being raised in a family of entrepreneurs, Maya developed an interest in how businesses run very early on. When she realized a career in the Arts was not her calling, Maya decided to attend business school at Cornell where earned her MBA with a concentration in finance. She explained, “Finance seemed like a really natural fit for me since I love numbers, the story they tell, and the picture they paint about a business.”

Career Path

Although she was ready to begin her career in finance, Maya realized that securing a job in the industry might be more difficult because she lacked the job experience that many other MBA graduates have. She persevered, however, and continued to network until she found the perfect opportunity to get her foot in the door. “I was lucky enough to meet some senior executives from ABN Amro during a trip to Holland in my first year of business school and I was offered a summer internship,” said Maya.

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Movers and Shakers: Karen Catlin, Developing powerful women leaders in the tech industry

working on a computerIn college, Karen Catlin chose to major in computer science at Brown University, despite the fact that she was not extremely familiar with computers. But as it turned out, Catlin discovered early on that she enjoyed the challenge presented to her through her computer science studies. “I enjoyed solving problems and I loved math, so it was a nice combination that allowed me to explore problem solving techniques based on mathematics,” said Catlin.

After a successful career working as a senior executive in the technology industry, Catlin is now focused on making sure women working in tech today have the resources to be successful. “I want to make sure women in tech are not opting out of the industry for the wrong reasons,” explained Catlin. “I want women to feel empowered, educated, and encouraged to have the career that they aspire to.”

Highlights in Catlin’s Career

After graduating, Catlin accepted a job at Brown researching hypertext, which was an innovative function at the time. “This was a great opportunity for me get involved with this research that was growing at the time,” explained Catlin.

Catlin moved to London with her husband, who is originally from England. Here she had the opportunity to work at a Hitachi Research Lab that was based in the UK. “It was a great experience not only working in the UK, but also working for a Japanese firm,” Catlin said. “I highly recommend that everyone gains some international experience if they can. It teaches you the skills that you need in order to be effective in different environments and different cultures.”

Although her experience working abroad allowed Catlin to gain valuable knowledge and add essential skills to her toolkit, she and her husband, who is a software developer, both felt like if they were going to work seriously in the technology industry, there was only one place for them to be. So, they packed their bags and headed back to the US with their sights set on Silicon Valley.

Catlin immediately found a job working for Go Corporation, a company that was working on tablet technology long before anyone else. She recalled being intimidated at the time even though she had a great technical background and education in technology. “If I knew the term ‘Impostor Syndrome’ at the time, I would have definitely said that I had it,” said Catlin. “I wasn’t sure I was up to getting an engineering job, so instead I got a job writing software and documentation that would teach other engineers how to write code.”

While she loved teaching other engineers, Catlin also discovered that she also enjoyed the challenge of getting things organized. She explained, “At the time Go was experiencing a lot of changes to their software specs, and they needed someone to guide the development team through this process. So I become involved in technical project management. I transitioned from being a software engineer to a manager at that point.”

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Movers and Shakers: Karyn Twaronite, the EY Americas Inclusiveness Officer

women working mentoring “Differences do matter,” began Karyn Twaronite, the EY Americas Inclusiveness Officer and a partner of Ernst & Young LLP. “I’m excited about expanding the definition of diversity as it applies to all men and women.”

She explained, “Many years ago, diversity work was about compliance, looking at numbers and representation. This is important, but there’s more to it than that. I like to think of the evolution as the three Cs. The first C is compliance and was focused on following the rules. The second C is character — diversity was seen as the right thing to do and something that your company needed to do to be viewed as modern. Today, we’re at the third C, which stands for commerce. It also focuses on making a difference to top and bottom lines in business.”

Twaronite continued, “Today we see diversity and inclusiveness, or D&I, as a way to further deliver quality service, innovate, and solve problems. For so many companies this is a competitiveness issue, not only to be seen as employers of choice, but also to enhance the quality of work. Diverse and inclusive teams provide better service to clients, and our high-quality service to our clients is key to our brand.”

She added, “I’m fortunate that I work at a company where D&I are embedded in our culture, and where D&I get a seat at the leadership table.”

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Movers and Shakers: Natalie Runyon, Director, Global Security, Thomson Reuters

Natalie RunyonNatalie Runyon, Director of Global Security at Thomson Reuters, wishes she had known just how important it was to seek out leadership training and development early on in her career. Since she cannot go back in time, Runyon is doing the next best thing. She is developing female leaders through the “How to be the CEO of Your Career” program that she created and launched through the New York City Chapter of the women’s network at Thomson Reuters. Supporting the advancement of women through this program has certainly been one of the most rewarding aspects of Runyon’s career because she gets to combine her passions of leadership training and providing a resource for professional women.

Career Path

One might say that Natalie Runyon’s career path was anything but linear. Yet all of her experiences have contributed to her becoming an influential leadership strategist for women who want to change the world, in her own words. Runyon was born and raised in Louisiana, and after graduating from Louisiana State University with a degree in International Trade and Finance, she was ready to explore life outside the Pelican State. Runyon headed to Washington, D.C. to work for the CIA, an opportunity she secured the year before when working as an intern the summer before her senior year of college. Determined to find her way to Wall St. to work in the financial services industry, Runyon attended The George Washington University part-time, while working for the CIA, eventually earning her MBA.

In 2003, Runyon packed her bags for New York City to begin her career in the Global Security group at Goldman Sachs. “This was shortly after 9/11, and I had the opportunity to get in on the ground floor of the crisis management program,” said Runyon. She continued, “It was in this role that I discovered my love for training at all organizational and operational levels.” Runyon excelled at crisis management, but after a few years she began to feel the symptoms of burnout set in. “Crisis management is 24/7, and when you are working in global security, the work never stops,” she said.

Recognizing the signs of burnout, Runyon took advantage of a unique opportunity in 2008 to work on rebuilding the go to the Gulf Coast and help victims of Hurricane Katrina recover and begin to rebuild from the disaster that hit the area in 2005. “I had a personal stake in this cause,” said Runyon, “since my grandmother lost her home in the hurricane. Helping with the relief efforts also gave me the opportunity to connect with people outside of the office, which was so rewarding.”

During this time, Runyon received her Leadership Coaching Certification, which was a skill she would be able to apply effectively during her time helping the coastal communities of Louisiana get back on track and in her next endeavor. That same year, Runyon had the opportunity to visit Ghana to do humanitarian work with impoverished children. Speaking about her experience working in Africa, Runyon said, “For the first time, I understood on a much deeper level what it meant to be part of the non-dominant group.” She continued, “It was through these experiences that I learned how important it was to give people the confidence to speak up.”

With a renewed sense of purpose and an interest in how to pursue equality in the workplace through leadership development, Runyon returned to her position at Goldman Sachs. By 2011, Goldman Sachs had undergone major restructuring and Runyon’s position was eliminated after several rounds of layoffs. However, like all of the events in Runyon’s career, this bump in the road had a silver lining.

In 2012, Runyon accepted a job at Thomson Reuters in the security team. Following a series of events, Runyon quickly rose to become the most senior person in her region after 5 months on the job. Runyon was able to apply her experience in crisis management and leadership training and development to take charge.

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Movers and Shakers: Lanaya Irvin, Vice President, Global Banking and Markets, Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Lanaya Irvin

Lanaya Irvin, Vice President, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, believes the financial services industry can only serve to benefit by moving toward greater diversity and inclusion.

“The glass ceiling is still very much a real thing. The industry continues to be male dominated at senior leadership levels. Sexism exists in some places just as racism exists.” But, she continued, the industry is evolving, and old stereotypes are giving way to more inclusive cultures. Industry leaders are working to change those perceptions, transform culture, and some of the legacy that may create hurdles for women and other groups. Our firm has been proactive in driving a culture of inclusivity.”

She believes this evolution is is, in part, a response to the challenges that the financial services industry has faced in recent years. After all, diversity provides the unique viewpoints and solutions that companies need today to gain an edge in an increasingly competitive marketplace. “At a high level, what’s particularly interesting to me is the positive shift the industry has been able to make. The domestic and global economic environment has required adjustment. Our strategy has been to refocus on our clients, and maintain that laser focus on the ways we can deliver value to them. Companies need diverse, talented professionals to do that.”

Irvin is leader of the Bank’s LGBT Pride Employee Network for Metro New York and the first female co-chair of Interbank Roundtable Committee, a consortium of 29 banks and financial services firms working together to share best practices around LGBT diversity and inclusion.

She believes that, as a group that represents multiple facets of diversity, LGBT women may face additional challenges when it comes to advancement, but she encouraged LGBT women to own their identities and stay true to themselves. “There is the complexity of having multiple minority identities. I think lesbian, bisexual, and transgender women in the workplace face many of the same challenges as heterosexual women, but silence around that identity can be more difficult.”

“For LGBT women, I would say, make your presence known,” she advised. “Our firm has made it clear that those perceived barriers should not exist and need to be disrupted. These barriers are not insurmountable.”

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