Jo Natauri, Partner, Investment Banking Division, Goldman Sachs

Jo NatauriWomen in the work force need to make an effort not to be so hard on themselves, says Jo Natauri, a partner at Goldman Sachs. “You have to accept that you won’t be functioning at 100% in all aspects of your life all the time. Sometimes you are a 100% mother or wife, and sometimes you’re 100% at your job, but often it will be somewhere in between. You have to be ok with pushing and pulling levers in your life, rather than going full bore on all of them at the same time. Frankly it’s a balance you have to acknowledge irrespective of your gender.”

Intersection of Healthcare and Finance

During her time as an undergrad at the University of Virginia, Natauri’s interests shifted from pursuing a career practicing medicine to one in finance. Working with a quadriplegic while in school, she was struck by the many difficulties he was having obtaining adequate medical care, as well as the financial means to cover it. “Seeing an accomplished individual still having these issues changed my course. I realized I wanted to be involved in healthcare in a meaningful way on the business side.”

Because of previous coursework, she had the flexibility to earn a degree in both economics and biology, and went into investment banking. Her plan when she started in 1998 was to spend time learning and understanding the business side and then eventually transition into policy, but instead she has spent her entire career in various roles in the healthcare business. She started at Goldman in 2006 as a vice president, and became a managing director in 2008 and partner in 2012.

Natauri is excited by her work on transactions in the sector with cutting-edge companies that are focused on helping people and curing diseases. “The altruistic component to the finance I’m doing is really important to me,” she says, “And, due to the profound changes in healthcare, the industry will continue to offer new opportunities.”

Passion = Success

Though Natauri has always felt a passion for the finance industry, she suggests young women who might be considering a career in banking recognize the demands the job may have on personal time. She says though work in investment banking can be all consuming, she likes working with smart people who want to make decisions quickly and produce the best work for clients.

She shares a passion for her work with the other women with whom she interacts in Goldman’s robust mentoring groups. “I was pleasantly surprised when I came here to see how important mentoring is, both formally and informally.”

She finds mentoring particularly helpful in addressing one of the main challenges she sees for women in the industry — the limited number of female role models at the higher levels. “If you haven’t seen a lot of women in senior positions, which I didn’t, you might feel pressured to mimic the few examples you do see instead of forging your own path, which can be challenging if that doesn’t match your personality,” Natauri said. “You have to figure out what success looks like for you, without having the benefit of a large number of role models.”

Natauri knows that success doesn’t come immediately, which also can be challenging when first starting your career. “When you’re young, you are promptly rewarded for good grades and hard work, and then you find when you enter the corporate world that it’s not as linear,” she says. “You have to have patience that your trajectory will take off.”

A Heart for Kids

Natauri spends much of her time away from work with her husband and their three children, ages four, two and one. She was also formerly on the board of a nonprofit organization called Everybody Wins, which she describes as a cross between literacy advocacy and Big Brothers/Big Sisters. The organization brings professionals to low-income schools to mentor and read to kids. “I’m a practical person at heart so I really appreciated its mission of getting busy people involved in an impactful way with the limited time they have available.”

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Voice of Experience: Betty Ng, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development, Moody’s

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Betty NgFulfilling careers may evolve as a lattice rather than a ladder, believes Betty Ng, senior vice president for the corporate development team at Moody’s. “You have to be open to different opportunities while still being true to yourself. Your career success is often heavily attributed to the efforts of others, so in turn, I believe you have a responsibility to help others.”

Ng’s high school career vision was to pursue the field of international corporate law, which combined a variety of elements that interested her. Though she ultimately chose a different journey, she was able to create a career that still mirrored those interests through seeking challenging, fulfilling leadership roles at international firms.

After earning a B.A. in Economics with a focus on international relations from Stanford University, she began her career with Arthur Andersen in the San Francisco and Beijing offices. Though she earned her CPA license, she didn’t want to devote her career to accounting, so she attended Harvard Business School for an MBA to enhance her general management and leadership skills, and then worked at Amex managing product and international program office initiatives.

Career Success through Networking

In 2004, a friend referred her to Citigroup where her interview catapulted her into an M&A execution role. This was an early lesson in being open to any opportunity, since although she had never thought about a career in mergers and acquisitions, the hiring manager convinced her that she had all the skills and experience she needed to be successful, including finance, international business, leadership, project management and foreign language. In fact, Ng found it to be the perfect role to leverage her skills and interests.

After a brief hiatus to be with her children, a former colleague at Citigroup hired her into Moody’s where she is now a senior vice president for corporate development, leading M&A and other strategic initiatives.
This experience leads her to offer the advice to women toalways be at your best since you never know who’s watching you and when your paths will cross again.And that means that in addition to delivering great work products, you have to focus on building relationships and expanding your networks.

“You want to be the first person someone thinks of for that job or assignment that can help you advance your career,” Ng says. She believes a crucial element of that is executive presence, a skill she believes can be learned and developed. “Have an open mind about enhancements that can impact your personal brand and success,” she says.

“Paying it forward”

Diversity is very important to Ng, who appreciates that Moody’s has a wide variety of programs and initiatives to support a diverse workplace, from women to LGBTA to multiple cultures to veterans.

Ng devotes time to two important groups: she is co-chair of Moody’s Women’s Employee Resource Group in New York and is concurrently working with other Asian professionals to develop an initiative to further develop the Asian talent pipeline in the company.

Her focus as co-chair of the Women’s ERG is to deliver strong content in the areas of networking and professional development, which involves collaborating with her co-chair and subcommittees to develop programs that cover a spectrum from Lean In circles to fantasy football groups.

Ng also highlighted Moody’s leadership programs for women, including a Senior Women’s Leadership Forum, which she will participate in later this year, and other programs which help participants refine their skills and gain visibility across the company.

Ng is grateful that Moody’s sponsored her attendance at the Stanford Business School Advanced Leadership Program for Asian American Executives in 2013, which she describes as an incredible professional development experience that inspired her desire to focus on developing the pipeline of Asian talent at Moody’s. While the effort is still in its early stages, its goals are to reach out to Asian talent and help senior professionals impart their experience and “pay it forward” as role models. They have held a pilot speed mentoring program and look forward to other initiatives as the group grows.

She feels that it is important for organizations to raise awareness of unconscious biases and overcome leaders’ tendencies to hire and advance people who are more like themselves rather than gaining the benefits of a more diverse pool of candidates. “Also, a lack of role models can create a psychological barrier for women, who may feel that achieving higher ranks is too difficult.”

In fact, she cites her ability to meaningfully “pay it forward” by co-chairing these groups, while still performing well at her demanding position, as the professional achievement of which she’s most proud.
Family First

Ng credits much of her success to her mother, who has served as an impressive role model by balancing family with an impactful career. A widow at 32 with four young children, she has devoted decades of her life to her career as a social worker and was recently recognized as a pioneer by the Chinese American Planning Council (CPC) for her contributions to the community. Ng had the honor of speaking at the awards event.

Having benefited greatly from CPC’s programs, Ng sought and received a grant from Harvard Business School in 2001 that allowed her to establish a sustainable youth employment program for CPC. “It was an incredible experience to help impact the lives of underprivileged youth,” she says.

Ng treasures her time with her seven-year-old daughter and five-year-old son, particularly relishing morning drop-off time and evening reading time. “My goal is to focus on my job during the day and have real quality time focusing on them when I am home.”

By Cathie Ericsson

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Voice of Experience: Carol Nelson, Regional Sales Executive and Seattle Market President, KeyBank

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Carol NelsonFor Carol Nelson, it’s always been about banking. After earning a bachelor’s degree in finance and a master’s in business administration from Seattle University, she began her career at Seafirst, which later became Bank of America, and spent 24 years in positions of increasing responsibility in its commercial and retail divisions.

She left to become president and CEO of Cascade Bank, a community bank headquartered in nearby Everett, Wash., where she spent 10 years transforming it from a savings bank to a commercial bank, serving businesses as well as consumers. In fact, that is one of the professional achievements of which she is most proud. As she notes, changing culture can be challenging, and she found it extremely rewarding to make such a profound change and still be named the “No. 1 Medium-Size Business to Work For” by Washington CEO magazine in 2005. “That much change can be threatening, so the fact that we could also sustain and build morale was really meaningful.”

As Nelson has progressed throughout her career, she has learned the importance of building relationships. During the Cascade Bank transition, she learned that “if others in the organization understand and know you, they are more willing to accept your leadership and any changes you might need to introduce.” She also gained an appreciation for the power of process. “Giving participants the opportunity to buy in will increase the likelihood of success, whether it’s a single project or an overall company transformation.”

Nelson eventually orchestrated the sale of Cascade Bank to Opus Bank and, and following a period of transition, moved on to spend two years as agency director and CEO of the Department of Revenue for the State of Washington. “Having the chance to serve the public and give a portion of my life to public service was a tremendous opportunity, and I thoroughly enjoyed being a member of the Governor’s Executive Cabinet,” Nelson said.

Future of Banking is Bright

Banking called her back though, and she accepted her leadership role at KeyBank in January 2015. “I love being on a steep learning curve, and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to bring my passion for diversity and leadership here to KeyBank,” she said. “I feel very fortunate that I found a career that I’m excited about and have a passion for – some people don’t ever find that and I’ve had it from the start.”

Nelson notes that it’s an exciting time in the industry. People have long predicted the rise of a purely cashless society, or the demise of branch banking as technology advances. But that’s not what her bank is experiencing – she says that customers still want the mix of touch points and so she will continue to lead efforts to deliver a broad cross section of products that can meet the needs of virtually every business and consumer.

“I don’t see that we will ever be able to harness technology to give people the sound advice and financial solutions that bankers do,”

Nelson finds banking to be an ideal career for women, due to the breadth and depth of the financial sector. She encourages women who are interested in career growth to seek a broad range of experience in multiple lines of business.

An Environment of Inclusivity

Though the career is particularly welcoming to women at the entry level, she has seen that as they continue to move up, it becomes more challenging and very competitive. “There are some stereotypes and management styles that can get in the way, but women just need to be smart about how they navigate them.” She notes a strong culture of advancement potential at Key in particular – it is led by a woman and women comprise 36 percent of the leadership team.

Since coming to KeyBank, Nelson has been appreciative of the networking group structure the bank offers. Employees are encouraged to form smaller networking groups where shared interests and backgrounds reinforce employee engagement and a sense of belonging. Current groups bring together Asian Americans, African Americans, employees with disabilities and employees of military families.

There is also a robust Key4Women group that supports the advancement of business women of all levels through networking and professional development events. Nelson says the program got her attention long before she came to the bank because it served employees as well as clients. “Our bankers are passionate about making sure women business owners have access to capital,” she said, adding that since 2005, KeyBank has lent more than $6 billion to women-owned businesses.

Giving Back

Nelson encourages women who want to become leaders to develop their skills by being active in the community early on. “Helping a nonprofit translates into valuable work experience and great connections,” Nelson said.

Her philosophy of giving back has created a mentoring mindset. “I believe that women leaders need to help other emerging women leaders advance their careers in the community,” she says. “Whenever someone asks for some of my time, I try to make it work. Someone paid it forward for me, and I want to do the same for others.”

At the same time, she notes that all senior women have to make savvy use of their time. Which is one reason she is such a believer in volunteer work and its ability to accomplish simultaneous goals.

Nelson is active in the Washington Roundtable, which focuses on economic development. “I am passionate about contributing to a thriving economy. At the Roundtable, I’m networking with peers and serving a mission while being visible on behalf of the bank. Time is finite – I really believe you have to be laser focused with how you spend it.”

She also serves as a trustee to Seattle University, where she is a double alum, and says she is energized by visiting the campus and interacting with the students.

And in her off time she participates in CrossFit – she is a certified instructor and while she doesn’t currently teach, she exercises her right to fitness with thrice-weekly sessions.

By Cathie Ericson

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Voice of Experience: Sanja Udovicic, Partner in Project Finance Group, Shearman & Sterling

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Sanja UdovicicClient service and innovative deal making are what drive Sanja Udovicic, a partner in global law firm Shearman & Sterling’s project finance group in London. “My proudest professional achievements derive from successfully accomplishing my clients’ objectives and delivering their goals,” she says, particularly when working on what she describes as “complicated and interesting deals that haven’t been done before in frontier jurisdictions.”

Her recent and ongoing work, for example, includes advising multilateral lending institutions and commercial banks on the financing of an upstream gas project in Uzbekistan, counseling the government of Croatia on their tendering of a concession for the operation of the Croatian toll road network and advising lenders on a power project in Indonesia which won a number of awards for its innovative financing structure.

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Voice of Experience: Donna M. Parisi, Partner and Head of the Asset Management Group, Shearman & Sterling LLP

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Donna Parisi“People sometimes ask me, ‘If you could do it all over again, given your practice focus in the financial services area, would you be a banker as opposed to a lawyer?’ I would be a lawyer. This is a particularly exciting time to be a lawyer, with all the regulatory changes, and my clients rely on me to provide counsel and advice,” said Donna M. Parisi, Partner and Head of the Asset Management Group at global law firm Shearman & Sterling LLP.

Parisi’s practice deals globally with derivatives, structured products, securitization, capital markets and commodities, as well as regulatory, risk management, and compliance counseling. It is an area of great interest, and her advice is in high demand.

She explained, “My clients need help navigating complex regulations– especially in light of Dodd-Frank. We’re in a period of great change. There’s a lot happening out there.”

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Voice of Experience: Eliza Swann, Partner, Shearman & Sterling

Eliza SwannEliza Swann, a partner at Shearman & Sterling, says that her interest in law and her interest in M&A developed in two wildly different ways: the first was a matter of design and the second was a matter of happenstance.

“I wanted to go to law school for as long as I can remember, but ending up on the M&A team at Shearman & Sterling was a bit of an accident. I had never considered a business transactional type of career,” Swann said.

It’s funny how things turn out. Swann, who became a partner at Shearman & Sterling in 2007 after eight years with the firm, works on domestic and cross-border deals. In recent years, she has worked on several of the highest-profile M&A transactions in the world, including last year’s acquisition by Liberty Global of Virgin Media in a $23.3 billion transaction.

As an associate just out of law school, Swann found herself on Shearman & Sterling’s M&A team, in large part because she had clerked for the Delaware Supreme Court. Because so many companies incorporate in Delaware (more than 60 percent of Fortune 500 companies are Delaware companies), it is a major venue for business law litigation, with a judiciary that is extremely sophisticated in reviewing corporate law issues. Swann’s clerkship gave her valuable insight into issues fundamental to a transactional practice.

“I was so lucky to have been offered the clerkship and accepted the position without realizing how truly interesting the work would be,” Swann said. “About halfway in, I decided that I wanted to work in a New York firm with a strong M&A practice. I got the job at Shearman & Sterling and have been interested every day since.”

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Voice of Experience: Anna Chung, Counsel, Project Development & Finance, Shearman & Sterling

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Anna ChungTo Anna Chung, landing your “dream job” is not a question of whether you are female or male but rather of how good you are. As a Singapore-based senior lawyer at global law firm Shearman & Sterling, Chung has demonstrated the ability to shine on client work throughout Asia and, increasingly, around the world.

A project finance lawyer, Chung’s practice focuses on power, LNG, oil and gas, and petrochemicals projects. She began her career at a leading Australian firm but left after a few years for Shearman & Sterling.

“To be honest, my career was not particularly planned out, but I’ve been fortunate in having opportunities come my way,” she explains. “I knew I wanted life experiences in cities beyond the city where I grew up, and with Shearman & Sterling, I’ve been able to work in our London and Shanghai offices and am currently working out of our Singapore office.”

While she works on projects throughout Asia, Chung says it has been particularly meaningful to be one of the firm’s leading lawyers serving clients in Korea. She has been doing joint pitches, coordinating marketing trips to Seoul and preparing business plans as the firm expands its client base in Korea.

“It’s meaningful for me as Korea is where I am originally from,” Chung explains. “Our global project finance practice is quite an integrated one, and from fairly early on in my career, I’ve worked with senior partners from different offices on projects involving Korean financial institutions or corporates.”

She adds, “Korea is increasingly an important market for us with Korean financial institutions and corporates so active in the international project finance scene. We have been investing in our Korean relationships for some time now and it’s rewarding that as a firm and individually, we are getting significant market recognition.”

Loving Your Job

Chung has had two professional role models during her career to date – partners Bill McCormack at Shearman & Sterling and Michael Harrison at Minter Ellison. According to Chung, they are recognised experts in their fields but the real reason is that despite “the pressures and demands that come with such busy practices and management roles,” they manage to have a great sense of humor, treat every person with respect and be dedicated to their family.

Just like her role models, Chung finds humor in difficult situations. Throughout her career as a lawyer she has learned that little details, such as the correct date of an overseas pitch, do matter.

“Sometimes errors can work in your favor,” she explains. “One of my partners at Shearman & Sterling still teases me for getting the date wrong for an overseas pitch for a $1.2bn project. We arrived at the client’s offices a week early but still managed to win the pitch.”

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Voice of Experience: Sarita Mohapatra, Partner, PwC US

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Sarita Mohapatra“Even though I was committed to continuing my career after my maternity leave, the first few months were still challenging. So now I proactively connect with other returning women to provide support and encourage retention because I know women can successfully juggle work and a family.”

Sarita Mohapatra, a tax principal with PwC, talks often about how to balance family life and her busy client schedule.

She’s been with PwC since 2001, becoming a partner in 2010. She initially studied economics in India and after earning her MBA came to the United States. A PhD in Economics followed, and she realized she had a love for teaching and spent four years as a faculty member at Utah State University. She decided she wanted to get back to the corporate world and subsequently moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, seeking a position in professional services that incorporated her background in applied economics. After briefly working at another firm, she joined PwC.

Her work remains constantly fascinating to her, particularly the technological advancements that seem to occur on a daily basis. With changes occurring globally related to transfer pricing and the intersection of economics and tax, she finds herself delving into new areas to identify solutions for her clients who are under lots of pressure to deal with regulatory compliance issues.

Don’t Make a Decision for Your Whole Life Based on Today

She worries that young women walk away from opportunities because they sometimes anticipate difficult situations than may never happen. She says that when she started, there weren’t many structured programs to help working moms. Even though she had no idea how to make it work, she knew she wanted to. She saw her male colleagues who have kids and still work, and she figured there was no reason why she couldn’t do the same.

“I learned that you can’t make a life decision based on the one problem ahead of you that day,” she says, citing child care coverage as an example of an issue that is transient in the big picture of your whole career.

“It’s a blip in your career. In a span of 35 years, it’s not much, but too many women think ‘I can’t be here tomorrow,’ so they walk away from everything today.”

Mohapatra says she took her clients into confidence early on, and set boundaries — for example, that two days of the week she had pick-up duties.

“I was fortunate that I had a lot of support and my colleagues and clients, both male and female, always supported me. Women wonder if it’s possible to have it all, so I try to talk to as many as I can to say, yes, it is possible. Even though everyone’s story will be different, this is how I did it. I really try to be a good role model for working moms because even though I had great support from my mentors, I wish I had more working moms as my role models when I was making those decisions.”

Speak Up To Get the Opportunities You Need

Mohapatra advises women to be outspoken and open about their aspirations. She says that while male candidates will routinely ask how long until they make partner, she’s found very few women will start a discussion to find out their prospects for career advancement potential.

“It’s not that they’re not ambitious — I see that drive and hunger — but they hold back,” she says. “I think they are concerned that I might think they are getting ahead of themselves. I coach my managers and staff constantly that if they want to advance, then they need to tell someone, because speaking up allows managers to give interested people the opportunity to acquire the skills and expertise they need.”

She says she focuses on this through her own experience – she had assumed everyone knew she wanted to make partner, so was surprised when she found out they didn’t. Someone asked if others knew, and she said “I think so! This is why I’m working this hard.” But she found out you can’t assume and went back to amend her career plan with long-term and short-term goals.

And the advice can translate for women she would consider her peers. She says that sometimes even at the higher levels, she still sees women will hold back in meetings and discussions.

She credits her viewpoints with her upbringing in India, when her parents would tell her that to succeed in the corporate sector in India without losing her identity she needed to be proud of who she is and what she brought to the table. “They would say, ‘We don’t want you to emulate men to be successful! Be yourself.’” Those words stick with her as she maintains her authenticity in her career.

Networking for Success

Mohapatra says that when she began in public accounting, there weren’t too many learning and development programs so she tried to build up her network naturally by participating in firm-sponsored events or organizing informal lunches or drinks.

“If I could, I would go back and cast my net a lot wider,” she says. “I tell my team to step outside their comfort zone from immediate coworkers and be more strategic about networking beyond those you meet organically.”
Mohapatra is very engaged in PwC’s Office of Diversity initiatives and recently gave the keynote address on the power of networking at the national convention of Ascend, a Pan-Asian organization with which she is involved locally and nationally.

“I tell my team to step outside their comfort zone from immediate coworkers and be more strategic about networking beyond those you meet organically.”

Family Focus

Mohapatra remembers that one of her partners had suggested she network more outside of business hours, which seemed challenging in light of the many long hours she already put in. But she realized that many of her clients also had kids around the same age so she started planning events that included families. “I realized I had to incorporate both my life and work to make better use of the time I had.”

She carries that double-duty ethos into her community service outreach as well, helping in her son’s school and working with Habitat for Humanity, which she combines into a team-building activity with her staff.

When she’s not working, she enjoys gardening, a hobby that she and her family can do together.

Her family loves to travel, looking for areas off the beaten path to get a true flavor of the culture. Her son, who is 12, has already been to 13 countries. “When people ask him to tell a fun fact about himself he loves to say that he’s been to more countries than he is years old.”

By Cathie Ericson

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Voice of Experience: Stephanie Holt, Chief Financial Officer, North Capital Inc.

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Stephanie Holt HeadshotAt one time she moved her young family to Singapore for work, traveled frequently from the United States to Latin America on business and left a high profile job to raise two daughters. A few years later, Stephanie Holt returned to the workforce and successfully reinvented herself at an investor focused start-up firm. As a woman with a degree in business economics and a background in technology, Holt proves there is no such thing as a straight line when it comes to your career path.

Creating an International Career

Born and raised in California, Holt met her husband as an undergrad at University of California – Riverside. After a short sabbatical to have her first daughter, she graduated and started working at a small medical technology firm. Soon after, she had her second daughter and then embarked on graduate school at the University of Redlands.

When her husband’s job moved them to the Bay area, in January 2000 Holt started working in finance at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), a semiconductor company that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. She started in Sub-Micron Development working with research and development Engineers buying equipment to design microchips that wouldn’t be produced for 10 years.

“About a year and a half later, the CFO asked me if I wanted to manage the manufacturing plant in Singapore,” she said. “My husband and I had a brief discussion about it and five weeks later we were on our way to Asia.”

That was July 2001 and Holt admits that if she knew the challenges that were ahead for a 5’10’’ blonde woman in Singapore, she may not have gone.

“Some of the things I saw were shocking. For example, when you apply for job in Singapore, you have to include a picture with the application,” she said. “Questions about your personal life and when you want to have kids are part of the interview process.”

At one point, Holt was pulled aside and advised to try and acclimate to the culture around her instead of trying to have them acclimate to what she was used to.

“I might have been cavalier when I first got there but I learned some great life lessons, such as not everything is black and white,” she said. “If I am passionate in my beliefs about something, someone else is just as passionate but on the other side of the table.”

Even though AMD wanted to extend her stay in Singapore another four years, Holt and her family moved back to the States after two years in Asia. They moved her into a financial sales role where she spent a lot of time traveling to Latin America.

Three years later, when her oldest daughter was in high school, Holt decided she wanted to take some time off to be a stay at home mom.

“It was then that I realized just how important my job title had become to me and it took me six months to reconcile that,” she said. “I didn’t know any women who had left a high profile corporate job to be a mom, and then come back after some time to another senior level position. I learned that if you are confident, you can do it.”

Joining an Investment Advisory Start-Up

After her second daughter went to college, Holt wanted to go back to work as a consultant. She called Jim Dowd, managing director of North Capital and a man she has known since high school.

“One of the reasons I was interested in the North Capital companies was because of the JOBS Act passing in 2012. This was designed to give individual investors better access to private investment deals. I remembered when I was at AMD, we had a sales rep who told us about an amazing company that was pre-IPO but past the start-up phase,” said Holt. “That company was Google and everyone was trying to figure out a way get money in but only the big investors had access to it. The JOBS Act is supposed to make it easier for people to invest in these private placement deals.”

Holt was excited about the new product availabilities and started thinking about all of the people in her life that could take advantage of this new landscape.

“We get a lot of referrals from our current clients’ children who don’t have a lot of money themselves but want advice on how to invest. Each client is deserving of your time and attention. That’s what I learned working with Jim Dowd and appreciate about him,” said Holt. “North Capital is a business but it’s also a friendship that has been 37 years in the making.”

In three years, Holt and Dowd have been able to build the company from 3 to 15 employees with over 20 registered representatives. Holt believes the time is right for the company to give back and launched an initiative aimed at educating women, in various stages of their life, to start the conversation about money.

“I really feel that money is still a taboo topic for women,” she said. “Since money is such an important aspect of your career and personal life, we need to be comfortable with talking about the topic.”

Lessons Learned

Holt has also recognized throughout her career that it is okay to say no.

“When I would make requests to colleagues and they would say no, I would figure out how to make it work and yet I was always reluctant to say no myself,” she said. “I would never think less of that person, I would just think that they had other work to do. I finally realized that no one thought less of me as an employee, or a person, if I said no.”

She said that this also makes you a better worker.

“When you say no, you are also able to avoid over extending yourself,” she said.

Holt also advises to be open and honest about what you don’t know at your job.

“I am the type of person that is always upfront about what I don’t know because I have always been surrounded by great people who could fill in the gaps,” she said. “In Singapore, I knew my role but I didn’t know the way people did business in Asia. I learned that if you ask for help, people are willing to work with you.”

A Career of Breaking Misconceptions

Just like Holt transitioned from Asia to Latin America and from accounting to technology; Holt has also been able to transition from a high profile, career focused women to a stay at home mom and back again. By learning to talk about money, by avoiding over-extending herself and by having the confidence to put her family first when she felt it was needed, Holt has become a role model for women with young families.

She believes it is a misconception to think women can’t take a break and then come back. She points to a change she has seen in the past 15 years.

“When I started, there weren’t a lot of women in senior management positions in technology. We were taught to wear pantsuits and act like a man because that was what it took to succeed. Now that women have become more visible as role models, females in finance and technology are better able to envision a path for themselves,” she said. “Just remember, you don’t need to take the point A to point B path to get to the right place.”

By Jessica Titlebaum

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Voice of Experience: Kelli P. Washington, Managing Director at Cambridge Associates

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Kelli P. WashingtonKelli Washington knows the value of understanding an organization inside and out.

She began her post-undergraduate career in the financial services industry, where she spent 10 years at Edward Jones as a due diligence analyst and portfolio manager. She began in a rotational program that gave her an inside view of departments like operations or marketing, and she knows that background knowledge increased her value to the firm. “I would attend meetings where people wouldn’t know where to find answers, but I became a go-to source since I knew different parts of the organization that others didn’t.”

She knew she wanted to stay in the industry but she also wanted to pursue a career path that was more meaningful, and for her that was the field of education.

“I had been fortunate to receive a college scholarship, but at the time I didn’t understand why I still had to take out loans if the college had such an ample endowment,” she says. “As I learned more about the responsibility of the endowment, I realized that I wanted to put my skills to work as an endowment investment manager.”

The Intersection of Finance and Non-Profits

She pursued her MBA at Yale to move into endowment management and has now been at Cambridge Associates for more than seven years.

When she reflects on her career, she is proud of the dedication it took to earn the designations of both CFA and MBA.

She says earning the CFA was not just challenging, but “often heartbreaking.” When she returned to school for her MBA, she already had a decade of experience, making her relatively older, which she says allowed her to focus on taking not only the classes she needed, but also those that were interesting to her. Her younger classmates who were in school for a career switch had a large number of classes they were obligated to take, where she took advantage of her unique opportunity to take more classes related to non-profits than business.

She has parlayed that expertise into her current role, helping non-profits manage their endowment assets. She’s particularly excited about one client she’s recently started working with, in which the nature of their relationship has allowed her to learn more about their mission.

“I talk with them about investment strategies, but the way they work on an integrated model has allowed me to have more interaction with their board members and their non-investment staff where I can learn more about their great work and programming at a deeper level.”

Her work is a perfect combination of exposure to both traditional finance and the non-profit space.

On the finance front, she says that everyone is acutely aware that many of the changes in the regulatory environment will have unintended consequences, even though many were necessary because of the financial crisis. She cites how the new regulatory environment has changed the landscape of the trading markets. The full impact may not be known until the next market correction.

“When the next bear market occurs, how will the markets behave and will we be in a position where we can create liquidity for our clients?” she asks.

And, on the other side of the coin, she draws from her unique space in the non-profit world to wonder how they can make sufficient money to be able to continue to serve their constituents.

She works with many organizations with deep pockets, but knows there are lots of smaller ones that won’t exist in 10 years because their endowments can’t support their missions and they can’t fundraise sufficiently.

“People can’t donate to all the wonderful groups out there, of course, so they have to choose those most closely aligned with their values. However, it’s a little scary to know that there will be people who will fall through some cracks. For example from a personal viewpoint, I fear that someone might not get the education that I am blessed to have because someone gave money to Washington University.”

Paying Attention

Washington has one lament about her earlier years – she wishes she had paid more attention. “It’s often hard to focus in the moment, but there are times I have an epiphany that I know something — but I didn’t know I knew it. It has helped me become more aware of what I’m working on and how it can help either myself or others down the road.” She advises women starting their careers to learn as much as they can and take advantage of opportunities that present themselves.

During her tenure at Cambridge, Washington has spent time in two of the eight offices, and admires its focus on establishing mentoring programs. When she first started, she had several mentors from whom she could ask questions outside of her immediate team. The firm also matches investment directors and analysts.

“I personally try to informally mentor as many of my analyst partners as I can and spend time with them to ensure they are growing and developing as they need to. Of course, I have a special place for the women since I’ve been there and know what it’s like to be one of the few.”

She believes that the lack of women in the industry is a self-fulfilling process — there aren’t enough women or African Americans to act as mentors and role models. “Young women don’t see other women so they don’t see themselves,” she says, adding that for the past 20 years she has actively been involved in recruiting.

She notes that ample numbers of women will attend an informational session, but the numbers dwindle as they matriculate through the interview process. “I don’t have the solution but I know we all need to do as much as we can to encourage diversity.”

Seeing the World

Outside of the office, Washington loves to travel internationally and and recently completed a 10-day European tour with her parents. She has also earned her scuba diving certification and looks forward to planning a dive trip this year.

By Cathie Ericson

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