By Jessica Titlebaum (Chicago)

Ann Zeiler takes the long view in her position as a saleswoman for Global Fund Services at the 120-year-old bank, Northern Trust Corp. “I am the cheerleader of the group, the perpetual optimist,” said Zeiler. “If someone keeps saying no, it is hard to get a group of people to energize again. Why keep trying?”

She answered her own question: “Because a lost opportunity is your next prospect.”

Zeiler is a natural saleswoman. She is energetic, driven and believable. Her career began 28 years ago at Northern Trust when she was supporting retirees and “on the phone all day working on retirement benefits.” Eventually, her personality opened doors to a marketing role where she was supporting a sales team and responding to requests for proposals.

“I am a team player but I like having individual responsibilities,” said Zeiler. “Buying decisions are emotional decisions. A sale depends on your knowledge and your ability to communicate.”

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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.”

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By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

On Friday, December 4, the National Association for Female Executives (NAFE) honored its 2009 Women of Excellence. NAFE is the largest professional association of women. The awards celebrated successful female business leaders dedicated to making a difference in their workplace, the larger community, and the world.

Keynote speakers and Pulitzer-prize-winning writers Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn opened the event with a call to make a difference in women’s lives around the globe, as detailed in their book Half the Sky.

They stressed the importance of addressing women’s issues around the world, not only because it’s simply the right thing to do, but because meeting women’s economic needs can help overcome poverty and violence. As Kristoff explained, “the paramount moral challenge of the 21st century is the brutality inflicted on women and girls around the globe.”

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As part of its ongoing Movers and Shakers series, contributing writer Tina Vasquez spoke with Teofla Rich, an executive woman in private banking about her climb to the top of the banking and financial services industry.

Integrity is something that comes up often in conversation with Teofla Rich. Rich, senior vice president/manager of private banking at Torrey Pines Bank in San Diego, places a refreshing amount of importance on integrity. According to the certified financial planner, the foundation of Torrey Pines is integrity, knowledge, professionalism, and fun, which falls perfectly in line with her beliefs as a financial expert and business woman. “You have to have integrity in all that you do: with your fellow associates and clients and with what you represent, sell, or promise,” Rich said. Read more

by Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)

Getting out of a bad neighborhood is a hard thing to do. It is so hard, in fact, that often young people use their immediate surroundings as an excuse as to why they haven’t done more with their lives or for their community. The opposite was true for Magda Yrizarry, Verizon’s Vice President for Workplace Culture, Diversity, and Compliance, who turned her upbringing in a housing tenement in a less-than-ideal Brooklyn neighborhood into an opportunity to give back to the community she once called home. Yrizarry’s father died when she was three, which left her mother to raise three young children alone.

“My personal motto, which I’ve had all my life, comes from my mother,” Yrizarry said. “When we were kids she drilled this into our heads: ‘To whom much is given, much is expected.’ We didn’t have material wealth, but we were blessed and fortunate and had every opportunity presented to us and with that, came the obligation to pass it on.” Read more