Katherine Stoller: Partner, Litigation, Shearman & Sterling

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Katherine Stoller“You have to be able to step back and think about not only the problem in front of you right now, but what are the next several months of this case going to look like?” reflects Katherine Stoller. “Where are the risks that we’re not focused on today, but we need to be able to see coming at us from other directions?”

Stoller speaks to how listening matters, the importance of presence and anticipation, and bringing the hard-to-navigate topics into the office chat.

Growing Through High Intensity

Working in the litigation practice, Stoller represents clients in criminal and regulatory investigations – representing people and companies involved in government investigations that can involve allegations of money laundering, sanctions violations, securities fraud, insider trading and market manipulation. She also represents clients in civil litigation, advises financial institutions on their ongoing relationships with regulators and conducts internal investigations.

“By the time clients bring in an enforcement lawyer, they’re frequently in high-stakes situations with a potential crisis on the horizon, so you come in as the steady hand and repeat player. You have to be a good listener,” says Stoller. “The first job is always to understand the facts and figure out the strategy , and then be ready to adjust the strategy as you go. It’s fascinating working with clients through these high intensity stretches.”

Not only is Stoller energized by the caliber of clients she works with on both the legal and business side, but she finds the cross-border aspect of her practice means that she is constantly learning – be it political, legal or cultural differences among the various international jurisdictions.

“Every case involves a different geography and a different business. You have to get steeped in the facts and the relationships among the clients and the regulators or enforcement agencies,” says Stoller. “You learn so much about how other countries operate, and I love that.”

Holding Grace Under Fire

Stoller finds good listening is a prerequisite of being an effective lawyer.

“I think a lot of lawyers come in and think it’s their job to start speaking right away. But there’s so much listening you need to do to understand the business, what the authorities are looking at and what matters to each of the stakeholders,” she says. “Taking all that information and building it into a strategy, and making sure you’re not missing out on what’s important to each of the stakeholders, is a really important skill.”

Stoller feels that understanding “the importance of narrative” is also very important, the ability to shape the story in a way that people can not only understand it, but follow the facts that are crucial to your argument.

As the daughter of an M&A partner at Skadden, she remembers hearing her father on the phone and even as a girl, she picked up that he modeled being a trusted advisor: “He was always calm and precise. You could count on his judgment. There’s a presence to being the calmest person in the room when things become challenging and intense. I hope I picked some of that up from listening to him.”

Moving More Towards Vision and Anticipation

Stoller joined Shearman & Sterling in January 2020, recognizing the opportunity to thrive with the firm, and made partner on July 1st of this year.

As a junior lawyer in the investigations space, doing well was about being meticulous, understanding the record well and not losing track of the details. But as she’s grown more senior as a lawyer, Stoller notes the remit has moved much more to big picture strategy and anticipation.

“The more senior you get, the more you are responsible for steering and being able to see around the corner and anticipating the different challenges that you’ll face along the way,” she observes. “You get more experienced at identifying the problems you may be seeing tomorrow.”

Stoller also values being able to effectively mediate conversations through difficult or stuck places so they can move forward, and without having to be a “bang-on-the-table sort of lawyer”.

Learning from Witnessing, Including Yourself

Having joined Shearman just a few weeks before the lockdowns, with few days in the office, Stoller looks forward to again experiencing in-office time with colleagues.

She notes that for her, much of her most valuable mentorship has happened through witnessing other lawyers in action when it counts: “I’ve learned a lot from sitting in people’s offices on the days when things are going wrong, when you get bad news and you respond to it, and one call leads to another. The chance to watch how excellent senior lawyers practice is important for more junior lawyers.”

Stoller emphasizes to those whom she mentors that it’s up to them to think about where they want to go, what they are good at and what they still need to learn.

“I think young lawyers need to feel empowered to ask for the kind of work they want and to speak up in meetings. There’s a strong tendency to stay quiet, which is the flip side of how important it is to learn from listening,” notes Stoller. “I encourage my junior associates to jump in, tell me if I missed something, ask a question, make the point someone else didn’t make, and start getting used to the sound of your own voice and advice. Of course, you also need to back that up by being diligent and having command of the facts and details.”

Bridging the Conversations

Stoller believes certain conversations should happen more often around law offices, so she will often bring up the topics that more junior lawyers may be reticent about.

“There are conversations that are hard to have and times where you don’t know if it’s okay to ask for something,” says Stoller. “I try to open the door to conversations I wanted to have when I was starting out. It can be a matter of just saying to someone, how are you doing? What kind of support do you need?”

Taking care of very little ones while managing a career that values long hours and lots of face time is one topic example, and a challenge she navigated some years back: “It’s hard to talk about the reality of your career during those few years when you need to leave the office at a certain point, or you don’t know when you’re going to be able to get the baby to sleep.” She feels it needs to be spoken to more explicitly, so parents can be open about what’s going on.

With a son of nine and a daughter of six and a passion for reading herself, Stoller makes sure to read to her kids every night and is currently in middle of a Laura Ingalls Wilder book, quite the throwback to her own childhood.

By: Aimee Hansen

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Geklang Lee: Chief Operating Officer, PGIM Real Estate, Asia-Pacific

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Geklang Lee“I think women’s trajectories should not be compromised when they have children, and that’s something that we need to advocate for,” says Geklang Lee. “I was fortunate enough to work in companies which were more enlightened.”

Lee speaks to accepting challenges, taking a career break for motherhood, being an executive and showing up in full integrity.

Seizing The Opportunity to Level Up

Born in Singapore, Lee was initially drawn to chemistry and biochemistry and scientific research. Unable to align with a path in genetic engineering, she took a completely different turn and chose to do research in the financial world.

She began in a research role on the sell-side in the public sector: “That fulfilled my desire and my interest in research. It fulfilled the analytical aspect of me.” Her enjoyment of the work drove her success and by 32 years old, she was a managing director.

Then Lee shifted to become a strategist, heading up the equity business in Singapore for Indosuez WI Carr, before moving again to become an Executive Director at UBS, to set up the Singapore Equities institutional research team which was subsequently ranked by Institutional Investors. As leadership opportunities came at her, Lee took them on despite the internal doubts to whether she was ready.

“Very often, women are much more cautious about opportunities or in raising their hands for opportunities. We feel like we need to be sure and know everything before we commit, because we want to do well,” says Lee. “But my view is that we should not shy away from challenging opportunities, putting ourselves out there and getting out of our comfort zone. If we set our minds to it and are willing to put in the hard work, then we can get the job done.”

Letting Go For Motherhood and Coming Back Again

“So many women feel that if they take time off to have a baby, they will be disadvantaged,” she says. “Sometimes organizations feel that way, too: you take time off, someone has to do your work, so there has to be a compromise. But I strongly disagree with that.”

In her case, both times Lee took maternity leave to have her children, she experienced an advancement. While on maternity leave with her first child, she received a big salary increase. When she came back from her second maternity leave, she was promoted to head the Singapore equity business at Indosuez WI Carr.

When over 40 years old, Lee left the UBS Executive Director role to spend three years with her three children, even though it felt like a risky move.

“I had already missed the growing years for my two older kids. I’d always had that guilty feeling of not being a mom, and had told myself I would look after my grandchildren,” she says. “But when my youngest was born, I decided, no, why should I wait? I actually wanted to spend time and bond more with my kids.”

For the first year, she retained a part-time consultancy with UBS. For the second two years, she was a full-time mom. Then as circumstances changed with her husband’s firm, she decided to return to work and reached out to her network contacts, which she had nurtured. Soon she was running the global real estate market neutral strategy for a hedge fund, before moving to PGIM Real Estate.

“Women shouldn’t be concerned about not being able to come back into the workforce, but I think what is critical is that we need to keep our contacts, “she says. “I always encourage people to keep your contacts within the network, as it’s extremely important for helping to build career path and opportunities, staying in touch with the markets, and moving jobs or returning to the workforce.”

Shifting To The C-Suite

At PGIM, Lee had the opportunity to go from managing the Asia Pacific public equities real estate portfolio to assuming the position of Chief Operating Officer for Asia Pacific real estate business. Moving from investments to a COO role was definitely pushing beyond her comfort zone.

“As a COO, you cannot be an expert in everything, but the team is there to support us as leaders. We provide the strategic direction,” says Lee. “Humility is important, recognizing they know more than me in the job they do, because they are the experts.”

Lee is dedicated to developing people, and emphasizes the leadership traits of versatility and adaptability—being open to different mindsets, perspectives and ways of doing things.

“Even if someone presents something that I do not agree with initially, I do need to listen, and reflect before making any judgments,” she says. “Everyone has a lot to offer. The young people today have a lot to offer, and if we are open enough to listen and allow them to present their ideas, then it will make us all stronger leaders and a stronger organization.”

Showing Up With Integrity

Lee never planned her career path, but has always put her best into anything she does. She feels that in her case, her commitment and hard work produced results, earned recognition and created opportunities.

Lee learned by emulating some of her previous supervisors. When she was deputy head in a previous firm, she noticed and admired how the head of the team did everything with the team’s interests in mind.

“When I was subsequently promoted to his position, because he moved on to greater things, I remember asking myself: am I willing to fight for my team, even to the extent that I may compromise my job? Am I willing to fight for my team for what is right?” she says. “Only when I was prepared to do that, did I accept the role.”

Thinking to her childhood, Lee remembers being a little girl in an underprivileged family and loving music but being unable to afford music lessons. When she was able to join the school band, her instructor said: “whether it rains or it snows, you have to turn up for practice.” She laughs that it never snows in Singapore, but if it were to, you still show up. At seven or eight years old, this left a big impression upon her.

“I think that developed my sense of commitment,” Lee reflects. “When you commit to do something, you just turn up. You turn up all the time. Regardless.”

Doing Things Differently and Better

Lee feels that as a woman, she shows up differently in a way that strengthens the table.

“As a woman, I don’t look at everything just as a task. There is often that softer touch that we bring to the table,” she says. “That helps when I’m running teams, because I’m not only interested in the output, but just as much in the individual.”

Lee is excited about how the forced circumstances of remote working has created rapid technology advancements and mindset shifts while raising questions: “How do we connect with our colleagues? How do we make sure that they feel part of the organization? How do we continue to build a team culture?”

Lee is energized by the company’s strategic operating initiatives —known as PGIM Real Estate 2.0—being ed by PGIM Real Estate’s Global chief operating officer, Cathy Marcus: “It’s essentially encouraging us to rethink the way we do things, and why we do them that way, in order to see if things can be done better,” says Lee.

Her children are now 27, 25 and 21. Lee loves sports and runs every day. She also plays the saxophone, enjoys pottery and embroidery, and does volunteer work with refugees in the greater region as well as migrant workers.

By Aimee Hansen

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Grace Jamgochian: Partner, Mergers & Acquisitions, Shearman & Sterling

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Grace Jamgochian“Law professionals are not selling widgets. We’re selling thoughts. We’re selling our expertise. We’re selling relationships,” advises Grace Jamgochian. “So remembering the human nature of our business is so integral to what we do.”

Jamgochian speaks to why M&A is animating every single day, the pay-off of being goal-oriented and why it’s important to treat law as a service-oriented business.

Loving the Hub Responsibility of M&A

As a full-service Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) partner at Shearman & Sterling LLP (Shearman), Jamgochian works across a broad general corporate practice — from public M&A, to private M&A, to private equity — gravitating towards the areas of tech, media, and telecom, infrastructure, and consumer products.

“M&A is a quasi-business and business strategy function. We advise our clients on more than just the technical aspects of the law. We partner with them to achieve their objectives, and we work closely with our internal specialists to make sure all bases are covered,” says Jamgochian. “As an M&A lawyer, you’re responsible for managing, coordinating and completing the entire deal. I love M&A because that responsibility fits well with my personality and drives me.”

Jamgochian thrives on the pace, breadth, variety and overview that M&A demands of her at Shearman.

“Every day is different. I have a general sense of my to-do list but M&A is often a series of fire drills,” she says, “Being on my toes is the type of practice that I’ve always wanted, and that’s why I’ve continued in M&A for more than a decade.”

Jamgochian also enjoys the teamwork needed for M&A transactions. “M&A is the central hub for a deal. My group handles the “corporate” pieces but we also collect the input of specialists such as in IP, Tax, Compensation, Real Estate, and Regulatory. I view a transaction agreement like a complex puzzle, and each person contributes a few pieces into the big puzzle that I’m ultimately 100% responsible for,” she says.

Jamgochian credits a year-ish long stint as an in-house attorney at Thomson Reuters, right after graduating from Cornell Law School, with immersing her into the business perspective of law from the very beginning.

“While others used the Shearman associate deferral year in 2010 for non-professional pursuits, I chose to work at a client handling M&A and securities matters so that I could get my feet wet right out of the gate. Having this opportunity set me up to be a practical, business-minded and solution-oriented attorney from the start,” Jamgochian reflects. “A deal needs business-minded lawyers. It can’t just be working in theory. You need to assess and advise on the risks, but you also need a good dose of reality and know what market practice is.”

Being Goal-Oriented As Her Key to Success

Though Jamgochian is newly elected to the Shearman partnership this year, it’s been in her sights since she first began her law career. Her journey to partner felt both intentional and linear.

“Always give yourself options. From Day 1, I tried to put myself in a position to be partner down the road, even if I couldn’t predict the future and would have been open to other paths. I volunteered for basically everything, from deals to extracurricular responsibilities like involvement in inclusion networks and bar associations. If you want to be a partner, you don’t wake up one day and suddenly have the skills. You should start thinking about business development early on and what technical and “soft” skills you’ll need to develop,” says Jamgochian.

She says her colleagues would most likely also remark on her efficiency, organization and ability to carry through a goal to completion.

“I’m a goal-oriented person. If we all have an idea in mind of what we think should be the finish line, let’s get there and let’s be efficient about it,” says Jamgochian. “In order to do that, you need to be organized, create processes, reduce any inefficiencies of people not knowing what their role is and communicate clearly. That’s me in a nutshell.”

When it comes to her next level goal, Jamgochian would love to continue to develop herself as an M&A lawyer to rank among the top of her field.

Law is Foremost About People

Early on, it was imparted on Jamgochian that law is a service-oriented industry in which the business is “people” and “our minds”.

“We’re getting paid to think. It’s about essentially our brains and our relationships: these intangibles. So the thing that lawyers need to focus on and remember throughout our careers is our clients and to develop those relationships with clients,” says Jamgochian. “Provide them with the best legal advice, which is essentially your thoughts and expertise, but then also don’t forget that everything is people-based in law firms, whether your clients or those you work with.”

When it comes to diversity, M&A as an industry is a more white male dominated area in particular.

“I have definitely had occasions where I’m the only woman in a room of thirty people. Once you already have a male-dominated industry, then you have the lack of mentorship, you have the lack of role models and it kind of snowballs from that,” observes Jamgochian. “But I think all firms, and the industry itself, are trying to pull the reins in. Shearman is really focused on D&I efforts, plus an increasing client focus on diversity is also helping to increase the law firm diversity focus as well.”

Busy Summer and Time for Family

As it’s only a block away from home, Jamgochian has been working out of the office this year, where her workload — focusing largely on tech, media, and telecom and infrastructure — has continued to boom when she might normally see a summer slowdown.

She notes that with the change of executive administration, as well as regulatory and tax changes in the air, many people and organizations are wanting to work through deals quickly. So these days, her expertise is a commodity in fast demand.

Jamgochian’s husband is also a Big Law lawyer, and with both of them having a high-intensity lifestyle, time with their five year old son is precious. They enjoy weekend picnics in Central Park and being surrounded by family in New York City and nearby.

With a background in dance history, Jamgochian turns to movement as part of keeping her balance, which may very well help in flowing with the pace of her work. She also loves learning instruments and reading music to stay sharp – along with piano and flute, she has recently also taken up ukelele.

By: Aimee Hansen

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Aine Leddy: Information Technology Business Partner, AIG Investments

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Aine Leddy“Curiosity is a hallmark of who I am and has been a huge enabler to my success. I am trying to grow all the time,” says Aine Leddy. “One thing I found when I first came to the U.S. decades ago was that many people were specialized, deep and narrow. I always aspired to know a little bit about everything.”

Leddy speaks to elevating to the C-Suite, cultivating intellectual curiosity and being proactive in expanding your ability to lead.

Stepping up to the C-Suite

Irish by birth, Leddy emigrated to the U.S. in the late 80’s while training to be an oil trader. Finding that her personality was not suited to the aggressive trading environment, she moved into financial services at Morgan Stanley, where she received an analyst training that she likens to an in-house Executive MBA.

After holding a variety of financial roles across 22 years at the firm, she reached an inflection point while working as the finance partner to the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the investment management division, Marianne Bachynski, AIG Investments+ Chief Information Officer, at the time. Technology was developing to become its own branch of the business, and Leddy was given the opportunity to step into a Chief Operating Officer (COO) role with overview of the IT business.

“I’m a big picture kind of person. I find closeness to decision-making and strategy very compelling. I love to ideate and be in a position where you can see ideas taking shape and then ultimately come to fruition,” says Leddy. “I enjoy the increased personal responsibility to make things happen as well.”

After a few transitions, Leddy began working at AIG in September 2020, motivated by the opportunity to learn about the insurance industry at a highly reputable firm, expand her skillset and reunite with Bachynski. While she has yet to be in the room with her team due to the need to work virtually, she’s been highly impressed by the collaboration, communication, cutting-edge performance, and progress on the big, gnarly technological issues like cloud migration.

Being Curious with Breadth

“I personally like to know enough about everything ‘to be dangerous’ and went out of my way to equip myself with that knowledge,” she says. “That curiosity has served me, particularly with my entreé into the tech COO world. I could show up at the table and enter right into a discussion about the business strategy and where technology fits in, and that was apparent to the people who have given me the opportunities.”

As a teacher’s daughter, Leddy prides herself on being super-prepared and putting the “sweat equity” into knowing her stuff, and it’s a hot-button for her to watch someone trying to wing it when they clearly haven’t done the same preparation. Despite this, she has learned to take in stride the out of left field questions as she is also prone to be the one to ask the question.

Being curious as a principle means the willingness to reveal what you don’t know: “I think a lot of women think it’s better not to ask because maybe you should already know. So, I might soften that by prepping my question with, ‘I probably should know this, but would you mind explaining it anyway.’”

Nine out of ten times, the person next to her will thank her for asking because they were wondering the same thing.

Taking Action in Empowering Yourself

Leddy emphasizes it’s critical to be solution-focused: “I do like to ideate and strategize, but I’m also an action-oriented person. You can sit around and admire the problem for a long time, but ultimately, you have to get the stuff done.”

She feels that taking personal initiative in growing yourself is foundational, as she, too, often hears people defer the responsibility of their learning limitations to their organization, when she argues you can be proactive yourself.

“Training is out there. It won’t always be the customized training that you do as part of the code of conduct or something like that,” advises Leddy. “But you can go and talk to someone with a different skillset than yours. There’s tons of information out there for you to train yourself, and there’s so much you can do for yourself in terms of expanding your horizons.”

When Leddy glances around her senior circle of peers at AIG Investments, and at some of her previous employers, she’s invigorated by the presence of women leaders. She has found herself fortunate to be in environments that reward intellectual curiosity, foremost, and where she felt she could be herself.

“Some women feel they need to be more aggressive to be successful. I never felt I had to be anybody other than who I am,” says Leddy. “When you bring your authentic self to the table in any situation, you’re going to be more successful.”

Being Willing to Move, But Also Move On

“You don’t realize how immersed you are in a culture until you have to get to know another one. I think switching companies taught me to be more open and not to bring my bias from another culture,” says Leddy. “That includes listening upfront and taking in how people work, work together and what’s important to leaders in one company versus another.”

Earlier in her career, while putting three children through college and being motivated by a compensation-focused opportunity, Leddy learned that you don’t always know whether something is going to be a good fit until you’re inside of it.

“I tell those I mentor that you cannot know all of the elements of anything ahead of time, you just can’t. So, if you want to switch departments or companies or even careers, you think you are going in with ‘eyes wide open’ but you may not be,” she says. “The lesson I learned is that if it’s making you miserable, change your situation as quickly as you can, learn from what you don’t want and then move on. Don’t stay where you’re unhappy.”

Staying True to What You Want

While Leddy feels she was most often mentored on business skills, her mentorship has always begun with listening into: what do they really want?

She’s found that it tends to be guidance on the softer side of matters, such as how she managed to get promoted while her kids were little and still feel present in the home. Leddy is known by her peers for being grounded and ‘unflappable’, and she carries that grounding to her mentees.

One thing she imparts onwards is never be afraid to ask for a raise or promotion but be solid in arguing your case for why you’ve earned it. She also advises to not get caught in emotional defeat when you don’t receive what you want, but be resilient, prepare to go back in and to argue your case again.

“I think women do ourselves a disservice, because we take things personally and get annoyed with our manager if we don’t get the raise or promotion,” she observes. “Whereas men seem to think, ‘If it doesn’t happen, I’ll get back in the ring and I’ll fight the good fight again next year.’ Ultimately, promotion is a numbers game. It can’t happen for everybody all of the time, so rather than take it so personally, elevate your case and prepare to ask again.”

Leddy has been married for almost 33 years and her three grown children are now in their mid-late twenties. She loves her Peloton bike and taking in the sun in her garden. She is a huge reader, a passionate etymologist and prides herself on living holistically to enjoy all aspects of her life.

By Aimee Hansen

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Marie Carr: Global Growth Strategy, Insurance and Financial Services, PwC US

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Marie Carr“I’ve spent my career helping companies grow in a way that takes advantage of disruption and new trends,” says Marie Carr.

From back when the internet seemed like an insecure and unproven place to do business to Artificial Intelligence (AI), Carr helps companies determine how to grow, particularly by taking advantage of technological changes that redefine customer interactions.

“People now want you to understand them,” Carr says of the client mindset: “I need you to understand me and frame things based not on what you want to sell me but on my unique needs.”

Carr champions adoption of new technologies that can help companies create better experiences for their customers, as well as actionable data that facilitates those positive experiences.

But what’s led Carr to where she is now and how has it related to her choice of careers? She cites motivation, how faith supports her, and how to find and respond to mentorship moments.

A Motivating Mission

“I went to business school to become a better entrepreneur,” says Carr, who decided early on to get her MBA at University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

She soon began to receive feedback that she’d make a great management consultant and realized that interning at a consultancy could support her education. She joined Diamond Technology Partners for a summer and twenty-five years later, long after PwC acquired the firm in 2010, she still loves where she is.

“I’ve been very blessed to work with leadership whose mission I believe in,” she says. “It’s easier to stay when you’re working with leaders who are building a culture that’s consistent with your values.”

She was initially inspired by Diamond founder Mel Bergstein’s vision in “forging a new path.” At the time, it was “unheard of” for a firm to grow to become publicly traded so that employees could own their own stake in it.

“To be able to work in something that you’re good at with like-minded people that also have a mission of greater good,” says Carr, “was a rare combination.”

With PwC, Carr found a new mission—to help build the advisory practice and ensure that what “was excellent about Diamond became part of PwC’s DNA.”

“Ten years later, folks who were younger consultants are coming into leadership positions and living those values,” says Carr. “It’s been a good journey.”

Overcoming Adversity and Keeping Faith

Carr feels her parents and faith instilled within her the ability “to never let temporary circumstances determine what your ultimate success is going to be.”

“Whatever adversity you have to overcome, overcome it,” says Carr, describing her parent’s motto, who both experienced tough challenges in childhood. “You can’t let the fact that there may have been discrimination stop you,” she says.

Raised in faith, Carr learned to trust in a greater power, which has enabled her to be comfortable in herself and have less anxiety than some in a high-pressure field.

“It’s not just about my own ability. I have confidence in and the ability to appeal to a force higher than myself. That’s helped me to be more patient, to put myself in other’s shoes, to not be so hard on myself,” says Carr. “You have to be able to center yourself, because you’re often going to find yourself in an environment that’s not going to affirm you. So, the ability to affirm yourself is really useful.”

Learning from Everyone

“I’ve learned a lot through observation. I’m very much a student of everyone. My dad taught me that ‘even the village idiot can teach you something’,” she says. “As I got older, I learned not to rush to judgment but instead ask, how do I learn from who I’m interacting with?”

She continues, “I’ve also found that people are very generous in helping you if you help yourself. Lots of people have given me advice in the moment, so I became good at getting feedback without being sensitive or defensive,” she says. “I’ve tried to learn from everyone, because there are a lot different paths to success.”

As she’s moved through her career, Carr has realized that she hasn’t always been aware of who’s advocating for her. As a result, she makes a conscious effort to advocate for others who she feels deserve a voice in the room.

Playing sports, particularly basketball, helped shape Carr’s approach. Being on a nationally ranked basketball team in high school meant being open to coaching and learning to do things differently to improve.

“Basketball is a team sport that really requires everyone to be able to fluidly move in and out of roles, that ability to adapt,” says Carr. “It has made me always look for what I could do to draw out the best of someone I’m working with.”

Leave It Better Than You Found It

Coming from a long line of ministers and pastors, Carr approaches management consulting as part of fulfilling her desire to serve.

Her mother advised her to always invest in people. For her, helping companies to grow and adapt is about affecting all the people who depend on the work to support their lives and families. She enjoys helping people and companies reach their highest potential.

Carr has run a financial summer camp on wealth empowerment and financial literacy for several years now, working in the community with younger generations to envision their possibilities.

“We’re accountable to making a difference in the world, says Carr. “You have to leave it better than it was when you got here.”

By: Aimee Hansen

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Silke Soennecken: Head of Risk Management, Commerzbank New York

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Silke Soennecken“You are motivated and grow when you are being challenged,” says Silke Soennecken, “when you have to use your resources to get your head around things you didn’t think would ever happen.”

Soennecken speaks to growing through challenge, retaining your power as a woman and letting go for others to grow.

When Things Turn Upside-Down, Learning Curves Go Up

As a Managing Director at Commerzbank New York, Soennecken is tasked to oversee governance and strategy for all risk management in the region, and is responsible for the bank’s entire North American credit portfolio. Based at a branch rather than head office, she enjoys the vantage point of gleaning how initiatives flow and come together, while gaining insight into areas of risk management that interrelate with her expertise in corporate credit.

As a risk manager, she thinks that despite the challenge, it is precisely the unexpected and unprecedented moments that provide the strongest learning experiences and opportunities to grow your skillset.

She experienced this first-hand in September 2008, when she joined Commerzbank just one month before the financial world fell into crisis, and then again this past year with the pandemic. Now Soennecken approaches these big upheavals with some fascination by observing how various players respond and react to crisis on all levels.

She notes her “extremely analytical mind” gives her the ability to remain curious and agile, as she is naturally prone to dissecting how the many pieces of a system work together and interact with each other—including considering the consequences in a scenario when one piece fails.

Flipping the Worst-Case Scenario

Soennecken had a first-hand experience of a worst-case work challenge, when years ago, her firm initiated a significant restructuring. Consequently, she witnessed a mass exodus of her entire 25 person department over just a few months, including team members she thought she could not afford to lose.

Tasked with restructuring the department, and never imagining she would end up doing it alone, she recalls a “breakdown moment” in the bathroom after the last person announced they, too, were leaving. However, beginning with temporary patches, Soennecken stood up and began to rebuild the entire department.

Although she had a private office, she instead moved her desk to the middle of the open floor, where anyone who joined would have access to her. Only after a three-year journey rebuilding the team did she return to her office with an open door policy.

“Rebuilding was hitting rock bottom where there was nothing left, and then climbing out from there to create a completely new department,” she recalls. “I didn’t know what to do except to put myself right in the middle and build from the inside out. I was just put in charge and swam my way out. But when I look back, I’m proud of the approach I took, and of what I accomplished.”

For Soennecken, the most impactful part of this experience was learning via unsolicited team member feedback about how her collaborative approach positively impacted their individual and collective growth.

Staying Confident as A Woman

“I had the advantage that I found progressive male mentors that supported me,” says Soennecken, “but I also found a lot of opposition along the way for being a woman.”

Having worked in banking for a few decades, she remembers earlier in her career being the only woman in rooms of men where she was asked to pour the coffee. Though she recalls wondering ‘why her?’, the request wasn’t entirely out of the norm at the time, and she wasn’t equipped to confront it like women are today.

“I wasn’t entirely aware that I was sometimes being treated in a way I shouldn’t have been treated,” says Soennecken. “As a consequence, certain elements of confidence were lost along the way that I didn’t notice I was losing, until I look back now.”

Today, she can recognize the minimizing ways in which she was talked to or handled as a woman, and how that wore down her natural confidence, while other habits arose to compensate and created a double bind.

“I ended up being a little harder than I was expected to be. I even had a coach for supposedly being too straightforward when talking to people,” she says, “but I think it was, in part, a consequence of navigating through a world where I had to push with my elbows to try to be heard. Now I know that I could have used a more feminine approach to get what I wanted without having to try to act like a man.”

In retrospect, Soennecken observed she could have used her intuitive and relational skills—such as sensing someone’s feelings about confrontation or mirroring their conversational tendencies—to achieve the influence she instead struggled for.

“Our sensitivity as women can work against us, but I realize I could have used that sensitivity to my advantage in interrelating,” she reflects. “It would have spared me some stress along the way.”

The Danger of Over-Explaining

Soennecken believes that it is important to encourage gender diversity in managerial roles, but on the flip side, women need not be required to champion every woman when it’s more objectivity that is needed.

When asked, one way she’s personally observed how women can undermine their own power is by defending themselves too much in the meeting room.

“We often think we are being attacked personally,” she says, noting many moments when she’s listened to another woman get drawn into over-explaining herself, going further only to lose her ground.

“If you make yourself small by defending yourself too much, by giving a lot of explanation for something that could be a simple answer,” she continues, ”then you lose all your power and the advantage you might have had.”

‘Letting Go’ For Others to Grow

Over the years, Soennecken has adapted from guiding people with a hands-on approach, to guiding people while letting go.

“When you are hands on, you do things a certain way and tend to believe others should do it the same way. But people have different approaches, and it takes time to admit to yourself those approaches are fine, and so are the consequences,” she says. “You are supporting the growth of people by allowing them to also make mistakes. You’re going to support and guide them, but there’s purpose in delegating and giving others the opportunity to grow and shine in their own way.”

As a mentor, she notices when people are stuck: “You see that someone is in the wrong job, but they are afraid of changing, finding the right job and really being happy. They’re making a big effort, but they can’t grow because it’s not what they want to do.”

“The potential is in embracing the unknown, not in staying in their comfort zone, but you get a lot of resistance because most people don’t like change. The success story happens when finally somebody embraces the change that is good for them,” she says. “You can help them realize the potential is there, and trust and support them, but they have to ultimately make the decision.”

When it comes to finding fulfillment at work and advancing up the career ladder, Soennecken feels it’s about going beyond. Being interested and doing “the extra” is what creates the sense of fulfillment for her.

“If you come to work every day and you type five pages because your job is to type five pages, you’re not going to progress,” she gives as an example. “But if you come in every day, and instead of typing five pages, one day you decide the pages could be a different color or a different layout or you can type eight pages or a book, then you grow.”

Never Forget “The Little Heart”

“You cannot have a more loyal employee than if the person has a personal situation, and you show you can be supportive,” says Soennecken. “Never forget about the personal side of the people you work with. It’s what I call ‘the little heart’ and everybody has ‘a little heart’. Very often, I think about ‘the little heart’ of my colleagues, regardless of their role or responsibility.”

When it comes to non-business workplace issues, for example redesigning seating arrangements, she knows certain things are important to people, and if she can accommodate a request, she will. While you can’t please everyone, she has found it makes all the difference to thoughtfully consider all parts of someone in the decisions she makes.

Speaking of little hearts, Soenneken is the single mother of two bright, energetic twin six-year-old girls. She feels the pandemic has helped to highlight what is most important in life and is enjoying the unexpected, but welcome, togetherness with her family.

By Aimee Hansen

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Erika Karp: Chief Impact Officer, Pathstone

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Erika Karp“I think that capitalism has the potential to be exceptionally productive. That said, we’ve messed it up. We’ve distorted it, and it has become a system that is extractive and exclusive,” says Erika Karp. “I think that’s really unfortunate. I want to be a part of a system that is regenerative and inclusive, and I still believe capitalism can be.”

Karp speaks to a childhood love for economics, why ESG takes the ideology out of sustainable investment and being the first out lesbian on her firm’s Wall Street trading floor.

From the Lemonade Stand to the Trading Room

Karp knew from when she was a child that she loved and wanted to be involved in trading and economics.

“While we don’t think about it that way, trading is part of human nature. As kids, we set up lemonade stands in our driveways in the suburbs of New York. Well that wasn’t quite interesting enough,” she remembers. “So I set up a stand with all my old toys, trinkets and baubles. It wasn’t so much about the money, but trading. I loved it.”

When Erika’s sister borrowed money from her as children, she’d pay Erika back with a little interest. And Karp recalls her father, a securities lawyer, getting off the phone with a client and saying: “It’s so wonderful when you’re involved in the stock market and on the phone, and on your word, on your honor, you can do important transactions with millions of dollars.”

Karp remembers that it was on your honor. From six years old, she didn’t know what a stockbroker was, but she knew she was going to be one.

Willing that Capitalism Can be Regenerative

Karp lists her personal values as nature and animals, access to water and the ocean, access to education and healthcare. Towards the end of her first 25 years on Wall Street, which culminated in her becoming Director of Global Sector Research at UBS Investment Bank, she was asked to manage the Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) team.

“I learned organically that when you look at the critical environmental and social and governance factors in a company, in an industry, in a sector – you really do get a lot of predictive insight into the long-term investing process,” she notes. “Being able to align my investment discipline and belief in capitalism with my personal values through the discipline of ESG analysis felt amazing.”

“To evolve capitalism towards something that’s more regenerative and more inclusive definitely takes a systems approach. That means understanding complexity, nuance and interrelationships.” As momentum gathered, Karp began to do work on sustainable investing in cooperation with World Economic Forum, UN Global Compact and the Clinton Global Initiative.

“As I got more involved, I felt a greater sense of purpose and urgency. So I founded Cornerstone Capital Group, which [was] a purpose-built research-driven impact investment advisor,” she notes. After bringing the business to $1.2 billion in assets under management, she took the plunge to merge her impact-focused firm with Pathstone, an independent registered investment advisory firm focused on families, family offices and institutions. It was a symbiotic merger, with Pathstone having a long-standing background in ESG analysis and a strong interest in expanding its impact orientation.

Taking the Ideology Out of ESG

“Years ago, I remember thinking even the word ‘responsible’ implies ideology, it implies right and wrong,” reflects Karp. “So the world of SRI was ideological, political, divisive and tree-hugging, and it just wasn’t adopted as real investing.”

“To some degree, I was subversive. I came to believe that over the long run, ESG factors are fundamentally important to get more predictive insight in the investment process,” she says. “So I was more pragmatic. I didn’t use words like ‘responsible’ or ‘sustainability’ or barely even ‘climate change’. I would talk ‘energy efficiency’ and ‘reputational risk” and ‘political risk’. I knew it was about sustainability in the back of my mind, but I talked about fundamental things to the industry, because I really believe it’s about investment outcomes.”

“Unlike SRI, on the ESG front, we can analyze factors objectively,” says Karp. “Whether or not this touches my values, does it touch a company’s revenues and costs and risk? It’s beyond being ideological now. It’s about investment.”

Karp was invited to join the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), an opportunity to create infrastructure in defining ESG criteria that matters to any given industry or company and offering standards for what to disclose based on material economic and profit outcomes.

“More and more people now understand ESG as an analytical discipline, so that’s great progress,” says Karp. She notes that myth-busting still is an active part of her work – for example busting the myth that ESG factors reduce returns when the research shows not only that this is incorrect, but that integrating ESG factors can potentially increase returns over the long term.

Karp points out the risk of ESG analysis becoming more popular is that it is done flippantly, rather than at a high quality level with skilled managers. She feels ESG practices will evolve with standard disclosure, and technology will become more skilled in discerning the signal from the noise in the data when it comes to informing investment impact and outcomes.

“ESG analysis is a discipline within finance that is the future of finance,” says Karp. “One day, all the different phrases – SRI and impact and values-based and double bottom line, we won’t use them. It’s just investing.”

Being A Leader, Not A Manager

“I would rather be a leader than manager. To be a good leader, you really do have to have a vision, a mission. I want people to feel inspired to get on board with what we’re doing and feel purpose and connection,” says Karp. “Management is structural and systems and measures and accountability are critical. But I don’t love management as much as I love leadership.”

As a lover of learning, Karp also feels she learns most when also teaching. With her wife being a clinical psychologist, she jokes she is clearly not afraid to be analyzed.

“Every leader has flaws. I think I am mostly able to hear about the things that I can do better. I want to evolve, teach and coach,” says Karp. “If I’m not listening or open to input as to how I can be better, that’s not facilitating what I want to do.”

“We have financial capital, human capital and natural capital, which is priceless. The intersectionality of these three forms of capital has to be valued,” she says, when she speaks to her leadership vision. “All need to be respected and they need to become regenerative as opposed to being destroyed or shifted around.”

“We know the value of financial capital – many trillions of dollars,” says Karp. “Could someone tell me the value of the last drop of water? That’s worth more than all the financial capital in existence. That’s how I think of things.”

Being The First Out Lesbian on The Trading Floor

“As a woman, to succeed, you can’t just be good. You have to be great,” says Karp. “I was experienced differently than many of the guys around me. So if I am assertive and articulate, I might have been perceived as pushy or aggressive. It’s hard work to gain respect and credibility while balancing not wanting to be seen as aggressive.”

Karp notes that as a woman, and being potentially more risk-averse, she has found herself and other women to often be more supported in their arguments: “In a conference room full of men, I may not be the first to speak,” she says, “but when I do, I have something to say that affects the thinking of the people in the room.”

“When it comes to being gay, that’s more challenging. While my clients or colleagues are processing ‘she’s gay’, are they also hearing what I’m saying? This is the case with any difference,” says Karp. “Whereas we now know difference has to be embraced, because it’s awesome.”

For the initial years of her career, Karp had been married to a man and was mostly closeted. Even after telling a close colleague, it took her years to come out, and she even recalls jumping out of her first Pride Parade in New York for the couple blocks around where it passed by her office building and jumping back in afterwards.

But after making director, and meeting her future wife, she came out 24 years ago. She did not experience the backlash she feared, and she says even if she had, she would not have cared.

“Even if it did affect my career in some way, I don’t care. I’ll never know. I don’t care, because I feel like being out has made me more productive, more creative, more content than I could have imagined back then,” says Karp. “But it was hard — I was the first out lesbian on a Wall Street trading floor.”

Karp found her firm to be receptive and open to learning, and she made a point of being purposely out and transparent to make it easier for those to come. She introduced a lounge for breastfeeding when she had her babies. Repeatedly, she went to HR at UBS with the questions that had never been asked: about covering costs related to becoming pregnant, about taking leave of absence when her wife carried the baby, about applying the financial assistance with the adoption process for her own children.

“Each time, they came back with a yes,” she says. “There are a lot of benefits we have now that are relatively standard at big investment banks, we didn’t have back then.”

Karp and Sari Kessler have had three marriages. Their first “illegal” wedding was 22 years ago in The BoatHouse in Central Park with their rabbi, friends and family. The second was on the first day that City Hall in Manhattan was giving out marriage licenses for same sex couples, also with her rabbi and this time, with their three daughters present (who are now 19, 16 and 13 years old). The third time was when federal marriage equality rights were granted.

Doing What She Is Meant For

“I know that I’m doing what I ought to be doing, and I know that I’m doing it in an important and honorable way,” says Karp.

She loves nature and water and says margaritas by the ocean with her family would be her happy place. She loves hiking, movies, playing cards and watching her daughters grow up, if far too quickly.

By: Aimee Hansen

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Caroline Samponaro: Head of Transit & Micromobility Policy, Lyft

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Caroline Sampanaro“One thing I learned through my community organizing training with Midwest Academy is this idea of leadership: that giving power away is how you grow a powerful movement,” says Caroline Samponaro. “I focus on imparting that message to those I manage: how are we giving away power to build a strength of team and community that can be that much more successful?”

Samponaro speaks to how social issues led her to transport and the journey to feeling confident in her voice.

Social Issues Led Her to Transit

An epic bike ride through Japan is what first set Samponaro, an anthropology major at Colombia University at the time, on the unexpected trajectory of working in transportation.

While writing a thesis on the topic of bike activism, she then began to ride around New York City. She discovered an intriguing intersection between social issues and transport. While working as a paralegal, she started to participate in monthly Critical Mass bike rides on Fridays, an action to create safety in numbers for cyclists by reclaiming the streets.

After challenging an arrest while on a bicycle, she co-founded a group, with other law students and lawyers, called The FreeWheels Bicycle Defense Fund, that raised funds and provided legal support to help cyclists challenge their charges.

“I didn’t come into transportation from a planning or policy perspective initially,” says Samponaro. “I was intrigued about the way that it was an intersection point into cities and government and social issues.”

Though she gained entry into law school, she instead began in a working in transportation in a non-for-profit and never looked back. After twelve years at Transportation Alternatives across various advocacy roles, feeling her impact was limited in scale, she decided to move to the private sector with Lyft as the company expanded its scope to include micromobility.

Affecting Inclusion through Transport

Transportation is a pervasive industry because it touches most people on a daily basis, and Samponaro’s work is disrupting the norms we take for granted that weren’t always norms.

“In the U.S., we’ve spent more than a century building the private automobile into everyday life,” notes Samponaro. “There are New York Times articles from the introduction of the automobile era which reflect the public’s uproar over the invasion of these automobiles onto the streets, which traditionally had been used as gathering places, stickball locations, parks, food markets and all the things.”

“We also heavily subsidize single-occupancy vehicle trips to mask the massive toll this form of transportation takes on society – free parking, cheap gas, roads designed entirely for vehicular traffic. It’s not surprising that roughly 77% of Americans drive alone in their car to work. As we face big challenges like climate change, housing, and equitable access to transportation options, removing the single occupancy vehicle from day to day life is part of getting at the root of the problem,” she says. “Lyft as a company is challenging the premise of the single occupancy vehicle through rideshare, our large-scale bikeshare programs and the ways that we provide our customers with trip planning to integrate transit into a daily commute.”

Samponaro’s line of work in micromobility is focused on creating a network of shared bicycles and scooters that functions like a public transportation system. Though bike activism originally drew her into urban biking, she feels her work is helping to remove the identity politics from riding a bike, while overcoming some of the disadvantages of not owning a car.

“At the end of the day, if we’re trying to transform the way people get around, and make it more equitable and safe, it’s important that when people choose to get on a bike to go to work, they’re not making an identity decision,” she notes. “They’re making a practical one, with a tool that is available, easy and affordable.”

Bringing A More Diverse Human Element to Transit

“In the context of biking and micromobility, often the market is orientating itself towards the perspective of a young white male,” Samponaro observes. “I’ve tried to find opportunities, whether through my own perspective or bringing in the perspective of other women, to make sure we’re inserting a broader view into how we plan our programs and welcome people to our systems.”

For example, street designs generally make the thought of shifting to a bicycle both scary and implausible: “You have to be daring, and you shouldn’t have to be thinking about whether you’re risking your life in your transportation choice. That’s not logical, so I think that impacting the systems around people’s choices become the ways you ensure equity and access.”

“It’s important that there are engineers building models and algorithms to make non-driving easier and more attainable,” notes Samponaro. “I’m most excited about my work when I’m bringing the human dimension to that essential product development. Given how much this area impacts the lives of people, having a people-centric perspective on the work of transportation has been an asset that I can bring and that I find great satisfaction in.”

A Culture of Belonging

“Growing up, I just passed as someone that people assumed was straight. So I struggled mostly in the context of work with a feeling of being closeted, unless I chose not to be,” says Samponaro. “Always coming out over and over again has its own challenges.”

Working in a highly male-dominated industry, she has often been the only woman or one of few women at the table. As a married lesbian mother of 4.5 year old twins, the years have brought internal and contextual changes that have helped her feel confident in embodying her own voice.

“Getting to a place of success and building my career trajectory involved feeling bad about myself at times and being slightly insecure that it wasn’t going to go my way, whether it was the raise or the promotion,” she notes. “If I spoke too loudly in the meeting, was I going to be called out for being rude, as opposed to be appreciated for being assertive? As I became more senior, the biggest feedback I received was that I was not being considerate enough in my tone, the kind of feedback that I feel men don’t receive. So the context of being queer just layered on top of those feelings of insecurity and asking if I belonged.”

Samponaro notes that achieving successes is different than having an inherent feeling of ease and belonging: “The overwhelming sense I used to have was as hard as I was trying and as good as I was doing,” she recalls, “I wasn’t going to get asked to that drink or get added to that bike ride or get included.”

Samponaro accredits much of the belonging and encouragement she now feels to being in an environment where there is a dedicated emphasis on building an equitable company culture.

“I have personally grown to a place where I could feel belonging, but then Lyft is just a wonderful place to work in terms of the emphasis it places on creating affinity groups, recognizing people’s differences, celebrating them and creating opportunities for that to be happening all the time,” she observes. “There’s so much structure built around ensuring that the company is doing equitability, right. The intentionality is key.“

Now that she feels more confident in her voice, Samponaro seeks to become the ally that she realizes she may not have dared to be: “ln my attempts to make sure I kept my job and kept growing in the way I wanted to, did I do enough speaking out on behalf of others around me? Did I do enough ally work? I think the answer, probably up until recently, is ‘no.’”

Samponaro is recognized by those who mentor her for her focus and determination to create change through the work she does. She has learned to embrace her sensitivity and capacity for empathy, though at times challenging, as an asset which has enabled her to truly impact the communities she serves.

By Aimee Hansen

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Natalie Tucker: Head of Strategy & Operations, Radioligand Therapy

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Natalie Tucker “As a professional golfer, you either hire someone to run the business side of your career, or you run it on your own. I ran my own business, raised nearly a million dollars in capital, hired my whole team and traveled around the world,” says Natalie Tucker. “It was a great experience that taught me a lot about business.”

Tucker shares some unique insights from the golf course to apply in the workplace, why you should focus on influencing the influencers and the price she once paid for feeling unable to bring her whole self to work.

From the Golf Course to Health Care

Tucker was a professional golfer for ten years before she retired her golf clubs at the competitive level and moved into healthcare.

Though she realizes being a professional athlete, especially as a woman, is an inspiration to others to embrace your gifts and follow your dreams, she also felt compelled to find avenues to more directly impact the lives of others. Having been surrounded by the business of health as a golfer, she was magnetized to go into healthcare while leveraging the science-inclined side of herself.

“Being a professional athlete was fun and entertaining, but for me, it felt like something was missing. In my work now, I feel I am helping people and bringing value to them,” says Tucker. “The patients benefit from our work, and you really feel like you’re making a difference.”

After a period of working in a company that focused on artificial intelligence for skin cancer detection, she attained her MBA from Yale, before moving into consulting for pharmaceutical companies. Eventually she joined Novartis – where she heads strategy and operations for a business unit focusing on radiopharmaceuticals for the treatment of patients with various cancers.

Lessons For Navigating the Course of Business

In a unique training ground where her personal career depended not only upon her athletic ability but also on her business prowess, Tucker acquired many valuable lessons as an athlete that she continues to draw from, over 10 years after leaving the golf course.

Maintaining Calm Under Pressure

Tucker gives credit to her professional golf career for helping her learn to manage pressure and anxiety. Her ability to retain her LPGA Tour Card, and therefore her job for the following year, depended on her performance in a single four-day tournament. When the stakes are that high, with six-figure sponsors on the line, you have to stay in your center and focus.

“If you play poorly over four days, you lose everything. You lose your income, you have nothing,” she recalls. “So there’s a lot of pressure. I had to learn ways of self-calming: how do I quiet my mind, take two minutes and just relax, and empty everything out? I did that on the golf course to get through these really hard moments.”

“This is a hundred percent applicable to business. Before I go into an interview, before I give a presentation, before I talk with the CEO of the company – I take two minutes just to calm myself. All of the methods that help maintain an even keel transfer from golf to business.”

Visualizing Your End Goal and Pathway To Success

“In playing professional golf, you spend a lot of time visualizing or mentally planning what you want to accomplish,” she notes. “The best way to be successful in business is also to think about what you’re trying to accomplish, and ask yourself ‘What does the end goal look like?’ ”

Once you know where you want to go, it’s about setting the plan for how to arrive to that outcome.

“Unless you have a vision of where you want to go and a plan of how you’re going to get there, you’re not going to make it, this is true in golf or business,” observes Tucker. “When you play a tournament, you plan every single shot in advance and visualize yourself accomplishing it – For example, for each hole, you look at where the pin is, and you think of the best angle to approach it. This angle informs every shot ahead of it. It’s starting with the end in mind to inform your first move.

In business, not only do you need to identify ‘what good looks like’ and sketch a project plan for how you’re going to get there”, says Tucker, “but you also need to ask yourself who you need to bring in.”

Bringing In Your Support Team

“Running my own business as a professional golfer taught me how to work with people, and not just for the purpose of ‘transacting’. I learned how to understand what others’ needs are, and the importance of that knowledge to build a strong relationship,” says Tucker.

It’s a misconception that being a golfer is not also about being part of a team, as her team was essential to overall success.

“When I came into business, I thought I could be successful if I worked hard enough, but that’s not necessarily true. You have to bring others along with you for the ride,” she notes. “Similar to golf, the more you can bring the right team on board, the more successful you will be.”

Tucker feels that dialogue is what gives rise to the best solutions, as the combined insight from others is what often catalyzes the best path, not just your own thinking.

Influencing the Influencers

Previously very focused on personal performance, getting out of her comfort zone and moving towards greater focus on interconnectivity has ultimately been highly fulfilling and encouraged versatility.

“Taking the time and really getting to know people has been the most rewarding part of my career. I’m really happy that I’ve adjusted my style of work to look beyond the work itself, and broaden my perspective to focus on people.”

One of the biggest adjustments that Tucker felt coming into business, as a performance-focused introvert, was the necessary need to navigate the more strategic connections that are so often a large component of being effective in the business world. In golf, the bottom line of Tucker’s success was her performance down to the numbers. If she performed well, the right people would come to her.

“The hardest part about the corporate world is there’s no black and white success criteria. There’s nothing that says if you do well on this project, you will be promoted,” says Tucker. “It’s performance over time and there’s a whole communication network that took me a long time to understand, and adjust to.”

As she had to do with raising money in golf, Tucker has learned to engage beyond the people in her team, and not necessarily by going three levels up for visibility either. Her strategy has been to develop real connections with influencers to the decision-makers.

“What I see too often is people only building relationships with those people who are like them and in their comfort zone, often at the same level or nearby in the office,” she notes. “But people would really benefit by looking at an organization and asking: who are the key decision-makers, and who are the influencers to those key decision makers?”

“People often want to go directly to the key decision maker and say ‘get to know me’, but if you get to know the influencers of the key decision makers, you become an influencer in the organization as well,” she has realized. “When joining an organization, this is a good first step for those who are more introverted and looking to quickly create positive impact on the business because you’re able to have honest dialogues on key matters. It’s about reading the organization, and learning about its people – not their title, but who they are, and their communication networks. Once you understand the communication network of an organization, you can navigate it well.”

The Price of Not Bringing Her Whole Self To Work

As a professional golfer twenty years ago, Tucker’s brand was critical to her ability to raise funds and support her athletic career – and she went through a very tough lesson as a gay woman who did not feel she could risk being her whole self.

At one point, one of her major sponsors told her that he had heard rumors she was gay. If true, he made it explicit that this would be a dealbreaker for continued sponsorship.

“Now this was 20 years ago, and times were different, but I hid who I was. I changed my image, tried to behave and walk differently, and it destroyed my career,” Tucker states. “I was trying to be someone I wasn’t, and I wasn’t authentic to myself or to the world around me. If I could do it over again, I would have behaved differently, even though it would have dissolved my access to income at the time. Trying to hide who I was made it impossible to be great. I couldn’t be my best without being my full self.”

After leaving golf where success was so dependent on her image, Tucker found the protections of the corporate world to be a huge relief.

“There was a transition period, where I learned how to be who I was, without feeling that I was going to be retaliated against,” she notes. “Today, everybody knows my wife, Marion. I finally feel like I have the ability to be open, and to be who I am. But it was a learning experience for me, and it definitely wasn’t easy along the way.”

In addition to loving cooking, Tucker loves to be outside enjoying nature whenever she can, and still loves to compete. These days, squash, tennis with her wife (who she jokes is ‘not that bad’ on the court against her) and basketball, to stay in shape, are her sports of choice.

By Aimee Hansen

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Noelle Ramirez: Project Manager, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, PGIM

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Noelle Ramirez“I bring to the table my lived and learned experience as a woman, a lesbian woman, a Hispanic woman,” says Noelle Ramirez. “The things that kept me quiet in the room before are the things making me speak the loudest in the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion space.”

She speaks to showing up visibly to create belonging, how to expand the diversity of recruitment, and the prerequisite importance of culture.

Being The Representation You Want To See

Given her love for people and their stories, Ramirez chose to study immigration throughout her undergrad at Dartmouth. During recruiting season in college, she never saw herself, as a Puerto Rican woman, in asset management. Literally. The recruiters and classmates on that track did not look like her.

“I didn’t see myself, and the lack of representation was something that I shied away from,” she recalls. “But a lot of my perceptions were really misperceptions. I just did a talent research project at PGIM, where we found there’s a huge perception issue for the wealth and asset management industry felt by not only women, but also Latinx individuals, Hispanic individuals, black individuals: I don’t see myself, so how could I go that route?”

So when Ramirez moved to a focused diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) role in asset management, she did so with intention.

“I can be the representation that I want to see and make an impact in an industry that needs more people like me,” she says. “Highlighting different voices is something I want to do—you don’t have to be a math major or male or straight in this industry. You can show up, do a good job and succeed. I found there’s some amazing, diverse people in this industry. They’re just not the voices we have traditionally highlighted first.”

Casting A Wider Net for Recruiting

“The most rewarding piece of my work is to create an opportunity and open a door, where traditionally that door may not have existed,” says Ramirez, “to be able to put that spotlight on someone who might not have been seen and say, ‘I see you and there’s space for you here.’”

In the Latinx talent space, Ramirez experienced one of her biggest moments of impact when she and a colleague dared to cast a wider net. They traveled to Hispanic-serving institutions in Florida, well outside of the typical target schools, and met Luisa Maria Machado Artimez, a first generation American who came to the US at the age of 12 from Cuba and served in the US Army for a year before starting college. Ramirez found Luisa to be “one of the most inspiring young women that I’ve ever worked with and probably will ever know.”

Ramirez and her colleague agreed they wanted to find a way to invite Luisa into the industry via an internship at PGIM. She joined the summer program, was a star performer and is returning next year.

“That’s why I do this work. It’s easy to make the case for casting a wider net when you know someone like Luisa has been brought into the organization and succeeded,” she says. That’s when the higher-level support comes and then you can create an entire strategy around that.”

Making the Business Case

“You’re not going to move mountains when it comes to DEI in a month, or even a year. We’re fighting things like systemic racism that have been in place for generations,” she says, “so it’s important to celebrate small wins.”

Ramirez emphasizes being strategic and data-driven in the DEI sphere.

“For some people, it really is showing them exactly what they are missing by not caring about this,” she notes, “creating that story and walking them to that finish line, so they can take the step to make the change in the organization.”

For example, one of her DEI focuses has been on identifying where core Latinx talent is concentrated in the organization, to establish allyship to support that talent in moving towards more leadership positions.

“The Latinx population is becoming the majority minority—this is, the fastest-growing population, a more educated and entrepreneurial population, set to become the majority homeowners in the next 20 years,” she observes. “If the industry doesn’t have a strategy that’s going to capitalize on this talent, we’re completely missing the boat from a business perspective.”

She notes the “three P” factors that are barriers to Latinx recruitment in the industry:

  • Perception: This is not an industry that I see anyone like me in.
  • Talent Pipeline: I don’t even know or understand what asset management is, so how would I choose it?
  • Passion & Purpose: Can I feel good and passionate about wealth creation?

“If we don’t know the barriers to address,” says Ramirez, “then how are we going to work towards them as an industry?”

“Job hunters today are looking for a career that aligns with their values and that they can feel good about – and rightly so, we should feel passionate about purposeful in the work we do every day.”

Ramirez feels there needs to be more emphasis on getting different voices out there to attract a diverse talent pool as well as sharing stories about how companies are doing good and can align with your values, like PGIM’s huge investment in the community of Newark, New Jersey.

Put Culture First and Create an Inclusive Environment

When it comes to advice on making career-related decisions, she tells others: “Culture first. Seek out advice from people that are already there. What has their experience been? Do they feel comfortable? Do they feel like they can bring who they are to the table? If the answer is yes, that’s a good place to start. It takes away a lot of productivity and energy to not be who you are.”

“Go somewhere where you can be yourself. I’m very passionate in my delivery and it’s part of my culture. Making sure I’m in an environment where that doesn’t have to be shut off is important,” she says. “Look for environments that are ready to receive you, because that’s where you’ll be your most productive, innovative, creative and strategic.”

Another core component of Noelle’s team’s work is to create a safe space so that people can comfortably share as little or as much about their own experience as they wish.

“I’m a lesbian. I can talk about my partner every Monday morning. I would say as an industry, we are behind in creating safer spaces where people can be 100% themselves,” she notes. “We have an LGBTQ+ Think Tank at PGIM, which is comprised of Out leaders across the organization, which is thinking of ways to highlight LGBTQ+ voices and to give them a platform to share and educate.”

For me, I made the conscious decision to be out at work, especially when I joined the DEI space, because I felt like there weren’t many out people that I could go to and seek advice from, and I wanted to be that for someone else.”

Of her own intersectional identity, Ramirez notes, “I’m a white passing person and there’s privilege in that. Early on in my career, it was much easier to just blend. But moving into the DEI space, all of the things that made it uncomfortable now instead legitimize me and give me a platform to stand on.”

“How am I going to show up today from my voice?” Ramirez notes it’s a daily struggle. “From your voice to your hair to your clothes to your delivery, these are not necessarily things that are on everyone else’s mind.”

Ramirez is a huge athlete and since her father introduced her two years ago, she’s been obsessed with one the world’s fastest growing sports: pickleball—which combines elements of badminton, table tennis and tennis.

Played by people of all ages, not only has it allowed her to get outdoors daily during the pandemic, but she’s also made close friends with people she would have never otherwise met. Though her partner is more inclined to music than sports, she also often joins Ramirez on the court.

By: Aimee Hansen

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