Voice of Experience: Paula Arrojo, Managing Director and Private Wealth Advisor, Investment Management, Goldman Sachs

Paul ArrojoThe Glass Hammer is celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month by featuring profiles of Hispanic Women Business Leaders all week long!

“Throughout my career, I could have taken the easy road, but I’m proud of myself for accepting a challenge,” says Paula Arrojo, managing director and private wealth advisor in the Investment Management Division at Goldman Sachs. “If you have good reasons to want to do something different or innovative and the risk is well articulated, Goldman values that ambition and desire to move forward,” she says.

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Voice of Experience: Kelly Williams, President of Private Markets, GCM Grosvenor

The pivotal moment of Kelly Williams’ career came when she was given the opportunity to step outside of her comfort zone and go in a completely new direction. “I started as a project finance lawyer in the private sector, where I was one of few women,” said Williams, who later took a position working in-house with Prudential Financial.

“Then I had the chance to move over to the business side because someone believed in me and recognized that I had the skills and ability to thrive in this new role in a different environment than what I was used to,” Williams continued.

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Movers and Shakers: Esther Yang, Vice President and Senior Trader-Derivatives at Voya Investment Management, formerly ING U.S. Investment Management

 

diverse women in the boardroomIn a recent round-table of derivative portfolio managers of the largest insurance companies, Esther Yang found herself being the only female among this male dominated profession. How did she get to where she is now?

Esther Yang did not have a conventional route to success in financial services. In fact, she didn’t begin college or her career with intentions of entering the field at all. However, Yang used her instincts and willingness to try new things to guide her into the position she currently holds.

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Voice of Experience: Carin Pai, Executive Vice President, Fiduciary Trust

When Carin Pai joined Fiduciary Trust 18 years ago in an associate- level position within the Investment department, she knew that she was an analytical person who had a strong creative side as well. These skills, along with a strong work ethic and circle of mentors have set a strong foundation for Pai’s rewarding career.

“I studied architecture at Brooklyn Technical High School and loved the combination of the artistic and technical elements,” explained Pai, who said she enjoys this same balance in her current role as executive vice president and director of equity management.

A Committed Leader

Throughout her career Ms. Pai has remained committed to broadening her investment management and leadership skills: in 2006 she became a Chartered Financial Analyst and then in 2011 she attended Harvard Business School’s Executive Education in Investment Management program.

Leading and managing her team of portfolio managers is one of the most rewarding aspects of her job, Pai said. She is especially proud of the fact that in spite of the market turmoil in recent years, she successfully guided her team and their clients through and the group is now reaching new highs.

Although she acknowledged that there can be challenges of leading a multi-generational team, Pai enjoys discovering new ways to be an effective leader and utilize the individual strengths and talents of everyone on her team. “It is a very dynamic environment where it is important to strike a balance between motivating senior professionals and mentoring the rising stars,” she explained.

According to Pai, the team-centric environment promoted by the leaders at her firm creates a wonderful company culture where everyone knows they are appreciated. “As many companies have been forced to make job cuts throughout the market downturn, Fiduciary Trust has emerged with new technologies, resources and talent to provide our clients with the best investment solutions,” she explained.

One of the newest investment avenues Pai and her team are following is ESG investing, which stands for Environmental, Social and Government investing. “ESG awareness can go a long way with investors who are committed to these issues,” said Pai. Right now, Pai is conducting extensive research in this area to gauge client interest. “If ESG is ranking high among our clients, then we will respond by dedicating more resources to this new alternative investment channel,” she added.

Another area of interest, Pai indicated, is to expand opportunities in the global high net worth markets, such as Asia and Latin America. “Asia, for example, represents one of the highest growth segments currently and we are strategizing on how to expand our presence in Asia,” Pai explained. She will be attending the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (“STEP”) Asia Conference in Hong Kong this fall in order to stay on top of Asia’s rapidly-evolving wealth management landscape.

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Movers and Shakers – Peg DiOrio, Vice President and Quantitative Analyst for the Portfolio Engineering Group at Voya Investment Management, formerly ING U.S. Investment Management

people at workWhen Voya’s Peg DiOrio describes the keys to her success overseeing quant for an entire group of investment managers, she uses a sailing analogy. “When you are part of a sailing crew, you have a job and you rely on others to do theirs. To be successful in business, you have to both respect and rely on your colleagues.”

Career Beginnings
Peg DiOrio taught high school math when she graduated college. As the newest teacher in school, she was assigned to some of the most challenging students. “One of my first classes was filled with high school seniors who were taking ninth grade math for the third and fourth time. They weren’t the most enthusiastic students, but it allowed me to try a lot of different ways to reach them. It taught me the importance of understanding my audience.”

In order to advance in the teaching profession, Peg had to get a masters degree. She enrolled in a then-new joint program between New York University’s Stern School of Business and the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. DiOrio recalls, “Courant had long relied on training Department of Defense types in its masters programs.” When that source began to dry up, Courant looked for new opportunities for mathematical sciences and found it in the finance world. “I think the program is now called financial engineering,” DiOrio commented, but back then financial quant work was just getting recognized as a discipline.

There wasn’t a huge amount of academic work devoted to the finance and mathematics at the time, so she and her cohorts studied mathematical models from a range of other disciplines – physical sciences, social sciences, etc. “We studied models that described fish populations, neural networks and flu outbreaks.” She believes that applying math to a range of situations has been really useful in creating financial models that work in the real world.

“Finance is Just Math”
Peg’s study group at Courant included a student who was working at Sanford C. Bernstein. Her cohort’s commitment to developing models that accurately described the real world and his willingness to push for the best possible solution were inspiring. One day he told her, “You are smart. You should come work at Bernstein.”

Peg was intrigued, but a bit concerned that she lacked an understanding of finance. Her studies were in pure math and applied math. To that point her cohort said, “Finance is just math. You’ll figure it out.”

Learning Finance through Experience and Collaboration
Peg was assigned to work with a group of financial advisors who managed money for Bernstein’s high net worth clients. Part of her role was to run statistical reports for clients. “Some of our clients were unusual trusts – such as nuclear decommissioning trusts. It was a challenge because the goal was to have enough money to decommission the plant but not extra because additional funds would have to be returned to utility customers. It was also interesting because it was a time when decommissioning trusts were finally allowed to be invested in stocks. “We spent a lot of time looking at the right level of volatility.”

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Voice of Experience: Deborah Ong, Partner, Risk & Quality Leader, Corporate Responsibility Leader, PwC Singapore

Welcome the The Glass Hammer’s “Spotlight on Asia” week! We will be highlighting successful women working in Asia all week long!

Deborah Ong believes that enjoying what you do will help you work efficiently, gain opportunities and rise up the ladder. “I’m very fortunate that I enjoy my line of work, and so I’m still in the same company I first joined as a graduate!”

“I joined the firm on graduation as a trainee and was fortunate to receive many opportunities during my early years to gain exposure and experience in the whole gamut of development – from general audit to more specialized internal and IPO-related audit, to liquidation, insolvency and investigation,” she explains.

“I am very happy I got to contribute significantly to the People journey at the firm. As Human Capital Leader for ten years, my team and I worked very closely with the business to identify and retain talent, train and develop them to the future leaders of the organization. Personally, I am a strong believer in nurturing talent through a coaching culture and I’m proud to say that our mentorship programme is still going strong today.”

Another leadership role she has acquired is PwC Singapore’s Risk & Quality Leader. She still holds this role, which gives her the responsibility to understand and assess the risks associated with each of their service offerings.

Ong describes her journey as colorful. “During my time as the firm’s Human Capital Leader, the firm saw significant shifts in managing the people agenda. I’m glad that I was able to champion the firm’s training and development programmes, and to personally facilitate and share my experience on how to deal with some of the practical challenges of being in the profession with managers and senior managers. I’m a firm believer of nurturing talent through coaching, and I hope that I was able to encourage ongoing growth and development.”

“Being the firm’s Risk & Quality Leader, it is my job to understand and assess the risks associated with each of our service offerings, and with each of our clients. This involves judgment, which is not an exact science but which requires a mix of technical skill and practical experience,” she explains. She has the opportunity to interact with clients and to learn how they view and assess risk, and how they help their businesses solve difficult scenarios.

Career Challenges

Ong believes that most of women’s challenges in this industry are based on time management because their work is organized in projects, which creates tight deadlines and time pressure. “At a certain stage, some women may feel the need to make a choice between career and other aspects of their life, such as family or children, and select to give up their careers.”

To overcome this challenge, Ong advises women to “have the right conversations within the organization with the right people, exploring alternative roles and/or work arrangements and for each person to be aware of the value they bring to the profession.”

She advises young women who are entering the industry to learn developing project management and people management skills. “In order to progress up the career ladder, the support of your team is crucial,” she explains. “You need talented people who can deliver results in a timely manner, and this involves significant investment into their development.”

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Intrepid Woman: Dayle Haddon, Founder, WomenOne

Dayle1004_7MA10576007-0025 - Version 2By Hadley Catalano

Dayle Haddon is working to change the world, one woman at a time. The former model, of the 1970s and ‘80s L’Oréal and Estée Lauder fame, began with her own sovereign growth. An act that has helped reshape the cosmetic industry standards, challenged society-based definitions of ageless beauty, and culminated in a redefined commitment to active gratitude.

Haddon’s intrepid story of personal development began in Canada, where the Québécoise began her career with the ballet. She began modeling during her teenage years to help pay for her dance lessons and was soon discovered by Eileen Ford. The young Haddon pursued her modeling career in New York – even though her 5’7’’ frame and curly brunette look were starkly dissimilar from the early 1970s tall-blond beauty standards.

“I was always looking for ways to support myself, and it took me a long time to be successful,” explained Haddon, who was recently honored by the Girl Scouts of Greater New York as an extraordinary leader and role model. “However, at the height of my career, I was working with top magazines, top photographers, and had four major cosmetic contracts.”

While Haddon’s career wove through a variety of high-profile professions, including small acting roles for French and American films, she eventually settled in Paris with her husband and their young daughter. Then, unexpectedly in 1986 Haddon’s husband died, leaving her with little money or support. She returned to Los Angeles desperate to find work to support her teenage daughter.

“This was a life-changing event; losing someone close to me was a painful experience,” Haddon recalled. “But it was transformative. Challenges make you more than you are. You can’t control what happens to you, but you can control how you handle it.”

Redefining Beauty
Starting over, Haddon found herself at the bottom of the ladder. At the age of 38, she was considered “over the hill,” and not desirable to modeling agencies or her former cosmetic employers. After having worked as a top model, only to be rejected by her profession, forced Haddon into a desk job as an office receptionist – an unexpected but didactic situation.

“It was good for me to recognize at the time that this was a humbling experience. I knew I wouldn’t stay there. If you give me an opportunity, I will work it. Challenges are there to build character and to grow.”

Haddon’s passion for women’s advocacy began as she struggled to climb the “glass walls” back into the beauty and fashion industry. She longed to break down the stereotypical age-image barriers and change the perception of “older woman” from inside the industry. She formulated a campaign and pitched major cosmetic labels the image of evolving, age-defying beauty. After many rejections Haddon landed a job as the face of Estée Lauder’s new anti-aging line and later became the spokeswoman for L’Oréal’s Age-Perfect skin care. The career move, the New York Times later quoted, “shattered age taboos,” and helped to launch the careers of models over 40.

“We were on the forefront of something different, and (at the time) most beauty companies hadn’t caught up yet,” Haddon explained of the early 1990’s beauty-from-within movement. “I researched in libraries and found information that explained that the 43 million female Baby Boomers felt they were more vital than generations before. So I started my own company, Dayle Haddon Concepts.”

For the next 20 years Haddon continued her work in the beauty industry, bringing progressive change to the industry and promoting awareness of the inner and outer beauty of all women. Through her personal company, her contributions to CBS’s The Early Show, the Huffington Post and many other publications, and with her two books, “Ageless Beauty” and “The 5 Principles of Ageless Living,” she has provided women an outlet to explore a balance between their health, beauty, and overall well-being.

A Model Activist
However, central to Haddon’s upbringing was the reinforced message to “give back,” and with her high visibility providing a public forum to elicit change, Haddon seized the opportunity to express her gratitude by pursuing a social justice agenda. She became a UNICEF Ambassador in 2008 and traveled to Darfur to interview women in the camps, visited earthquake-ravaged Haiti to vaccinate newborns, and brought home stories from Angola about the lack of medical equipment in rural clinics. She shared this information in lectures, wrote articles for publications, and helped to raise money for children’s issues worldwide.

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Voice of Experience: Teo Lay Lim, Country Managing Director for Singapore, Accenture

Teo Lay LimWelcome the The Glass Hammer’s “Spotlight on Asia” week! We will be highlighting successful women working in Asia all week long!

Teo Lay Lim has been working at Accenture for 26 years, and she loves what she does. One lesson she has learned throughout her experience is the importance of networking which, she finds, women are naturally good at because they collaborate and communicate well.

“For women at all levels of their careers, constantly building your personal network both internally and externally is extremely valuable,” she said. “Building personal networks helps you to draw on others to augment your own insights [and] perspectives,” she added. This is especially important for leaders because they need experience, perspective and insight.

Accenture has more than 85 local women’s networking groups in 32 countries which, as she explained, “help them build strong networks.” Lay Lim added that “our global women’s theme, Defining Success. Your Way., demonstrates our commitment to supporting women’s professional goals and aspirations. It’s all a part of our overall commitment to attracting, retaining and advancing women, which supports our broader commitment to an inclusive and diverse workplace.”

Lay Lim encourages women to look for careers in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). “STEM skills are a business imperative and I believe that women are key in this area,” she said. “We need the intelligence, talent and ability of women to help fill the growing number of STEM jobs and this means encouraging young women to pursue careers in these fields and enabling them to succeed.”

“At Accenture, for example, STEM skills are critical. Technology-led innovation is at the heart of our business – a business in which women comprise almost half of the workforce,” she said.

Working in Accenture

She currently works as the geographic unit senior managing director for Accenture’s offices in ASEAN (South East Asia), and she is also the Country Managing Director of Accenture in Singapore. Prior to this position, she worked as the Asia Pacific managing director for the company’s Analytics and Sustainability Services, and during 11 years (two of them spent in Shanghai) she worked as the managing director of Customer Relationship Management in Accenture’s former Management Consulting practice.

Working in the services industry, she has learned about the importance of showing talent and relevance, which she believes “is a challenge because even though our competitors have changed over time, our client and customer expectations are consistent and ongoing.”

Being different helps a company be more successful than its competition and she offers two pieces of advice that can help companies reach this goal: “Be relevant to what [your] clients and customers need, and be a talent magnet for the best people with the right potential to be developed.” These best people, she explained, learn quickly, are committed to the company and their jobs, and have the character and values that the company is looking for.

Improving the Country

“I love what I do at Accenture and the work I take on in my roles, both past and present, has always kept me on my toes,” she said, “but I’m also excited about the work I’m doing externally, to help my country. I am a steering committee member of the Infocom Media Masterplan, led by Singapore’s Ministry of Communications & Information, which aims to spearhead the development of a single, integrated plan to guide Singapore’s Infocomm & Media sectors up to 2025 in a holistic manner.”

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Thought Leader: Alison Maitland, Future Work – Moving to an Output-Oriented Work Culture

Alison MaitlandAlison Maitland is a business author, speaker and conference moderator who specialises in leadership, diversity, and the new world of work. She is Director of The Conference Board’s Europe-based Council for Diversity in Business, a Senior Visiting Fellow at London’s Cass Business School, and co-author of the prize-winning book Why Women Mean Business. Alison, with co-author Peter Thomson, recently published the second edition of Future Work and she sat down with theglasshammer.com to share her views on why future work is a critical part of an organisation’s long term success.

The Glass Hammer: How is future work different to flexible working?

Alison Maitland: Flexible work arrangements tend to be tactical initiatives by HR, targeted at individuals and disconnected from any strategy being pursued by the organisation’s leadership. They do not fundamentally alter the current work model.

What we call “future work” is a business strategy to move away from focusing on inputs to viewing work as an activity that produces desired results. The focus is on performance and outcomes, not hours spent in the office, and people have much greater autonomy and choice about how, where and when they carry out their tasks.

Communications technology is of course the great enabler of this. Future work is about giving everyone the tools, information and objectives they need and then letting them get on with the job in the way that works best. To become a core part of a company’s culture, it needs to be driven by leaders across the organisation – IT, finance, communications and real estate as well as HR and leadership development.

TGH: Why is future work important now?

AM: The new workforce is looking for something very different from the traditional career and work model. The International Women’s Forum UK recently celebrated its 25th anniversary with a survey asking current and emerging female leaders about success, including what they would do differently if starting again. While many of the senior women said they would not do anything differently, some wished they had said “no” more often during their careers or been less hard on themselves. One said “We have to change the concept of work to make it more relevant to a woman’s life.” The responses from the younger women placed strong value on balance, happiness, fulfilment, and the need to pace and prioritise carefully. These trends are supported by a global ACCA/Mercer survey, which we reference in Future Work. The survey asked over 3,200 millennial finance professionals how they felt about their jobs. It found that this generation wants a much broader range of benefits from working life and that making more money is a less important factor in career success than it was to previous generations.

What does this mean for organisations? Employers can no longer assume that employees will put up with having to work at rigid times in a fixed location if it does not make sense to do so. If employers don’t offer greater autonomy and choice, they will struggle to attract top talent. Future work also allows companies to draw from a broader and more diverse talent pool, which in turn should lead to more innovative organisations. Future work is not a nice-to-have – it should be a viewed as a priority by leaders looking to deliver sustainable success.

TGH: Are leaders really convinced about the benefits of future work?

AM: Those we feature in the book definitely are! But many managers still fear that people won’t work if they can’t see them sitting at their desks around them – hence the jacket-on-chair syndrome. In reality, most people are more productive and motivated when they feel empowered and trusted by their managers to get the work done, regardless of time or place. Through a combination of surveys and case studies, we’ve shown that there is a wide range of benefits for business, including increased productivity, more reliable business continuity, faster access to market, and reduced costs. Organisations need to do a better job of measuring these benefits to see what a difference future work can make.

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Voice of Experience: Karen Loon, Banking and Capital Markets Leader, PwC Singapore

karen loonWelcome the The Glass Hammer’s “Spotlight on Asia” week! We will be highlighting successful women working in Asia all week long!

Karen Loon, recently appointed as PwC Singapore’s Banking and Capital Markets Leader, knows that making assumptions based on someone’s gender is a mistake. Assumptions based on appearance are often equally misleading. That’s because while some might assume that Loon was born in Asia, she’s actually a fourth-generation, Australian-born Chinese.

That’s why her interest in diversity runs deeper than just gender. “I am passionate about ensuring that both women and those from culturally diverse backgrounds are given the right opportunities to thrive within their organizations,” she says, which makes her the ideal fit to be PwC Singapore’s Territory Diversity Leader.

A Career in Accounting Added up for Loon

Loon began her career after graduating from Sydney University. Her parents were business owners who had business acquaintances who were accountants and encouraged her to consider it as a career.

She participated in vacation internships with other accounting firms, and decided she liked the culture of PwC, which she joined in 1990. She was seconded to PwC Singapore in 1994 when a one-week training in the Netherlands opened her eyes to the possibility of working outside of Australia, coupled with her growing conviction that Singapore was ripe for a booming economy, and decided to stay for the longer term.

The move was less conventional than one would guess, because as Loon says, “Most Australians have a strong affinity for the U.K.” Furthermore, though she is ethnically Chinese, Loon doesn’t speak Chinese. “It’s very difficult to feel like an outsider. I was fortunate to be coached and mentored by supportive people.”

Climbing the Ladder as a Woman

Becoming a partner was not easy to achieve and certainly ranks as one of her proudest professional achievements. In fact she says that though she didn’t realize it at the time, she had never met a female audit partner when she started in Sydney.

“Women partners were few and far between in Sydney,” she says, adding that Singapore was more progressive in this area with some of the women partners having kids. “There is more family support in Asia. The values in Sydney tend toward mothers staying home.”

During a recent two-year return to Australia, Loon reflected on her values and how she had changed — and how other aspects of the firm had changed. “There are now more women partners, but we are still clearly the minority. It made me more passionate about making sure there are opportunities for everyone.”

Diversity Committee Feeds Her Passion

That’s why she finds her work with her Singapore diversity committee to be so satisfying. In addition to her recent appointment as a Territory Diversity Leader, she is also the East Cluster Financial Services People Leader, East Cluster Diversity Coordinator and a member of the Global Financial Services Diversity Steering Committee.

“Being open to diversity is how businesses can retain talent,” she says, adding that the broader issue facing all organizations is how cultural diversity, not just gender diversity, will continue to dominate the discussion.

“Companies have to be cognizant of culture and open to accepting that people come with different values and backgrounds. Companies that continue to focus with a just a western lens will be at a disadvantage. Those who understand different types of clients and environments will be the successful ones. Otherwise it’s so easy to offend someone without even realizing it.”

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