Voice of Experience: Elaine Sarsynski, Executive Vice President, MassMutual’s Retirement Services Division and Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, MassMutual International LLC

Sarsynski_Elaine MassMutualBy Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)

Technically, Massachusetts is in very close proximity to the bright lights and big city that is New York, but the small town of Hadley, where Elaine Sarsynski, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of MassMutual International and Executive Vice President and head of MassMutual’s Retirement Services business, called her home couldn’t have felt farther away. Sarsynski is currently the top ranked female executive at the company and was recently named one of the Top 15 Women in Business by PINK Magazine. But her attraction to business and her early understanding of its most basic concepts actually came as a result of working on her parent’s 60-acre vegetable farm.

“Working on the farm exposed me to the business side of things very early on,” Sarsynski said. “I can remember being a little kid and listening to my parents discuss things like venture capital, wholesale, and investment strategies at the dinner table and I soaked it all up. My mother was actually an astute business woman and was always thinking of clever ways to grow the business and make it profitable. I decided early on that I wanted to be a business woman, too, but I didn’t know it would ever actually take me off the farm.”

Sarsynski’s big chance came when she was just a junior at Smith College majoring in economics. One day, MassMutual came to her campus offering “a Day at MassMutual” to young women interested in the financial services industry. The young college student was eventually chosen to participate in the visit to corporate headquarters and upon making her entrance to MassMutual’s beautiful building, Sarsynski immediately knew she wanted to work at the company someday.

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Voice of Experience: Susan Allen, FCA, CPA, Audit Partner, TICE Assurance Leader, PricewaterhouseCoopers

Susan Allen (C2VR)By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Motivated by a “secret love” of being a teacher, Susan Allen, TICE (Technology, Information Communications and Entertainment) Assurance Leader for PwC Canada and Chair of the firm’s Women in Leadership/Retention of Women initiative, has built her career on her leadership capabilities, and is motivated by a passion for encouraging women leaders.

She began her career at the University of Toronto. “I graduated from university with a geography and drama degree, because I wanted to be a teacher,” Allen explained. “I fell into accounting because I took on a job as the University Cashier, and the world of accounting opened up to me as I started taking courses.” Allen joined PricewaterhouseCoopers in 1981, after taking an introductory accounting course, and was offered a position in training as a new manager – which was perfect for her inclination toward teaching. “Funny that I had to get my CA to be a teacher!” she joked.

A 3 year secondment and two children later, Allen was promoted to senior manager. Commending PwC for the company’s flexibility, she said, “I decided that part time was the answer for me.” Working full time January through April, three days per week May through September, and four days per week September through June allowed her to spend more time with her young children – and still make partner in the regular amount of time.

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Voices of Experience: Janet Thomas, Director, Citi FX Prime

Janet-ThomasBy Elizabeth Harrin (London)

“Foreign Exchange is exciting,” says Janet Thomas, Director at Citi Foreign Exchange Prime. “The pace of change is so fast that trading takes place in microseconds.”

Thomas has played a key role expanding the business from a start-up to being ranked a key global FX Prime of strategic importance to clients. “The relationship I have with clients is one of the most rewarding aspects of my position,” she says. “Some clients have expanded their business through acquisitions as unprecedented market conditions presented once in a life time opportunities; others have devised pioneering new models of business and substantially increased their profits.”

Thomas joined Citi FX Prime in 2006, and was very excited about the challenges ahead – and economically it has been an interesting time since then. She believes that the foreign exchange market has been incredibly resilient during the credit crisis which has decimated other business areas in financial services. “It’s at the epicentre of any political, economic and social change and these factors impact the market immediately,” she says.

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Voice of Experience: Wanda Eriksen, Partner, Assurance, PricewaterhouseCoopersAG

Eriksen_Wanda_17925_04By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

“I see myself riding a wave,” explained Wanda Eriksen, Assurance Partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Zurich office and founder of its Women’s Initiative. “I think that I’m really part of the change. Looking back, I’m going to be in that group to really have more opportunity.” Eriksen sees a shift in attitudes regarding women in the workplace – an acceptance that grows larger with each generation.

She recalled how she had been approached to spearhead the Women’s Initiative for PwC Switzerland. “Until about four years ago, I was not even remotely informed about gender issues. I was like, ‘I don’t want to start any trouble!’” she joked. “In the beginning I needed to be convinced. [In Switzerland], we were probably about 10 years behind the U.S.,” regarding gender activities.

“I don’t want to say there are barriers… there aren’t a lot of women in leadership positions,” Eriksen explained, attributing this to the “little me” syndrome, in which leaders (usually men) promote people who are like themselves or take someone similar to themselves under their wing. “It’s more related to behavior than barriers,” she said. “I also see that things are changing, solely through the increasing volume of women choosing to have a career.”

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Voice of Experience: Heike Eckert, Executive Director, Eurex

Image via MarketsWiki

Image via MarketsWiki

By Jessica Titlebaum (Chicago)

In the mid 1990s, Heike Eckert launched DTB’s US office in Chicago (DTB is a predecessor of Eurex) and after successfully establishing Eurex’s electronic trading business in the US moved back to Frankfurt in 2000 to head up global marketing and sales for Eurex. She moved back to Chicago in 2006 to further expand Eurex’s North American offices in Chicago and New York, and in late 2009, headed back to Frankfurt where she currently resides.

Throughout her career, Eckert has worked with people from many different cultures and expressed the need to differ her management style in the U.S. and Germany.

“We always think that Western culture is the same wherever you go but it is very different. The U.S. has a hierarchical structure and is very goal orientated,” she said. “In Germany, everything is much more of a discussion. We are a society of debate historically.”

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Voice of Experience: Gena Lovett, Principal and COO at Alexandra Investment Management

Gena LovettBy Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)

Growing up as a little girl on a farm in Arkansas, Gena Lovett, now Principal and COO at Alexandra Investment Management, knew instinctively that she belonged on Wall Street. There was something about the ringing of the opening bell each day on the morning news that left a lasting impact and kept her dreaming of a high-powered career in New York City. Lovett’s mother, Beulah Lovett, the most influential person in her life, worked herself to the bone and dedicated her life to ensuring that she and her three siblings were taken care of after their father died when Lovett was just ten-years-old. Despite being a single, widowed, working mom, Lovett’s mother was able to keep her children on the straight and narrow after they moved to Little Rock, Arkansas. Eventually all four children would graduate from college, Lovett herself receiving a B.A. in Business Administration from Philander Smith College.

Fast forward just over twenty years later and Lovett has served on numerous boards, accrued years of financial services experience, developed a wide range of expertise managing front, middle, and back office operations, and currently finds herself in the esteemed position of being the first Black American Principal and COO at Alexandra Investment Management, an alternative investment advisor managing assets of approximately $500 million. As if that didn’t keep her busy enough, Lovett is also acting President of the New York Junior League (NYJL), an organization of 3,000 women volunteers who work to address some of the city’s most critical issues through volunteer services. Each member of the organization is dedicated to working just as hard as Lovett does, as 85 percent of the volunteers have full-time jobs and contribute more than 250,000 service hours.

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Voice of Experience: Michelle McCarthy, Chief Risk Officer, Russell Investments

Michelle_McCarthyBy Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)

As the saying goes: “A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck.” That is certainly the case for Michelle McCarthy, Chief Risk Officer of Russell Investments. While she attributes much of her success to luck, it’s clear that her moxie is really what’s allowed her rise to the top of her profession. Said McCarthy: “I’m willing to be a bit of a maverick and willing to do things even when I don’t feel completely ready.”

At 13, a fearless McCarthy declared her intention to major in political science. For many, that would be precocious; for McCarthy, it was just part of her college life, which began at that age. Of the University of Washington’s experimental “Early Admissions” program, said McCarthy, “was a really enjoyable experience. In high school, they are much less forgiving of ‘nerds’ than they are at college. It was a kinder situation socially than I’d been in before. ”

After graduating university at the age of 17, she attended Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Science. To earn some money while earning her Master’s, she took a part-time job at a student loan agency updating spreadsheets. After a short time there, she realized that she had found her true calling—finance.

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Voice of Experience: Mara Topping, Partner and Head of the Fund Formation Practice in the D.C. Office of White & Case

1795_thumb[1]By Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)

When Mara Topping, a partner in the D.C. office of White & Case, was a young girl, she lived in five countries on three continents, moving wherever her father, a high ranking USAID official, was stationed. Her childhood abroad—and her experiences with the beauty, diversity and poverty in Africa in particular—triggered a lifelong interest in other cultures and in international development. She applies this passion to her role as the head of the fund formation practice in the D.C. office of White & Case. “Emerging markets are a good part of the focus of the work that I do in private equity fund formation. I feel very good about seeing foreign capital mobilized into emerging markets where there is tremendous economic opportunity and a great deal of need.”

But the road to fund formation was not a direct one—Topping originally pursued a career in archeology. “Between Rome and Tunisia where I lived when I was younger, there are some of the best classical Roman sites in the world. It would have been hard for me not to be an archeologist. The experience of living in different cultures and the cultural diversity and issues of international development and social and cultural change were what I grew up with. And that’s what archeology really is—looking at long term cultural change and how societies develop and why.”

She completed her undergraduate archeology degree at Cornell University and a Master’s degree at the prestigious Institute of Archeology at the University of London. Topping went on to earn a Ph.D. in archeology from the University of Chicago, using two of the three Fulbright Scholarships she’d been awarded to do her Ph.D fieldwork in the Fiji Islands. There, she excavated one of only two known large pre-historic South Pacific ocean-going vessels.

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Voice of Experience: Robin Ross, Managing Director, Interest Rate Products, CME Group

Ross_3525-1By Jessica Titlebaum (Chicago)

“As soon as I walked onto the trading floor they had me hook, line and sinker,” said Robin Ross, Managing Director of Interest Rate products at CME Group. “You could almost taste what was going on in the markets.”

Originally from Little Rock, Arkansas, Ross learned about Municipal Bonds from her father. When his eyesight deteriorated, she would read call features for the bonds from the books her dad brought home. She joined her father’s firm during her senior year of college and the company sponsored her to take the NASD Series 7 Test. At the time, she was the youngest woman to pass the test.

“There were no women in the municipal bond business in Little Rock,” said Ross. “Men thought it was cute that I wanted to sell bonds.”

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Voice of Experience: Diane Garnick, Investment Strategist, Invesco

Diane GarnickBy Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)

Called the “Princess of Perseverance” by many who know her, Diane Garnick brings her positive attitude to everything she does. “When people ask me what I am doing right now,” says Invesco‘s Investment Strategist, “I tell them I am in wild pursuit of lifelong dream to provide financial security for as many people as possible.” She added, “My greatest accomplishment is when clients who are senior people—the sophisticated investors—call me and ask ‘can you please explain this to me?’. That is the best feeling in the world because if I help them and they do a better job managing pension assets, every single person who worked, and is relying on that money for their retirement, will do better.”

It would be an understatement to refer to Garnick’s beginnings as humble. “We were very poor,” she said. “There were many times we didn’t have enough food to eat, many times we didn’t have hot water or heat, and other times that the house would be locked by the bank.”

Garnick remembered, “Someone gave us a very small black and white TV that if we adjusted the antennae just right we could get PBS. On Friday nights [while I watched the Wall Street Week with Louis Rukeyser program on PBS], I would think to myself, ‘wow these people who understand Wall Street…their kids are the luckiest kids in the world because those kids probably always have food. They never worry about whether there is going to be heat.’” She would ask herself, “Could you imagine being one of those kids?’” She vowed that, if she made it through those tough times, she would make sure that her kids—and children everywhere—would never suffer the way she and her siblings did.

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