“Play the course and not the other players,” says Kristin Wells, when asked about her personal drive. “Don’t constantly compare yourself to others. Instead, focus on what you’re doing right, and improve on what you need to within yourself.”
Wells has embodied the definition of a ‘mover and shaker’ since she began her career as a Corporate Securities Associate at Pepper Hamilton. She became a partner the first year that she was eligible and had a baby that same year.
“Explore and learn about all the things you can achieve and then ask for what you want.” That’s the advice Priscilla Hughes of Thomson Reuters gives to women, whether they are novices or seasoned professionals—a lesson she had to learn the hard way.
Growing up in Brooklyn, Hughes didn’t know how many career opportunities were out there for women. “I thought that my dream job would be working for the telephone company,” she says. But thanks to hard work, good mentors, and a willingness to take risks and try new things, her dreams have been dwarfed by reality. Never did she imagine she would find herself as a leader in the legal field — as General Counsel Europe & Asia and Chief Counsel for M&A in Financial & Risk at Thomson Reuters.
“Clients want to do business with people they like and trust, and you can only build trust over a long period of time,” says Goldman Sachs’ Alison Mass.
Mass began her career in the fast-paced industry at Drexel Burnham after earning her MBA in 1981 from New York University. Then in 1990, Mass went to a competitor before joining Goldman Sachs in 2001 as a partner.
“I’ve been fortunate to have had the same client base for most of my career, and have seen the private equity industry grow almost from inception,” she says, recalling that when she started in the 1980s, there were few funds over $1 billion. “I’ve been able to grow with my clients and invest in relationships that span decades. It’s been a privilege to watch private equity firms evolve over that period of time. Most professionals don’t ever get that kind of an opportunity.”
After earning degrees in Business & Insurance Science and Business Administration from Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca in Spain, Belen Navarro began her professional career in April 1997 as an account executive at a brokerage firm in Madrid.
In 1997 she joined AIG Europe, where she held various positions of increasing responsibility in the finance area in Spain and Portugal for 12 years. In 2009, she was offered what she calls a life-changing opportunity: to join the Regional Financial Lines team for Latin America and the Caribbean. Navarro currently heads the Latin America and Caribbean Professional Liability and Cyber team for AIG with the responsibility for establishing underwriting strategy and implementing best practices across the region.
Lisa Carnoy, Division Executive for Northeast and Metro New York U.S. Trust, Bank of America Private Wealth Management, is a persistent and self-described optimist. Carnoy is pleased to have both “survived and thrived in” the multiple market and corporate changes over the years, including the end of junk bonds, the tech crunch, and the 2007 crisis.
This summer marks her twenty-fifth year in the financial industry and also marks another career milestone as she advances her career from Global Capital Markets to the company’s wealth-management unit. Carnoy, who started at Merrill in 1994, has emerged as one of the top strategists in the company and was recognized by American Banker as one of the 25 most powerful women in finance.
Fresh out of college, Amanda Tepper, currently a financial industry leader as founder and CEO of Chestnut Advisory Group, set her sights on a career in the radio industry. “And then one night, as I stood on stage introducing Ozzy Osbourne, I realized it was not for me. Time to get off the ‘Crazy Train’,” she says.
That wakeup call sent Tepper to the career networking office at her alma mater, Brown University, where she found a job on Wall Street at Mabon, Nugent & Co — and she has never looked back.
Whether it is searching out long-lost shareholders for a proxy vote, creating new or merging existing mutual funds, or overseeing the myriad steps it takes to rebrand a family of 161 mutual funds, Kim Anderson spends her days finding ways to get things done.
Learning by Doing – Often without a Net
Kim Anderson started out as a banker in the early 90’s when the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed. Her employer, then known as Bank One AZ, decided to get into the business of selling mutual funds and Kim took her first steps into what was largely uncharted territory for both her and the banking industry. “I became a compliance principal and was responsible for approving the trades made by the bank’s representatives.” Her time at the bank was a big opportunity to prove herself and as she notes, “I learned about mutual funds and the industry, which set the stage for where I am today.”
With her first major accomplishment under her belt, Anderson went on to tackle bigger challenges. In 1995, she moved to Pilgrim Funds shortly after they were acquired by Express America. The prior Pilgrim organization had been floundering under a scandal after the firm and its CEO were fined by the SEC for misleading advertising. Certain Pilgrim Funds were purchased by Express America, a mortgage company looking to get into the mutual fund business after enduring the savings and loan crisis.
At Pilgrim, Kim leveraged her compliance experience into heading up the legal administration group. “I oversaw a paralegal team at Pilgrim who worked in conjunction with outside counsel on Board meetings, SEC filings, and the Secretarial function.” Kim’s willingness to dig into the details and make sense of a situation earned her a reputation as a problem solver. “I had many mentors who helped me along the way by seeing an opportunity and saying, ‘Give Kim a shot at it’ which had a very positive influence on my career growth.”
Taking on Even Greater Challenges by Building a Team
Eventually Pilgrim grew to a size where it needed in-house counsel and Kim moved over to run product development and strategic planning.
“We went through a number of mergers and acquisitions and each one presented significant challenges for me and my team.” Pilgrim made a series of acquisitions in the late 1990s and was acquired by ReliaStar in 1999. A year later, ING purchased ReliaStar and Aetna’s financial service operations.
The early 2000s proved to be challenging for Anderson and her team. “Each transaction required a number of new filings, shareholder and Board approvals and operational integrations,” Anderson recalls, “In 2003, we began to really pull all of the acquisitions together and there were not a lot of templates on how to get things done. It was pretty chaotic.”
Anderson’s team at the time included several who she credits with helping her and the overall effort, to be a success. One important achievement was the development of a methodical approach to decision making around the mutual fund products. “We did a full Design-For-Six-Sigma process on how we make fund decisions and it has made a significant difference in getting buy-in from various stakeholders. The [six-sigma] project created a safe environment for all of the constituents to look at the process and voice their opinions. The process ensures that fund product decisions are made based on fact and thorough analysis. I believe the stakeholders see it as ‘everyone’s process’ – with all involved working towards the best outcome.”
By 2007, the new processes were in place and they were ready to deal with any big changes. And there have been plenty of changes for Kim and her team to take on. In 2013, ING U.S., the retirement, asset management and insurance business, was spun-off from the parent company in an IPO. In connection with the IPO, Kim’s team dealt with securing fund shareholder approvals through a proxy event that touched the entire shareholder base – over 5 million shareholders. The past year or so has been dedicated to ING U.S.’s rebranding as Voya Financial (and the investment business as Voya Investment Management), reducing redundancies in its mutual fund line-up and the strategic decision to focus on growing and scaling proprietary asset management.
Welcome to The Glass Hammer’s “Women in Tech” month! We will be celebrating successful women in technology all month long!
With 30 years of experience in financial services now, Menelly got her start early when she was selected to participate in a management intern program at Bankers Trust. Here, Menelly realized that she always tended to gravitate toward situations where problem solving skills were critical. She added, “This solidified my interest in developing business solutions and bolstered my tolerance for digging into the level of detail required to create large scale solutions.” Menelly spent twelve years at Banker’s Trust and gradually increased her responsibilities by working on bigger and bigger projects for numerous departments across the bank.
Welcome to The Glass Hammer’s “Women in Tech” month! We will be celebrating successful women in technology all month long!
Jo Hannaford has been in Technology for 24 years, and thinks of herself as fortunate for having the opportunity to pursue a career which she enjoys.
“Technology is a fast-changing environment,” she explained, “I have learned to act positively when faced with uncertainty. Embrace new opportunities and look forward to the new experiences.”
Career in Technology
Hannaford was always drawn toward technology, and when she earned a First Class Honours degree in Computer Science, she validated her interest in the field with her talent and skill. She had an ‘apprentice’ attitude to her early career – looking for opportunities to learn new technical disciplines and gain knowledge.
Welcome to The Glass Hammer’s “Women in Tech” month! We will be celebrating successful women in technology all month long!
By Cathie Ericson
Kimberly Bryant, tech founder of Black Girls CODE, wasn’t looking to start a non-profit, but realized the need was too great not to. After a series of engineering management roles at various companies early in her career, she left for the opportunity to do something on her own outside of Fortune 500.
Ideally, she had hoped to combine her focus on the health industry with her interest in the start-up field. As she networked with that goal in mind, she became more aware of the lack of women in the science, technology, engineering and math professions – and more than that, the even greater dearth of people of color in the startup space.