Jamila Houser: Deputy Chief Underwriter – Agency Lending, PGIM Real Estate

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Jamila Houser“People often say ‘if you can see it, you can be it.’ Well if you don’t see it, does that mean you can’t be it?” challenges Jamila Houser.

Houser speaks honestly on qualifying yourself, showing up as you and the challenges of leveling up while finding your balance.

Getting Into The Door

With strong natural abilities in math and science, Houser grew up thinking her job options were becoming a doctor or an engineer.

But while picking up her second undergrad degree at Georgia Tech (in engineering), she realized that designing laptop fans—her final senior test —was not the gateway to her ideal field, as a naturally outgoing people person.

After working in consulting at Accenture, she moved towards a real estate concentration in her MBA at Georgia State, which eventually launched her into 17 years of moving up through the ranks with PGIM Real Estate so far—where she loves the people, culture, challenges and opportunities.

But getting that initial foot in the door was no small feat. Her resume lacked real estate experience and 75% of the job post read like a foreign language. So Houser chose to emphasize from her daily life how she was a bright individual with genuine passion for the space, who could learn and had the energy to come in, figure things out and get stuff done.

“What skills do you think you bring to the space and what is it that interests you most about this opportunity?” Houser advises to ask, emphasizing that as women we too often mistake that we have to tick every box.

“Forget the fact that you have no experience,” she says. “How can you communicate your interest in such a way that you convince them that you are worth the investment?”

She recommends to be aware of the energy you are bringing foremost, come with clarity on what skills you offer and clearly exemplify those skills and how they will add value.

She also attributes her success to managers who had the courage to do something different and invest in knowing and growing her.

“It’s so important that when people are choosing an organization to work with, they are interviewing that manager just as much as they are being interviewed,” notes Houser. “You want to go somewhere where there are people who see value in you and are going to do their part to help ensure your success.”

If You Can’t See It, Can You Still Be It?

Houser admits feeling like an outsider when she initially entered into finance those couple decades ago. The industry appeared to be a conservative, formal and stifled male world where she didn’t belong as a warm and friendly people person.

While there are far more women and women events since she entered the industry, Houser notes that it still takes energy to network in a conference room where she is one of few people of color, let alone senior women of color.

“I think for me personally I have had to get comfortable with being uncomfortable,” she says. Houser has learned to go into new roles as who she is, not measuring her compatibility for the role by the gender, skin color, personality or approach of her predecessor.

“I may not see someone who looks like me, talks like me, sounds like me, but I still see myself in people who are in leadership,” she notes. “You get to realize you’re not that different.”

“I’ve never met a stranger. I just love people,” says Houser. “And I can empathize and understand that the people I’m dealing with are in a large part influenced by the lenses they’ve developed over time. So I can build relationships in a way that allows us to get to know each other.”

Recently, in a Zoom presentation to several heads of business, a simple smile from one gentleman amidst a screen of faces reminded her: “You’re just talking to other regular human beings. You’re here, you have something to say and they’re here to listen to you.”

Leveling Up Your Skills and Brand

“I’ve built my brand on hard work,” says Houser, coming from a line of single mothers. Her own mother completed her Ph.D. across 20 years while also working three jobs.

“Hard work, determination and persistence caused me to rise in the organization very quickly up to a certain point. The earlier promotions happened automatically,” Houser observes. “But there comes a point where those qualities alone are not enough, and moving up through senior management levels requires mastering new skills.”

Houser admits she works to rebuild proficiency and confidence each time she levels up.

“I have to be very intentional about negative speak—especially when I’m going into new positions or new opportunities,” she says of the critical inner voices familiar to many of us. “How quickly can I cut that off?”

Houser is grateful for mentors and sponsors who have witnessed and magnified her strengths as well as been able to point out her subtler blindspots or gaps… and dissolve her false concerns.

With her recent promotion, she’s been facing the common leadership growth pains of moving from the “hardworking” brand she’s confidently built her career on to redefining her value by leading and supporting others to be effective and productive.

“I hold myself to a very high standard, probably unreasonably high,” says Houser, “so when you’re shifting to no longer being the doer but now the manager, you have to tone it down. Moving from colleague, or peer, to manager is a difficult transition that I’m still mastering.”

Rather than assume how her team wants her to support them, her approach has been to get very clear on what support her team needs from her while communicating what she needs and expects from her team.

At first it was difficult not to jump in and put her hand in everything out of habit, but the sheer volume of work has shifted her towards more delegation and trust, so she can focus on where she needs to go now too.

Finding Your Authentic Expression

Houser is an outcomes-driven person who has learned across time to bridge the conversation differently with those who are more process, detail or strategy-oriented, with their own inclinations and gifts.

One of her personal journeys has been finding her authentic expression in a professional setting, and letting that move with her.

“The switch flipped for me with authenticity that I can still be myself but there’s a way to be myself at work,” says Houser, noting her husband pointed out to her that her professional self is as much a part of her wholeness as her Sunday dinner self.

“I have had to wrestle with the idea of authenticity,” says Houser, “and I think I’ve become much more comfortable that I can be who I am and express how I express. I have found the right balance where I bring my authentic self but into the work setting.”

Bringing Others Up With You

“Once it clicked that not only do I have a seat at the table, but people also look up to me,” observes Houser, “I began to take the responsibility to lift others to success very seriously.”

While she used to be focused solely on her own contribution, Houser now spends most of her time looking around to see who she can advocate for, make visible and elevate, building the close mentor relationships she herself has valued as a mentee.

“I especially champion the ones who no one is thinking about, nobody is talking about, they’re not raising their hand,” she says. “They’re fine sitting over there and doing their job every day to a very high degree.”

“That gives me so much joy,” says Houser, “using the skills, the talent, the relationships, the knowledge I’ve gained to help someone else be successful.”

Practicing Self-Care to Show Up For Others

As many women share, being passionate about her job in the remote, 24/7 availability work environment and being a mother of ten and eight year old sons who are distant learning beside her at home has made creating balance more challenging.

“I’ve found that if I don’t take care of myself, I can’t show up and be there for my staff, for my kids or my husband,” observes Houser. “So though I may want to put my hand in all these efforts and do all of these things, I need to put my own oxygen mask on first.”

She has found declaring self-care recharge days and moments for herself to be a necessary grace. She plans to cultivate more intentional quality time and movie nights with her boys.

Houser finds meditative rhythm by running in a women’s group each morning come rain or snow, and gardening continues to be a lifelong love of hers, with a future interest in helping to create urban farms.

By Aimee Hansen

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Rose-Gaëlle Belinga: Technology Associate, Morgan Stanley

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Rose Gaelle Belinga“Because I really have people’s attention, I make sure that my work speaks for itself, that people take me seriously,” says Rose-Gaëlle Belinga from Morgan Stanley.

Belinga speaks about her unique journey into software engineering and her passion for applying tech acumen to better the world.

The Power of Simple Innovation

Growing up in her family home in Yaoundé, Cameroon, Belinga was inspired towards STEM at an early age by her parents, both family trailblazers who attended university in science fields.

While inclined towards STEM, what piqued her interest in technology was a simple can opener.

When her uncle gifted her book on inventions, she was inspired to learn that the can opener was not invented until 40 years after the can, meaning that people had accepted a harder way to do things.

“Someone said there must be an easier way, and if it doesn’t exist I’m going to go ahead and invent it and everybody is going to benefit from my invention,” says Belinga.

The notion of making a big impact on lives from a simple innovation catalyzed her passion for technological innovation.

Another Kind of Language

After high school, she moved to the U.S. and attained her bachelor and master’s degree in software engineering from Auburn University, alongside a bachelor of arts from Oglethorpe.

But coming from Cameroon, where neither computers nor internet were prevalent at that time, when a professor recommended that she take his Java course, she assumed he was referring to the island in Indonesia.

When that same professor described software through the example of the plane that senses, provides data and course-corrects for the pilot, steering the plane most of the time, she saw that “software was almost the spirit in the machine” and realized tech could complement any field of interest she would have.

As a polyglot, she now counts her programming proficiency among her Bulu, English, French, and German fluency, as well as Latin, Hungarian and Spanish languages she can speak at some level.

“Programming languages also have the grammar and spelling and syntax and all,” she notes.

In 2012, she joined Morgan Stanley after first summer interning there, and loving the company culture, complexity of problems, richness of technology and mobility of opportunities inside the organization.

Leveraging Your Difference

When Belinga moved to an engineering school with 96% caucasian and mainly male student peers, her initial sense of imposter syndrome was offset by being actively supported by her student peers and a Moroccan professor who advised her to leverage her differences.

“My professor told me that when he goes into a classroom, he doesn’t know who the best students are. But when he sees a female student or person of color, they get his attention right away,” she recalls from her junior year. “That’s how my professor challenged me, not to look at being underrepresented as holding me back but as an advantage – and let my work speak for itself.”

Those words stayed with her. When she first began employment, Belinga used her voice to call out those who assumed she was part of the administrative staff rather than the engineering team. But she has never considered her gender nor ethnicity as a barrier to her possibilities.

“Instead, I am showing that the abundance mindset is a thing,” says Belinga. “I’m here for a reason, and everyone I work with knows that. I now get more responsibility than some of my colleagues because I stand out and my team knows I can deliver.”

She mentors to keep your long-term interests in mind when making job decisions – such as advising a friend against moving to a position that was perhaps a diversity quota win for the team but not the best move for him personally, or advising a mentee into a PhD track so she could arrive to her desired focus of tech research.

Technological Philanthropy

“Because I stand out,” she shares, “I try to take advantage of the platform to open the door for others, such as encouraging colleagues to go to under-served high schools to teach computer science or encouraging male colleagues to mentor female students.”

She emphasizes that it can’t just be women helping women or people of color helping people of color, but everyone can step up.

Belinga is animated by technology philanthropy, putting her tech acumen to work for the greater good, not only teaching computer science to students in locally under-served high schools in the New York/New Jersey areas, but also making tech vocations accessible in places where they have been absent.

“One thing that has always made me sad was that I had to leave my support network, my family and everything I knew in order to pursue my studies and seek a better lifestyle,” she reflects. “It would have been nice if those opportunities had been made available locally.”

So Belinga is dedicated to being a part of the change she wants to see. Volunteering in partnership with Global Code and TurnTabl, she has traveled to Ghana with fellow volunteers the last few summers, apart from this past summer.

Partnering with Global Code, they instruct a three to four week crash course which empowers the community students to envision a tech solution project to help the local community – and together they develop the prototype.

For example, due to youth urban migration for education and work, elders did not always have immediate family to call on, let alone an equivalent of 911. The students created a necklace for elderly in the village with an embedded device and three buttons, pre-programmed to make calls or send messages for support in case of falling or emergency.

The best students from the Global Code program can then apply to the Turntabl program to be placed in contract technology jobs (with mentorship) for companies in North America, Europe and Asia from their home country, without having to relocate from their families or support system, as Belinga once did.

Envisioning What is Possible

Catalyzed by her passion for technology philanthropy, one of Belinga’s interests is Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality (AR/VR), which she researches as part of an innovation program that allows employees to dedicate 20% of their time to exploring new solutions or technologies.

“Wouldn’t it be great if with a headset we could allow different people to collaborate in the same virtual room?” she asks, whether an office or in a classroom.

Along with the benefit of collaboration, 3D data visualization animates her. She imagines her nephews being able to explore a village in the rainforest or to hear someone speak her native tongue, Bulu.

She also sees the potential of AR/VR to shift how we think about the issues we need to collectively confront, such as by immersing us in the reality of places most affected by them. Her first contact with the power of AR/VR was standing in middle of Times Square as she experienced it submerged according to sea level rising scenarios.

“AR/VR has the potential to help us see how the actions we take affect other people we don’t see,” she says, “so we can build more emotional intelligence and motivate ourselves to tackle it together.”

Belinga is an active member of the FIRE movement. For her, it represents finding life hacks to make your biggest dreams (if health, wealth and time were no issue) happen in the here and now.

She is currently polishing up Pachelbel’s “Canon in D” on the violin to fulfill her brother’s wish for a public performance (it will be her first) at his wedding this summer.

By Aimee Hansen

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Sheri Crosby Wheeler: Vice President, Diversity and Inclusion, Fossil Group

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Sheri Crosby Wheeler“I just thought to reach out and find the true picture of the world,” is how Sheri Crosby Wheeler describes leaving her Texas hometown, Brownwood, where she grew up economically disadvantaged and without African-American professional role models, for university and then law school.

Speaking of her background, she says, “I feel like it has given me the grit, the resilience, the fight, the get-up-and-go that I have to this day. I won’t see myself as ever being down and out, and I won’t stay in a ‘woe is me’ place, not for very long.”

The determination to seek possibilities beyond her circumstances has been vital to Crosby Wheeler’s career trajectory from law to diversity and inclusion (D&I).

When Mentors Are Absent

Throughout law school and her legal career, mentors were missing, and she didn’t know how to reach out.

“I wish at that time I knew that if you’re gonna go down a path, you should talk to people who have been down that path already so they can steer you clear of the potholes and the explosions,” she says, for example missing out on a judicial courtship. “I was just very much ‘I know how to do it’, because before that, I had done it all on my own.”

In the absence of mentors, “I crashed and burned, stumbled and failed,” Wheeler says, “I didn’t do well at my first law firm. And for someone who was used to doing well up to that point, it was kind of earth-shattering.”

Getting back up, however, taught her to take risks and eventually to leap paths.

Vicarious Mentorship

In lieu of mentors, Crosby Wheeler has “professionally stalked” role models she admires. This once led her to eventually join the law firm of a lawyer she followed for nearly a decade. Today, her “professional crush” is Vernā Meyers, VP, Inclusion Strategy at Netflix, who like her, holds a law background.

“I’m watching them from afar. What did they do? I’m gonna try that,” she says. “I tell people that the mentor you think you want to have may not be accessible to you one-on-one. They may not necessarily have the time in their day and career to mentor you, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be your secret mentor.”

Daring to Reinvent Herself

“Now initially, I will say I was fighting it,” recalls Crosby Wheeler about her desire to leave litigation. “I was like, no. I have chosen law. I’m gonna push, I’m gonna strive.”

But there came a moment as a contract lawyer when the work no longer felt aligned, and she realized “something has got to give.”

“In my mind, I always knew,” reflects Crosby Wheeler. “I didn’t know when, I didn’t know how, and I didn’t know where I would be going.” That willingness to stop pushing uphill and embrace the uncertainty of career change is a defining moment she is proud of.

After resolving to change paths, an opportunity appeared and became the shift that led to subsequent bigger moves, including three entirely new opportunities that landed on her D&I responsibility at Mr. Cooper, before moving to Fossil Group in 2021.

Sponsorship and Networking Are Essential

While lacking early on, sponsorship was ultimately key for Crosby Wheeler in reaching where she is now, particularly those people who looked at her, saw the potential and extended her the chance to expand into entirely new areas.

“If someone hadn’t put their skin in the game, I wouldn’t even be in this role,” says Crosby Wheeler.

Crosby Wheeler is now passionate about mentoring others. “To remember when I’m going forward, to continue to reach back to young attorneys, to other professionals,” she says. “To the extent that I can, I do. I know how important that is because some of that was missing in my journey.”

She also swears by a consistent network of friends and colleagues who can pick up the phone to support each other.

“I tell young professionals to right now start building that network. And don’t look at the network as what they can do for you,” she says. “Look at the network as what you can do for them. What can you give them? How can you help them? That is how you build a stronger network.”

“Real Good D&I, Not Feel Good D&I”™

“Now I am seeing that direct impact – the ability to positively impact people, businesses and communities,” Crosby Wheeler says of her D&I experience. “What underlies diversity work, and some legal work, is fairness and justice – and that’s a theme that has been a common thread throughout my life. That is what really speaks to me in this work.”


With racial justice issues at the national forefront, Crosby Wheeler sees this as a moment for companies to advance equity like never before. 

“More people are focused on it, caring about it, and understanding the importance,” she observes. “More people are willing to have the conversation. That’s what we’ve needed all along.”

“It can feel uncomfortable, but there is growth in discomfort,“ she says. “I don’t know about you, but I like to grow. I like to change. I like to get better. It’s just like people going to the gym. Your muscles are sore because you worked them. There was some discomfort there. Same thing. You’ve gotta work your D&I muscles for you to grow, for you to get better.”

Crosby Wheeler is observing a shift to “Real Good D&I, Not Feel Good D&I”™.

“‘Feel Good D&I’ can also be considered performative,” she says. “‘Oh yea, we just had this potluck and we put up a statement, woo!’ Well, that’s not changing things for people. That’s not changing systems, policies, procedures, laws, so ultimately it’s not changing things.”

An example of “Real Good D&I” is a company being transparent about where they are on the journey, and creating sustained organization-wide accountability to shift it.

“Having accountability that recognizes that it’s everyone’s issue, that it permeates the entire organization. That it’s not ‘that department over there, they’re doing this’.” she says. “No. Everybody is doing this, because this runs throughout the whole company. That’s what it takes – everybody working on it.”

Because “Real Good D&I” is sustained effort and change, it’s hard to gauge by quick metrics.

“It’s not like regular business operations where you’re looking at numbers, where it’s dry and objective,” Crosby Wheeler presses. “This is people, emotions, and feelings involved as well. So you’re trying to change hearts as well as minds. That’s not simple and that’s not easy and that’s not quick.”

Sourcing Growth From Adversity

Crosby Wheeler boldly chooses the experience of being fired from a legal job early on in her career as a key moment in her character development.

“It let me know that I can come back from a mistake, from what I thought was the worst thing ever.” she says. “I remember saying at the time ‘now I’m gonna find out what I’m really made of,’ and I did. I hope that I can exude that for other people to take in, and know they will also be okay too.”

And she does.

By Aimee Hansen

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Nhaman Pelphrey: Director, Abbot Downing

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Nhaman Pelphrey“If you’re asked to the table, or opportunities present themselves to you, don’t second guess it,” says Nhaman Pelphrey, a director in the Los Angeles (LA) office. “There’s a reason people are asking for your participation—you have inherent value to add.”

Pelphrey speaks about moving from private law practice to wealth management at Abbot Downing, and the valuable insights in personal development she’s gathered.

Be Open to Unexpected Opportunity

“Although it may appear from my bio that my career path was by design,” says Pelphrey, “looking back, each opportunity that was presented at the time felt like a departure from what I was thinking I would do.”

After graduating from The Pennsylvania State University, Dickinson School of Law in 2004, Pelphrey had her eyes set on becoming a real estate lawyer in the booming southern California commercial market. “I wanted to represent developers and be at the forefront of the action.” Minutes into an interview, she realized she had neither the experience nor the know-how.

Though she was quickly told that they needed someone with requisite training to hit the ground running, she remained curious about the firm and built a strong rapport with the managing partners. Although the firm did not have capacity to train a junior attorney in real estate, they took a chance on her and offered her a position in their trusts and estates practice. It was not what she had set out to do, but she gave it a try.

Eleven years later, she had already disrupted her career, two years into it, for the unexpected step of a master of laws degree in taxation from Northwestern University School of Law, and was now sitting in a premier boutique planning firm in Century City, with a client profile of ultra-high-net-worth individuals.

Feeling successful, having served on the executive committees of the Beverly Hills Bar Association and the LA County Bar Association, having cultivated many strong network relationships with the ability to elevate one another, she felt at the peak of her law career—so she ignored the recruiter calls.

Until a colleague and friend, who had herself left private practice for Wells Fargo, urged her to consider going for an informational meeting—emphasizing opportunities at Abbot Downing do not often come around.

“I was accomplishing all the things that defined success to me,” recalls Pelphrey, “so leaving private practice was not a decision I took lightly.”

Six years later, Pelphrey calls the move to Abbot Downing the best career decision she’s made so far, rising from a senior wealth strategist to a director and multi-generational relationship manager for ultra-high-net-worth families.

“When opportunities present themselves, even if unforeseen or not necessarily what you were looking for,” says Pelphrey, “be open to them for they can lead you down paths that you didn’t even know were right for you.”

Rewarding Client and Team Relationships

Pelphrey enjoys the depth of value that she can add through nurturing long-term relationships with her family clients, and feels she works with “the brightest and most personable team.”

Back in the billable hours of her private practice legal days, her journey with clients would often end after counsel and creation of the plan. Now she partners with clients from the inception of formulating the plan to the most important and crucial aspect—implementation.

“We really get to know these individuals and their families very well,” says Pelphrey. “We become a trusted advisor and that’s a very gratifying position to be in.”

One thing she appreciates at Abbot Downing is the collaborative nature of her dynamic team. “We raise each other up and put our client’s best interest at the core of what we do.”

Mentors Who Raise You Up, Higher

One of Pelphrey’s first mentors, a big-time tax attorney, taught her a valuable lesson through a bit of playful testing.

As a young associate, she was asked to research and draft a memo on how to structure a corporate reorganization. In the tax partner’s explanation of the assignment he referenced multiple Internal Revenue Code sections that she had never heard of before. When she got back to her desk, she immediately googled the sections. After combing through multiple legal research databases to educate herself on the code sections, it was clear that the code sections were not applicable or even worse, she might have jotted them down incorrectly. She mustered up the nerve to knock on his door and let him know that the sections he quoted cannot be used as part of a structural reorganization.

He congratulated her with a big smile for saving herself several agonizing hours of spinning her wheels, only to fit a square peg in a round whole.

“From that moment on, I realized its okay to ask clarifying questions,” says Pelphrey. “He taught me that asking questions is the best way to ensure that you understand what you’re being asked and what the other person really needs.”

Later in her career, she had another mentor who was highly skilled and well-respective modeled the ability to express complex, technical strategies in a simple and easy to understand manner with clients, treating them like partners.

But what most impressed upon Pelphrey as a lesson was his approach to mentorship in supporting her to learn, hands-on.

“He said to me, ‘I know that you’re capable and my goal is to help you become a highly technical attorney and to be better than I am,’” she remembers. “I heard the selflessness. He wanted to help me be even better than him, not just good as a reflection of him—and his actions were aligned with that.”

At Abbot Downing, Pelphrey eventually assumed the position of her retiring mentor, who groomed her to take over much of his client book. The mentorship first arose because they appreciated each other’s wit and banter, and could together devise creative client solutions.

Not only did he encourage her to expand roles using more of her talents, but he also taught her that being a generous, genuine resource for others will come back to you ten-fold in opportunities.

Embody Your Place at the Table

Throughout her career, Pelphrey has often been the most junior person at the table.

“One of the lessons I’ve learned is if people are asking you to participate, they see that you have an inherent value,” says Pelphrey. “More so as women, we’re invited to be part of something and it’s often easy to second guess ourselves – ‘Am I too young? What is my role?’”

Cultivating personal confidence has become key to her success.

“If I’m at the table with successful and savvy clients, it’s because they know I have value to add,” she says. “We come in as a team and we’re confident as to what and how we can provide for our clients.”

Supporting Each Other and Being a Mom

Pelphrey enjoys gatherings that merge the wisdom and experience of her colleagues and her clients.

She participates in annual events designed to connect with, inform and inspire the younger generations among her client families—as well as women focused activities – where colleagues and clients support each other.

Having a competitive personality, Pelphrey calls herself the tennis and basketball “Kris Jenner equivalent” of a sports mom to her two sons, six and eight years old.

She enjoys supporting their participation and the valuable life lessons that is organically gained through sports.

Pelphrey feels the same when her sons get the opportunity to witness their normally organized parents navigate unknown territory and unexpected turns during international travels.

“I love the kids to see that we don’t always have it all together,” she laughs. “But we end up on a great adventure even if it wasn’t the plan.”

By Aimee Hansen

Abbot Downing, a Wells Fargo business, provides products and services through Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. and its various affiliates and subsidiaries. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. is a bank affiliate of Wells Fargo & Company.

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Linda Descano, CFA®: Executive Vice President, Red Havas

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Linda Descano“‘We will be known forever by the tracks we leave,’” quotes Linda Descano, from the Native American proverb she lives by. “To me, that means we need to tread lightly because words and actions have profound consequences.”

“But it also means that through our tracks, we can leave a footprint behind to follow,” she remarks, “so other people not only avoid our pitfalls, but also accelerate because they build on our lessons and experiences.”

In this interview, Descano shares some footprints to follow. 

Allow Intrigue To Guide You

“My career path has been anything but linear,” says Linda Descano, based again in Philadelphia after thirty years away. Instead she has let intrigue and excitement guide her. 

“For me, it’s been about finding opportunities to learn…and finding interesting problems to solve with smart people who want to somehow improve the world or make a difference,” she reflects.

Following that spark of intrigue began in university, when she took a geology class to fulfill her science elective for her English Communications degree, then switched her major.

After pursuing graduate studies in earthquake prediction, she pivoted to work on ways to make K-12 STEM education more hands-on, and then joined a team that was developing a ‘brain’ to drive autonomous underwater vehicles.

Descano then joined an environmental consulting practice which led her to eventually become a member of the environmental affairs team at Citi predecessor Salomon Inc. in 1994. She leveraged her understanding of environmental and social issues to join a socially responsible investment program at Citi, which was one of the first—if not the first—on Wall Street.

Descano then leapt to help launch Women & Co. in 2003 within Citi, an award-winning online financial lifestyle resource for women, eventually serving as President and Chief Executive Officer.

In 2012, she became Managing Director and Global Head of Content and Social at Citi. In 2015, Descano pivoted yet again and went from the brand side to the agency side, joining Red Havas as Executive Vice President in 2015.

 “My entire career has been questioning, listening and hearing about challenges—friction in the system, opportunities to grow, trends reshaping customer preferences and needs—and being willing to raise my hand and get involved,” says Descano. “I’m always looking to find a way to learn and grow myself.”

Define Your Own Parameters

Early in her journey, Descano experienced professors and colleagues who judged her potential as less than she knew herself capable of—whether due to her Italian heritage, her Catholic upbringing, her weight, her gender, not having a finance degree or not having an MBA.

Time and again, she resisted having others box her in, cultivating inner resilience while growing in self-awareness and managing her own triggers and sensitivities. 

“It taught me that people will always see you with perceptions and judgments,” she notes. “And it’s up to each of us to decide—will we let others define the sandbox in which we operate, or will we blow it apart and carve our own path?”

She recalls saying to one such colleague, “I might not have an MBA from Harvard, but I do have an MBA from the ‘School of Hard Knocks.’ So between my brute experience and your Ivy League education, we should together be able to create a stellar program.”

“You have to decide who is going to own and set the parameters for your career and make your choices—don’t put them on autopilot,” she advises. “You have to be the navigator of your career. I set out to become a Managing Director, and that’s exactly what I did.”

Be Intrapreneurial In Your Leadership

“Execution is a passion of mine,” says Descano. “I’m always very focused on ‘I understand the strategy, but how do you execute flawlessly and what’s the right organizational structure?’”

No matter what organization she is a part of, Descano assumes the mindset of the “intrapreneurial executive.”

“When you think of an entrepreneur, you think of people with a lot of flexibility and they’re adaptive. They act as owners. They take initiative. They lean in,” says Descano. 

“So as I think of being an ‘intrapreneurial executive,’ I bring that same sense of acting like an owner to the organization I work for. I’m going to be constantly thinking about ways of improving the business,” says Descano. “I act like I own it, as if it’s my investment. It’s working with that same sense of responsibility and drive to make it grow.”

Descano has valued the leaders—both at Citi and Red Havas—that gave her the green lights to create and test and do things differently in order to bring more value to the consumer and community.  

“If you just put your head down, you will lift your head up one day and the world around you will have changed and you have not, so how could you be adding value?” says Descano. “It’s so important to deliver, but I believe you have to keep looking around, looking up, looking down, looking sideways— because the world is changing. You have to evolve and grow and adapt.”

Value the Value of Your Network

With incredible female role models in her family, Descano also internalized the importance of helping others and paying it forward.

Outside of her ‘day job,’ Linda has served on the board of numerous organizations dedicated to advancing women and girls, including Step Up, Girl Scouts of the U.S.A., and New York Women in Communications (NYWICI). A past president of NYWICI, she remains an active board member and currently serves as the Treasurer.

“I’ve made it a point throughout my career to spend part of my personal time and money investing in paying it forward with women and girls, mentoring both informally and formally.” says Descano. “Sharing your fortune and facilitating opportunities, that’s how you help people move forward.”

Descano considers running Women & Co.— a business focused on supporting women to be their personal best— for over a decade to be the highlight of her career. 

In today’s knowledge economy, Descano also advises that the network you build by supporting others is your greatest asset. 

“When I’m faced with a challenge and issue, I have a tremendous network of people I can call on to get the benefit of their experience, insights and knowledge,” says Descano. “Part of the power and value that I bring to an organization’s table is my network and relationships.” 

Whether it’s getting a 101 on a new industry for a new business opportunity, connecting a client to several women she trusts in a new field they are entering, or recruiting a speaker, her network has been absolutely invaluable to her.

When you are there for your network, you also create a net for yourself. 

“When you show kindness, when you’re willing to help others, even if just to listen to them,” notes Descano, “then the days you fall, the days you aren’t the best you could be, the days you get displaced by circumstance, you have all these people that are softening your fall and supporting you, almost like a spring back up.”

Remember We Are All Human

Much of Descano’s work today is designing transformational communications for organizations during times of change—which has never been more salient than now. 

One of the big focuses at Red Havas that animates her is person to person (P2P) communications, or bringing the humanity and empathy back to the forefront of communications.

Remembering that we are all human—no matter if you’re talking to employees, customers or a business—is one topic featured in the monthly podcast she has launched as part of a team, Red Sky Fuel for Thought, providing insight into the communications landscape.

When she’s not being an intrapreneur or supporting other women, Descano can be found reading, or listening to True Crime podcasts in her kitchen while making a couple dozen stromboli for her family.

By Aimee Hansen

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Veronica Willis: Investment Strategy Analyst, Wells Fargo Investment Institute

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Veronica Willis“I’ve learned a lot of strategies about productivity during this working-from-home time due to COVID-19,” says Veronica Willis. “I’ve also learned a lot about what really is high and low priority, so now I know what to focus on and I will take this back to the office with me.”

Wells Fargo’s Willis discusses a career shift into investment strategy, finding her own stride as a leader, and what the remote working environment has taught her so far.

Moving Toward Investment Analysis

A Chicago native, Willis graduated from Washington University in St. Louis, majoring in mathematics with a concentration in statistics and a second major in Spanish language and literature.

After joining Wells Fargo in 2012, she put her quantitative prowess into application in researching and running quantitative models for developed and emerging countries, commodities and currencies.

From working in heavy quantitative analysis, she began to investigate the strategic side and felt herself pulled in that direction.

“I realized the writing side was interesting to me,” says Willis. “I began to explore the research and strategy side, especially around commodities. And while the quantitative work still mattered, I found my interests were going in a different direction.”

In 2015, she began to move into research and recommendations around asset allocation with the head of asset allocation, bringing strategic market insight into advising investors on how to minimize risk and maximize success, in alignment with their investment goals.

Currently she is part of Wells Fargo Investment Institute, focusing on clients of Wells Fargo’s Wealth & Investment Management division —where much like bridging the rich diversity of her two university majors, she combines an aptitude for quantitative and qualitative insight.

Becoming a Leader

Willis is proud of the new tax efficient asset allocation models that launched on December 1, a project she worked on throughout this year and for which she took the lead.

“It’s been a great opportunity to show my leadership abilities,” reflects Willis. “It’s really amazing we were able to get this completed in this complicated year.”

As she takes on new leadership opportunities and challenges, Willis is coming into stride with the gear-shift that rising to leadership asks of her.

“As a leader, I’m excited to learn how to take the lead in projects, how to manage peers and take ownership,” she says. “That can be a fine balance if you move from working with people as peers to then being in charge of a project. I struggled a little with the shift at first.”

However as she ventured into this territory, Willis quickly gleaned?? that real leadership is never a one-size-fits all approach, but a matter of listening and attentiveness.

“I think the key is to figure out how people want to be managed, style-wise,” says Willis. “Some people want autonomy and to be left alone. Some people want a lot of check-ins. As a leader, you need to meet them in the style that is best for them.”

Willis is now enjoying expanding her experience in people management.

“I want to be a leader who develops people on the team,” she says, “I want to guide them in their careers, especially now in this remote work environment, as teams are geo-diverse, and there’s just not the opportunity to catch up in the office as there once was.”

Attuning the Work-Life Balance

Willis finds that the remote workplace has prompted her to increase mastery of her time management and prioritization skills.

“I’ve learned time management working from home,” says Willis, who produced a massive amount of intensive research during the volatility in the spring. “I used to pull long days and check emails outside of the office constantly. I realized when I was working from home that I had to draw some boundaries and stop at a certain time.”

Stepping away from the office, Willis has found it easier to curtail the 24/7 availability habits and instead create a better work-life balance.

“It’s very easy to stay logged in, checking and replying to emails, long after the work day has finished,” says Willis. “I’ve learned it’s okay to turn off the work phone, and I plan to continue to have the off-time delineation when we go back to the office.”

Mentoring and Supporting Others

During the first year of her career with Wells Fargo, Willis had a formal sponsor who advocated for her and still does to this day.

Willis has found that mentorship is very valuable in building up her transferable skills, and she wishes to pass that support onto others.

“My mentor helped me find my voice to help others and build my skills,” she says. “I mentor people who are now going through the same program that I myself started my career in.”

Outside of work, Willis also serves on a young professional board at the Saint Louis Crisis Nursery, focused on stopping abuse and neglect of children. She supports the organization in creating a safe space for kids to come and providing help-line support for overwhelmed parents in need.

Be Willing to Discern and Expand

If she could say anything to her younger self, it would be to practice discernment and own your ‘no’s’ as much as your ‘yes’s’ in alignment with valuing your time and professional goals.

“It’s okay to say no to some requests,” she reflects. “I was always saying ‘yes’ early in my career, and I would tell my younger self to be more selective, especially if you’re trying to build a specific skill-set.”

Her advice to others is not to let your past interests or roles define the latitude of your future possibilities.

“Don’t necessarily box yourself in — you don’t have to be what you studied in college. You can explore new things that interest you and that you have passion around,” Willis encourages. “It’s okay to build those skill, and then it’s okay to follow your passions and grow.”

 

Risks

All investing involves risks including the possible loss of principal.

 

Disclosures

Wells Fargo Investment Institute, Inc., is a registered investment adviser and wholly-owned subsidiary of Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., a bank affiliate of Wells Fargo & Company.

The information in this report is for general information purposes only and is not intended to predict or guarantee the future performance of any individual security, market sector or the markets generally. 

The information contained herein constitutes general information and is not directed to, designed for, or individually tailored to, any particular investor or potential investor. This report is not intended to be a client-specific suitability or best interest analysis or recommendation, an offer to participate in any investment, or a recommendation to buy, hold or sell securities. Do not use this report as the sole basis for investment decisions. Do not select an asset class or investment product based on performance alone. Consider all relevant information, including your existing portfolio, investment objectives, risk tolerance, liquidity needs and investment time horizon.

Wells Fargo Wealth and Investment Management, a division within the Wells Fargo & Company enterprise, provides financial products and services through bank and brokerage affiliates of Wells Fargo & Company. Brokerage products and services offered through Wells Fargo Clearing Services, LLC, a registered broker-dealer and non-bank affiliate of Wells Fargo & Company. Bank products are offered through Wells Fargo Bank, N.A.

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Kelli Hill: Senior Director of Planning, Central Region, Wells Fargo Private Bank

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Kelli Hill

“In the moment, you might think that your path in life doesn’t seem clear. It might seem like it’s going in a direction that’s not what you had planned,” says Wells Fargo’s Kelli Hill, based in Minneapolis. “I’ve learned to go with it and have confidence that life will take you right where you need to be.”

From unexpected career and personal turns to crossing the finish line at an Ironman Triathlon, Hill shares on navigating towards growth and fulfillment.

Trusting A “Zig-Zagging” Career Track

“Prior to joining Wells Fargo over eight years ago, I would have described my career path as a bit of a zig-zag road. That’s the way that I thought of it.”

While at the University of Minnesota Law School, she wanted to become a public defender. But Hill remembers sitting in a tax class one day and turning to the student next to her and saying, “Isn’t this fantastic?” The reaction she received was quite the contrary.

That was the moment she suspected this might be the field for her.

Out of law school, Hill took a job in public accounting at Deloitte & Touche. She left Deloitte (now Deloitte Tax) to practice law and spent most of private law practice in the trust & estates and business transition planning groups at Minneapolis-based, Fredrikson & Byron, PA. She enjoyed the work, the firm and her colleagues, and was learning a lot, but felt like something was missing.

“I didn’t want to look back and say, ‘I was a successful attorney and worked at a terrific firm with so many talented colleagues, but was never really completely fulfilled.’” reflects Hill.

Hill left private law practice to run the tax, trust and legal group of a single-family office headquartered in St. Paul, Minnesota.  It was during her time at the family office that Hill discovered the benefits and impact that having a financial plan and, specifically doing strategic wealth planning, can have on high net worth families.

When she joined Wells Fargo as a senior wealth planning strategist in 2012, she began to see congruency in the experiences she’d accumulated and where she was going, eventually rising to a Senior Director of Planning in Wealth Management.

“I thought to myself, ‘my entire career path has been tailor-made for this role and this experience,’” says Hill. “It was no longer a zig-zag to me.”

Working with Individuals and Families

What Hill loves most about her work in wealth management (and wealth planning, in particular) is supporting and advising clients on personal and financial decisions that are otherwise difficult to make, to greater outcomes than you might even imagine.

“As a professional, when you help somebody to make financial decisions, it has a qualitative impact that often far outweighs any tax dollars saved,” she says. “It can have such profound impacts on their lives and, when that happens, the appreciation and gratitude is overwhelming.”

As an exemplary moment of this, Hill recalls working with a family to transition their business to the next generation.  Her work led to conversations that, as a family, they had not previously been able to confront.

“We had this moment where they actually told each other how they felt about the business and their desired places in it,” remembers Hill, “I will never forget it.”  Beyond ultimately being able to identify solutions that enabled the family to achieve their financial goals, Hill recalls this moment and how important to the family their work together had become.

Being Open and Receptive to Mentorship

“I would not be in the position I am today without having had the benefit of supportive mentors and sponsors,” Hill attests. “I’ve worked with some pretty wonderful people in my career, especially while at Wells Fargo.  In fact, most of the mentors and sponsors with whom I’ve had the privilege of having were/are managers of mine.”

If you want to attain strong mentorship and sponsorship, whether you are the mentor or mentee, Hill recommends listening, being receptive and open, and most of all—being yourself.  Early in her career, Hill recalls a mentor saying to her “don’t try to fake it, people will know.”

“I always try to be open to feedback, even if it stings a little.  I want to continue to improve and work on my professional and personal development,” she notes. “The individuals who have become my mentors and sponsors have pointed out that my openness to feedback and focus on self-improvement are characteristics they enjoy most about working with me. The other is my being authentic, being me.”

Hill says her professional self is just who she is. These days, that includes embracing the realness of her seven year old daughter wanting to say hello to her colleagues on a Zoom call.

“This is me,” says Hill. “I always try to be my authentic self.  To really connect with people —your colleagues, your clients —you have to let them see you. I’ve learned that to be a great leader, it’s a good thing to be vulnerable, authentic, natural. To be you.”

Hill also recommends implementing the advice you receive.

“It’s one thing to solicit and ask for advice and guidance,” says Hill. “It’s another thing to actually take it, and I do my best to do so and will continue to.”

Growth Through Change And Adversity

On a personal level, Hill values personal growth through challenge as well as learning through making mistakes.

In her early thirties, she experienced an unexpected divorce that shook her world.

“I took the opportunity to work through a big change in my life very seriously,” says Hill. “I remember saying, ‘This is an opportunity for me to really figure out who I am.’ It impacted my life tremendously, it was traumatic—and yet I would do it all over again, every bump, every hurdle. My life experiences have helped shape who I am today and, as painful as some may have been to go through, I appreciate them all.”

In both personal and work life, Hill is aware the road of transition can be a time of discomfort and challenge, but keeps focused on the vision.

On an organizational level, Wells Fargo has embarked on an evolution to create greater consistency around bringing financial products, services and solutions to all clients through a more horizontal structure.  While the work will result in “a more effective and efficient organization for our clients and shareholders, the change can be challenging.”

“When we look back six months from now, we’ll see how we’ve transformed and know that it is right where we are supposed to be.” Hill tells her team.

Trusting Your Own Strength

Hill never for a moment doubted her own vision of being personally successful.  Though she came from a single-parent household with modest financial means, Hill is proud of being the first in her family to go to college and then on to law school, which was the beginning of her career path.

While recovering from that divorce years ago, she remembers a moment of personal empowerment that taught her she was capable of anything.

A few years into her career, she was a self-confessed coach potato who realized it was time to change. The first time she put on a pair of tennis shoes and ran a single mile, it took her 14 minutes. But she was thrilled.

Then, she was hooked—training up to participate in marathons and eventually an Ironman triathlon.

“I remember crossing the finish line of the Wisconsin Ironman and thinking, ‘There is nothing I can’t do’” beams Hill, who also met her husband through the triathlon community, with whom she is raising their daughter.

Her contagious enthusiasm has encouraged several others on the running path, and she keeps up a morning workout which she loves, though being a mom is now her number one priority.

Her favorite time with her daughter is bedtime reading. It began with she and her husband reading to their daughter when she was an infant and now it’s listening to their daughter read to them—and Hill wouldn’t trade it for any finish line, not these days.

Abbot Downing, a Wells Fargo business, offers products and services through Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. and its various affiliates and subsidiaries. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. is a bank affiliate of Wells Fargo & Company.

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Melanie Priddy: Chief Talent Officer, Katten

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Melanie Priddy

Photo provided by Gittings Photography

“At the end of day, relationships are the key to everything, regardless of what industry you’re in, or what your profession is,” says Melanie Priddy.

Katten’s Chief Talent Officer speaks about the value of connections, the need to merge professional development with diversity and the importance of self-advocacy.

Becoming a Business Professional in Law

“I wish I could tell you this was the plan all along, but sometimes the careers we find are ones we fall into,” says Priddy, about being a people-oriented business professional within the legal industry.

Upon graduating from the University of Virginia School of Law, she started her legal career as a practicing lawyer at an Am Law 50 firm.

After a few years as a transactional attorney, Priddy gravitated toward recruiting attorneys for law firms and counseling law students on their career options. She went to work for a staffing firm and then a university and found that she loved advising others on making choices to navigate their career in line with their ambitions.

Priddy joined Katten in 2008 as an attorney recruiting and development manager in the firm’s Los Angeles office, where she managed professional development programs for associates for a few years. She worked at a couple other law firms before she returned to Katten in 2018 as Chief Talent Officer based in the Washington, DC office where she oversees administrative areas including human resources, attorney recruitment, professional development, and diversity and inclusion with an eye on hiring, career growth opportunities, diversity and inclusion efforts, and retention of both attorneys and business professionals.

Diversity and Development Are Inseparable

“To me, diversity and professional development are closely tied,” says Priddy.

At a previous firm, she led recruiting strategies and managed training programs. She took the initiative to expand her role by launching a diverse lawyer mentoring program. She became the Development & Diversity Manager and implemented programs to advance diversity and inclusion within the firm. At a subsequent firm, Priddy was able to incorporate her work in professional development programming with her interest in making workplaces more diverse and inclusive.

“I honestly pressed for it, rather than sitting back and waiting for someone to tap me on the shoulder,” says Priddy. “I had to say, ‘I think I would be really good at this combination of roles, and let me explain how and why they should be combined for me to be successful, and what I could do.’ That set the stage for me to be in the role I have now at Katten.”

She’s committed to offering diversity and development support at every level, and integrating it into the decision-making process at law firms.

“My approach has been that diversity is part of every discussion—when you are talking about recruitment, about development, about choices people are making with regards to business or client development or opportunities around training,” states Priddy.

From the top down in law firm hierarchy, diversity should be top of mind.

“One of the things we always talk about is that everyone is responsible for improving diversity in the legal field,” she says. “The diversity professional brings the opportunities and the resources to others in the law firm or legal industry, but everyone is responsible for ensuring a diverse workforce. When you look at it that way, then you’re really going to make progress.”

Priddy emphasizes Katten’s successful participation in the Mansfield Rule, which sets benchmarks for women, attorneys of color, LGBTQ+ attorneys, and attorneys with disabilities to account for at least 30 percent of the candidate pool considered for leadership and governance roles, equity partner promotions, formal client pitch opportunities, and senior lateral positions. This initiative, coupled with the firm’s newly launched Kattalyst Sponsorship program aimed at retaining and advancing diverse associates and income partners, works toward the goal of increasing representation of historically underrepresented attorneys in law firm leadership.

Invest in Relationships and Self-Advocacy

Priddy stresses how important it is to nurture relationships and curate a support network for career guidance.

“When I started in my career, as many people do, I thought if you just keep your head down and work hard, everything will be okay. You’ll advance and be rewarded,” she reflects. “What I’ve come to realize over time is the importance of developing relationships—obviously with the people you’re working with and for, but also outside of your immediate circle and within the industry itself.”

She advises others to network within various organizations that align with their interests at all stages of their careers. For example, she has been involved with the National Association for Law Placement (NALP), previously serving on the board of directors and most recently as chair of the nominating committee, which solicits nominations for elected positions, slates members for officer and director positions and administers the election process.

She also stresses the importance of advocating for yourself to achieve your goals.

“As women, often there’s a tendency to downplay your success, your role or leadership skills, whether with a boss or with a group,” she says. “But someone else can’t speak up for you on your behalf, if you don’t do it for yourself first.”

Bring Your Whole Self

“A lot of times as women of color, we bring just a part of ourselves to work and we leave a broader sense of who we are back at home,” she says.

Priddy feels that this year’s remote work environment is helping to break down some barriers with her colleagues.

“Our personal and professional lives are so blended because we’re at home, and you hear my dog barking and you see my kids going through the background—and I’m getting my job done,” says Priddy. “I would say in some respects, because of tearing down these walls, I’m more connected to people now than I was in person.”

She adds, “I see how important it is to bring some vulnerability into the workplace so people feel like they can connect and share and get to know you.”

Supporting Personal and Professional Integration

Priddy has been instrumental in Katten’s efforts to destigmatize mental health issues and to draw attention to substance use disorders within the legal profession by joining the American Bar Association’s well-being pledge and launching a firm-wide wellness program, Katten Well-Being 360: Live Well, Work Well, Be Well to support attorneys and employees with information, training, and helpful resources.

She’s proud of being a mother of two sons, ages 10 and 13, modeling for them a world where they grow up with a mother who has a seat at the table where high-level decisions are made.

Under Priddy’s leadership, Katten created a Parents Affinity Group as a resource and support network for working parents at the firm to connect and discuss approaches to dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. She also worked with firm leaders to get the  parental leave policy expanded to a 12-week, gender-neutral paid leave, with an extension of 8 more weeks for a total of up to 20 weeks for birth mothers and those who have exceptional circumstances, such as adoptive and surrogate parents.

In this virtual environment, her team is also tasked with seamlessly bringing on new attorneys and employees without daily in-person interactions with co-workers and supervisors. “How do you onboard and integrate new people, or create relationships when you’re never in the same room physically together?” Priddy said. Her answer: offer productive programs that build relationships.

For example, she helped roll out a more elaborate mentoring program involving mentoring circles to foster a sense of connection at the firm, as well as a coaching program covering career development topics, goal setting and development of an action plan for summer associates and first-year associates who joined Katten during the pandemic.

These creative solutions appear to be cultivating connections—whether virtual water cooler moments or shared creative nights from home. With less travel, she finds her colleagues are more available than ever to get on the phone.

Outside of work, she’s enjoying more time at home with her family, cycling on her Peloton bike, and perfecting her green thumb, checking on her tomatoes in the garden. A proponent of integration where it serves better results, Priddy is embracing the experience of blending her home and professional life.

By Aimee Hansen

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Caring for Children With Learning Challenges as a Working Parent

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Erin Garcia

In this Q&A, Erin Garcia, a Vice President in Controllers in Dallas, shares how she supports and advocates for her two sons while working at Goldman Sachs.

What are some of the obstacles you have encountered managing both your sons’ learning challenges?

Erin: One of the greatest challenges was explaining to each of my two sons, Cason and Cohen, how their learning and mental health challenges differentiate them from their classmates.

After his dyslexia diagnosis in second grade, Cason began losing self-confidence in reading. I explained to him that his brain is unique and that there is a special way to teach him, and we were making sure he got the specific help that he needed. Since he is a big sports fan, it helped to point out some successful athletes also happen to be dyslexic.

Cohen, on the other hand, didn’t want special attention. He didn’t want to make a big deal out of his having ADHD, nor did he want to be pulled out of class like his older brother.

Listening to their concerns helped me address their needs, advocate for them successfully, and get them both the help they needed.

What have you learned about yourself through these experiences, including most recently during the pandemic?

Erin: Before receiving their diagnoses, my children and I had a number of arguments because I thought they were being lazy with school and didn’t want to try hard enough. Once we received their diagnoses, I felt badly for having been so hard on them. I learned to be more patient.

In the early stages of the pandemic, we just tried to survive! Toward the end of the school year, there wasn’t a lot of structure so it was a “work on your own pace” sort of schedule. We fit in school whenever we wanted, which was helpful for me as I was balancing my own responsibilities in the Fund Accounting department. Once the current school year began, there was more of an adjustment.  The boys have a firm schedule to follow and have to be present in live and virtual meetings with their teachers for most of the day.

We have to do what is best for our family, and every situation is different.

How do you ‘recharge’ your batteries to meet the competing demands of work-life-parenting, and what advice would you share with other caregivers?

Erin: I talk to my friends who are also mothers, and colleagues and mentors who have experienced similar situations. My oldest started middle school this year, which has been a big adjustment. We are all navigating unchartered territory these days, especially working parents. The more we share our stories with each other, the more we feel like we are not in this alone. We are all doing the best we can.

I also have to remind myself that I need a break sometimes, and that’s okay. Everyone should take things one day at a time. Some days are good, but then you will occasionally have that rough day where a progress report comes home reflecting a low grade in a class. Our kids need to know that they are accepted and loved by everyone around them, on good days and on tough days.

How have you managed conversations with colleagues at the firm about your experience as a caregiver?

Erin: For me, honesty is the best policy. A lot of my colleagues have younger children, so these days I try to regularly check in (and made a point to do so when everyone went exclusively remote for work) and continue to be an advocate for working parents.

What would you like people to know about what it’s like to care for loved ones with mental health or learning challenges?

Erin: I think the more we talk about it, the more we educate everyone around us. It was important to me to explain to my oldest son that there is nothing wrong with him. He is intelligent. Once he understood that, he gained the confidence he needed and started engaging more in school.

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Sheetal Prasad, CFA: Managing Director, Jennison Associates

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Sheetal Prasad“I think the constant in my life is that you’re moving to the next level. You’re moving to a new challenge,” says Sheetal Prasad, Small Cap Core and Mid Cap Growth Portfolio Manager at Jennison Associates, “And even though you might not think that you’re ready, you are.”

Prasad talks about the continuous learning curve, the value of culture, diversity of thought and being your whole self at work.

From Pre-Med to Portfolio Manager

Like a “good Indian girl”, Prasad began pre-med at Georgetown. When she realized being a doctor was not her calling, she switched to business. At first, she remained in the healthcare territory, working in a market research firm before moving to Wall Street.

A few years in, she leapt from the sell-side research to buy-side investment management, and then landed at Jennison, thirteen years ago. Soon she was challenged to diversify her expertise. 

“I got the opportunity to become a small-cap portfolio manager, but you have to know stocks across the entire universe – not just healthcare, but tech stocks and consumer stocks and industrial stocks,” says Prasad. “The truth is I didn’t have the background for that, but you’re given an opportunity, and you take it.” 

Today, most of her time is spent on mid-cap portfolio management.

“I had to learn to love to read. It’s so critical. My job is predicting the future to some degree. It’s finding those companies that are so well-positioned in certain industries that they can continue to grow from being a smaller market value to larger over time,” says Prasad. “The way you do that is by constantly reading or listening and continuing to learn. Learning is the best part of my job everyday.”

How I Built This, Invest Like The Best, The Knowledge Project and Masters of Scale are among podcasts that inform her professionally. 

Culture & Social Responsibility Matter More Now

“It’s pretty clear that we aren’t going back to the old normal, so what is that ‘new normal’?” asks Prasad. “How are we going to work – and play – differently? How will life change? Who are the companies that will enable that change and are going to be able to thrive?”

In addition to new companies and business models, Prasad is paying attention to company culture. The post-pandemic world has brought out the true value of culture.

“I have a much greater appreciation for culture today in my investment portfolios and the companies that I invest in,” she says. “Because I think that really is the difference between a company that can grow to be bigger, versus a company that might not make it.”

Investing responsibly is paramount to Prasad, such as considering environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria.

“As our portfolio companies are becoming more social stewards, we also have to follow that,” states Prasad. “If I don’t feel good about investing in a company, I don’t have to do it.”

“I take my fiduciary and social responsibilities very seriously. It’s the way the investment business is going to be going forward, and we have to be good at it,” she says. “Part of who I am is having a social responsibility to my family, my community, but also to my job and my investors.“

Diversity of Thought And Voices

“In our business, diversity is not just on the outside, but it’s really about  diversity of thought,” notes Prasad. “If we all think the same way, we’re not going to do well in a stock market, where we need to be prepared for low probability events and be willing to react.”

Diversity of thought is essential to preventing blindspots, cognitive dissonance and ‘thesis creep’, since her team’s success requires staying open-minded to ‘what ifs’ and the healthy friction of debate. 

A candidate that questions a stock the firm holds, from a genuine and informed place, is an asset.

“Everybody is absolutely respectful, but you can’t be shy,” says Prasad. “We don’t hire wallflowers. We want people to express their opinions, because an exchange of ideas is critical to performance.”

Be Visible And Ask Questions

“The financial services industry is behind in their ability to attract and retain and promote women,” states Prasad, though Jennison does better. “And it’s both a top-down problem and a bottom-up problem.”

While face-time is essential to building culture and relationship, she feels the post-pandemic disruption has revealed it’s possible to work more virtually. This could help to attract women and diversity of thought. 

Prasad encourages women to sit visibly at the table, not the periphery, and express their opinions. If there’s one thing she wishes she’d known earlier, it is to not be afraid to ask “dumb questions”. Be communicative and ask questions, especially when you shift between roles or jobs. 

“I’m asking dumb questions all the time,” she says. “Chances are there’s somebody else sitting at the table that also doesn’t understand.”

She encourages women to take a page from men’s confidence book, and when opportunity presents, take the leap before you think you are ready – knowing you will figure it out, and it’s okay also to fail sometimes. 

“I’ve long come to realize that I have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable,” she states. “I’ve had imposter syndrome throughout my entire career. I’ve had to use that discomfort to get smarter, to get better, and to drive towards better performance. It doesn’t stop.”

Being Your Whole Self

Prasad begins her days with yoga before logging on, and recommends to take the time to do whatever helps clear your mind and support your well-being, as often as possible. She is finding working at home is also allowing her to feel more present at work. 

“I think very often in life you can’t be really good at your job if you feel as though you’re not giving 100% to your personal life, because that really is the core of who you are. My children, my family, are so important to me,” she says. ”The fact that I can be here for my family allows me to give just as much energy to my job.”

Prasad has learned the value of bringing her authentic self, including her emotions and extroversion, that complements some of her colleagues, to her work.

“In my early career, I was stoic. I felt like it’s all about the job,” she recalls. “Over time, I came to realize it’s okay to care. It’s okay to share. I am going to be emotional about this job and it’s okay. Because the best part of a job really is the people and the relationships you develop.”

“I love my team so much that I think it’s okay for me to show that I’m a woman, that I’ve got family obligations, that I laugh or I cry, or show what bothers me.” She exhales. “Chances are someone else might be going through something similar, and if you can share, they feel like they can. That’s where the team dynamic really comes through. Those small personal interactions go a long way.”

By Aimee Hansen

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