Voice of Experience: Alison Mass, Co-head of the Financial Sponsors Group in the Investment Banking Division, Goldman Sachs

Mass alison“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.”

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Mover & Shaker: Belen Navarro, Financial Lines Regional Manager, Latin America & Caribbean at AIG

female leaderAfter 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.

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Voice of Experience: Lisa Carnoy, Division Executive for Northeast and Metro New York U.S. Trust, Bank of America Private Wealth Management

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.

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Voice of Experience: Amanda Tepper, CEO of Chestnut Advisory Group

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.

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Voice of Experience: Kim Anderson, Senior Vice President of Mutual Fund Product Development, Voya Investment Management (formerly ING U.S. Investment Management)

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.

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Voice of Experience: Denise Menelly, Shared Service Operations Executive, Bank of America Merrill Lynch

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.

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Voice of Experience: Jo Hannaford, Global Co-Head of Enterprise Platforms Team, Global Co-Head of Compliance Technology, Head of EMEA Federation Technology, Goldman Sachs

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.

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Intrepid Woman: Kimberly Bryant, Founder, Black Girls CODE

Welcome to The Glass Hammer’s “Women in Tech” month! We will be celebrating successful women in technology all month long!

By Cathie Ericson

Professional Headshot_CompressedKimberly 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.

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Movers and Shakers: Justine Chen, Senior Manager, SunGard Consulting Services

Welcome to The Glass Hammer’s “Women in Tech” month! We will be celebrating successful women in technology all month long!

Justine Chen, senior manager at SunGard Consulting Services is deeply committed to getting more women interested in technology careers. Through her current role, Chen participates in a lot of community outreach and as a result, she took a particular interest in the organization, Girl Develop It, which offers courses for women who want to learn technical skills.

“I made a connection at GDI who introduced me to the film, Girl Rising, a documentary about the education of girls in several developing countries,” explained Chen, who organized screenings of the film at many SunGard offices in honor of International Women’s Day.

“This collaboration has been so rewarding and it is an empowering feeling to be involved with spreading a positive message about technology to young women and girls across the globe,” Chen said.

Career Path

Chen grew up in Taiwan and moved to Canada after high school. She explained that in Taiwan the education system requires students entering senior high school to declare an area of study. Chen had always been drawn to logic and problem solving, so naturally these interests pointed her in the direction of engineering. “This was the first step toward my career in technology,” said Chen, who continued to study engineering when she was at university in Canada.

After graduating from college, Chen accepted a position at a traditional engineering consulting firm working on a system that would commission commuter ferries in Washington. While Chen enjoyed this experience, she sought a role that would give her the opportunity to interact more with the public as opposed to focusing so much on back end developing.

“This put me at a crossroads early on in my career where I had to decide to pursue opportunities on the East coast or stay on the West coast. Ultimately, I was drawn to the East coast and started working as a java developer for a search company right as the internet was becoming extremely popular,” Chen explained.

As a result of the increasing popularity of the web, companies were looking to design more interactive and dynamic websites. Chen, who found herself in the right place at the right time, was asked if she wanted to learn the programming languages that were emerging at the time. “I entered that field and I have been working on web technologies ever since,” Chen noted.

According to Chen, the changes within the web technologies field that have taken place over the last few years have created such a dynamic environment offering opportunities for people from all walks of life. In the past, she explained, web technologies primarily attracted computer science majors. Now, more and more people entering the field are self-taught programmers and developers who are bringing an entirely different skill set to the table.

Selected as SunGard’s rising star for the Women’s Bond Club in2013, Chen continues to make significant contributions in her current role as a senior manager at SunGard Consulting Services. “In addition to my daily responsibilities, I am working on a new business solution through SunGard Consulting Services solution proposal competition held each year that encourages us to think outside the box,” said Chen.

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Movers and Shakers: Adda Birnir, Founder and CEO, Skillcrush

Women SpeakingAdda Birnir is the founder and CEO of Skillcrush, an online technical skills platform designed specifically for women. According to Birnir, her career path has been unconventional, but as she looks back at all of her experiences she is certain that each role she had in the past served as a building block and learning opportunity to help her create the company of her dreams.

Navigating a Career in Technology
When Adda Birnir first had the idea for Skillcrush, she identified a hole in the marketplace and created a platform to fill the gap in an area she felt very strongly about: inspiring women to discover technical skills by developing an accessible online resource.

Before this, Birnir was working as a technical producer at MTV while running her own web development and design consulting business. “This was a great business, but I found that I wasn’t professionally fulfilled by the client work I was doing. Instead, I was craving a more hands-on experience where I could take a project through the entire life-cycle,” she explained.

Birnir graduated from college and moved to New York in order to pursue a career as a professional photographer. “I quickly learned that the reality of the profession was nothing like I had imagined,” explained Birnir, who shortly thereafter found a job working for an online publishing company. “I was lucky because my position straddled editorial and production, which gave me the opportunity to gain exposure to the technical side of the process of creating and delivering online magazines,” she said.

Here, Birnir realized that she not only had genuine interest in technology but also a natural talent that began to emerge as she spent a lot of time working closely with the web developers. “This was my first real introduction to the world of technology,” said Birnir, who started to take on small coding projects in addition to her regular tasks.

According to Birnir, sponsorship has played a critical role in her career development in technology. “I have been fortunate to have several people in the workplace take me under their wing and guide me as I developed my skills,” she noted. This is why, Birnir added, she has made mentorship such a key component of her company, Skillcrush.

“There are a lot of excellent resources out there for anyone who is interested in learning about programming and web development,” Birnir said, “but it can be confusing to navigate. This is where it is important to have someone who can interject and give you guidance along the way.”

She continued, “Through Skillcrush, we recognized a great opportunity to serve women in the technical space and offer something different than any other technical skills platform that was available at the time.”

Growing Pains: The Ups and Downs of Startups
When Birnir was initially developing Skillcrush, she decided to take a “test and learn” approach to her business. This, she explained, meant treating the company like a science experiment by creating a series of hypotheses and testing them one at a time, beginning with the riskiest.

“The riskiest part of this business model was not creating an online technical skills platform,” Birnir explained, “It was building this type of business that would attract women.”

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