Rising Star: Nitu Gupta, Vice President of Product Development, Sodexo

Head_Shot-Nitu_Gupta_hi-res_0807[1]by Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)

Nitu Gupta, Vice President of Product Development at integrated food and facilities management giant Sodexo, knows something about the power of leveling the playing field by doing the right thing. Born and raised in New Delhi, India, she had wanted to pursue a degree in economics and math and have her own career. However, her parents’ notion of the right path for a girl was to go into a home economics program and be married soon after graduating from a university.

After studying to be a teacher, she gained entry into a competitive graduate program in food and nutrition, which was the closest thing her university had to a career oriented program. Unfortunately, she had to leave the program when she met her soul mate and moved to the United States. Of the move, she said: “It was quite a challenge. I was learning how to be married and getting used to a new culture.”

She added, “I am very open minded and willing to adapt. I believe if you go into a situation willing to learn, it makes it much easier. Of course, there are going to be conflicts and confusion. But, as long as you stay positive things work out in the end.”
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Voice of Experience: Sabrina Callin, Managing Director, PIMCO

By Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)

“I think I ordered my first application to Harvard and Stanford’s Business Schools when I was roughly 10 years old,” said Sabrina Callin, a PIMCO managing director based in the firm’s Newport Beach headquarters. “My parents were both educators, and instilled a strong work ethic and belief in me that I could do anything I wanted to do. As a result, I was motivated from a young age by the ability to have an influence and make things happen.”

During her undergrad years at Texas Christian University—a school founded by her father’s ancestors back in the 1800s—Callin decided to pursue a career in finance, graduating with degrees in accounting, finance and economics. A focus on finance, she felt, would provide her with the opportunity to be in a “very dynamic and intrinsically interesting profession,” and could provide an opportunity gain unique insight and expertise that “is very broadly relevant, and well beyond the day-to-day workings of a given job.” In the period between her undergraduate and graduate programs, rather than heading to Wall Street as she’d originally planned, she earned her CPA. “I believed experience as a practicing CPA would provide me with an important knowledge base that would be beneficial for my longer-term career path.”

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Voice of Experience: Joanne Kinsella, Managing Director, ITRS America

Joanne_Kinsella_168_resized[1]by Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)

When asked how she ended up in the financial technology industry, Jo Kinsella, managing director of ITRS America quickly answers: “Pure unadulterated chance.”

Indeed, her career path has wound through industries and countries, starting with French proficiency upon graduation from university from Leeds, England. And although she was able to write a thesis in the language, Kinsella did not want to be a translator. Without much office experience, she went to work as an office temp for Carlton Television but was soon promoted to full-time events manager, organizing and running corporate events, hospitality, and public relations for the shows they did around England.

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Voice of Experience: Ann Ziegler, Chief Financial Officer of CDW

Ann_Ziegler[1]By Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)

Audacious proclamations are the hallmark of the many of the successful among us. “You’ve got to raise your hand,” says CDW’s Ann Ziegler, the corporation’s CFO.

No surprise, then, that Ziegler, who is an attorney—not a CPA or Finance MBA—told her boss at Sara Lee— “I want to be the corporate CFO”—and has come to realize that goal.

Ziegler was drawn to the law early, mostly because of strong influence of an older cousin who was an accomplished lawyer. Once she was knee-deep in her legal studies, she realized that, above all else, she was called by corporate law, even though it wasn’t what most of her classmates were doing. “At that time I was in law school, litigation was the sexy part. But I never wanted to be a litigator. I enjoyed corporate law and other similar courses.”

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Voice of Experience: Lucy Reed, Global Co-Head of International Arbitration Group, Freshfields

By Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)Reed_Lucy[1]

“It is not the amount of money that affects how hard I work. I worked as hard when I was a GS-7 law clerk as I do now as a highly paid law firm partner. The most important thing for me is that I have a varied practice and a varied career. I’m always looking for new challenges, which is why I like international arbitration— each case involves a different sector, different expert, different issues,” said Lucy Reed, the global co-head of the International Arbitration Group at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP.

Reed started her career clerking for a federal trial judge in D.C. who had a number of international cases, including a 9-month criminal trial of the first defendants accused of the assassination of former Ambassador Orlando Letelier ordered by Augusto Pinochet. She then went into a D.C. law firm that had arbitration cases before the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal set up in The Hague after the Iranian Revolution. Read more

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35 Under 35: Caroline Doran, Partner, Sprecher Grier Halberstam LLP

caroline-d_big[1]by Elizabeth Harrin (London)

“Anyone who sees employment law as “touchy feely” probably hasn’t had a HR problem,” says Caroline Doran, partner at London law firm Sprecher Grier Halberstam LLP. “HR problems need a lawyer who can be commercial simultaneously as dealing with understandably emotional clients who may be stressed about paying mortgages, school fees or, if a company, protecting the business and profits.”

And on top of that, the work changes with the economic climate – something employment lawyers have to keep up to date with and plan accordingly. “In the past few months we have seen a disturbing trend,” says Doran, “although thankfully the redundancies have slowed. Many employees are reporting that work ethics have deteriorated. A high flying executive in a London bank commented that it was as if she had been transported back 40 years in terms of the behaviour of the management and what was deemed acceptable. In her opinion, some appear to have the attitude that people are ‘lucky’ to have a job in this climate and will simply have to put up with boorish behaviour.”

Doran, who specialises in both contentious and non-contentious employment issues, is pragmatic about how the difficult economy is affecting those working with less-than-perfect management. She believes that there is an element of truth in the attitude that people have to keep their heads down and ignore work ethics that would have been unacceptable not that long ago. “Only the bravest or those who cannot face another day of mistreatment will jump ship in this economic climate,” she explains. “However, we expect a glut of claims in coming months and years using the current pattern of behaviour as evidence of mistreatment or discrimination.”

It’s something that Doran is well prepared for – she’s never wanted to be anything except an employment lawyer, after her original dream to be part of the Cagney and Lacey team faded. “My school work experience programme sent me to the Employment Tribunal which gave me an insight into the cut and thrust of employment issues for businesses and staff,” she says. “I saw first-hand the passion this issue was fought by both sides and the commercial impact of the decisions. I knew then that I was going to be an employment lawyer.”

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Voice of Experience: Carla Brooks, Managing Director at Commerce Street Capital

By Elizabeth Harrin (London)Carla Brooks

“I come from a family of bankers so it must be somewhat ingrained,” says Carla Brooks, managing director at Commerce Street Capital. But it’s more than just growing up with the knowledge a career in finance meant. Brooks excelled in math during her school years and took this interest and skill with her to further education. “My college undergraduate thesis was titled ‘Bank Holding Companies: Their Growth and Future,’” she says. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Brooks has ended up in such a senior role in fund management.

“I joined the team at Dallas-based Commerce Street Capital LLC and its predecessor firm in 2002,” Brooks explains. Since then, she has put her three decades of experience analyzing financial institutions to good use. Having built a successful career in bank regulation and oversight, Brooks was in a unique position to help create private equity funds to invest in banks at Commerce Street Capital. “Private equity’s involvement with banks is relatively a young concept,” she adds.

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Voice of Experience: Margaret Enloe, Principal and Associate General Counsel, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP

By Pamela Weinsaft (New York City) Margaret Enloe - PricewaterhouseCoopers

Life lessons that come from one’s parents are not uncommon. But when your parent is the founder of an NGO—specifically, UN We Believe (which ultimately became the Business Council for the UN)—such lessons are as likely to come from a speech as from casual dinner conversation.

And it was a speech by her father that taught Margaret Enloe one of her most treasured life lessons: If it is meant to be, it is up to me.

Ms. Enloe, Associate General Counsel in PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Office of the General Counsel explained, “You can hope or expect others to act, but it’s almost never a given. If you really want something to happen, it’s up to you. You have to be proactive. And, it’s not about complaining, or worrying or blaming someone else when things aren’t going right. It is much more ‘let’s try to figure this out and where do I start.’”

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Voice of Experience: Melinda Schramm, founder of the National Introducing Brokers Association (NIBA) and owner of MHS Capital Resource

By Jessica Titlebaum (Chicago)Schramm

Melinda Schramm is the founder of the National Introducing Brokers Association (NIBA), the writer of the industry’s only guide for Introducing Brokers (currently circulated by the CME Group) and the owner of MHS Capital Resource, an NFA registrant. A lawyer by training, Schramm decided to go into finance after being physically threatened on her prior job. Knowing she needed a change, she answered an ad in the Chicago Tribune and went to work in a newly created compliance department at Green & Collins (known today as the Rosenthal Collins Group).

Now, more than 30 years later, “Melinda is considered a matriarch to the leaders in the financial arena of Introducing Brokers,” said Karen Bertoli, Director of Communications Strategy at Zen-Fire and an affiliate member of the National Introducing Brokers Association (NIBA).  “I have been lucky enough to enjoy her leadership through NIBA and her friendship outside the office.”

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Let’s Bury Short-Termism to Avoid Another Crisis

Contributed by Bill George, professor of management practice at Harvard Business SchooliStock_000005516576XSmall

The Aspen Institute recently made the following announcement:

“Twenty-eight leaders representing business, investment, government, academia, and labor joined the Aspen Institute Business & Society Program’s Corporate Values Strategy Group (CVSG) to endorse a bold call to end the focus on value-destroying short-termism in our financial markets and create public policies that reward long-term value creation for investors and the public good.”

I am one of those twenty-eight leaders, and am proud to join the likes of Warren Buffett, Louis Gerstner, Barbara Hackman Franklin, and Richard Trumka as a signatory to the statement, “Overcoming Short-termism: A Call for a More Responsible Approach to Investment and Business Management.”

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