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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Voice of Experience: Colette Taylor, Managing Director and COO of Americas Institutional at Russell Investments

ColetteTaylorBy Gigi DeVault (Munich)

A well-stocked kitchen cabinet is more than a reassuring comfort; it can get you through some hard times. If you ask Colette Taylor, Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer of Americas Institutional at Russell Investments and founding president of Russell’s Women’s Network, about her “kitchen cabinet,” she will not talk to you about shelves lined with orderly packages of staples and foodstuffs. Referring instead to Harvard professor Bill George‘s cabinet concept, she will tell you about a cabinet of advisors on whom she can lean for support in difficult times—times like those from which executives across the globe are emerging and through which they are leading their firms. In 2009, Taylor’s own personal board of directors, made up of coworkers, professional coaches, family members and friends, created a platform on which she could strip away distractions, get back to basics, and focus on relationships.

Getting back to basics can mean becoming leaner as an organization. This can be bad news for a program that receives corporate support, such as mentorship programs. As Taylor says, “A formal mentoring program can get lost because it can be considered less of a priority. But mentoring is always going on whether there is a formal program or not; people continue to reach out.” To get the most benefit from a mentoring program, she might remind you to look into your own kitchen cabinet. “One of the things that I have learned is that mentoring can have two facets—one for developing specific skill sets focused on the ‘professional,’ and one for work/life balance. Sometimes those are two different mentors because they are such different conversations. There is tremendous value in hearing from a diverse set of perspectives. This can uncover something you have never thought about—an idea from left field.” And that maverick perspective may be just what is needed. “I’ve been both a mentor and a mentee. I enjoy being on both sides; when you are a mentor, you are getting mentored at the same time. If you are really open to the mentoring relationship—really listening— it can change you.”

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Voice of Experience: Lynn Tilton, CEO, Patriarch Partners

Image courtesy cnbc.com.

By Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)

Over the course of her 28-year long career, Lynn Tilton has walked a winding road from Yale to her current position as CEO of Patriarch Partners, a $7 billion investment firm.

At the age of 25, Lynn Tilton was the single mother of a 2 year old, working 100 hours a week and putting herself through business school. An overachiever from a young age, Tilton played on the national tennis circuit while growing up and went on to play tennis for Yale. Her life turned upside down when her father died during her junior year. “Until that point, I was a golden girl, a nationally ranked tennis player and Yale student. That’s where my world all unraveled and started to change.”

She continued, “The number one loss is death of a working parent because it causes the family structure to change and the children to be left behind.”

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Voice of Experience: Barbara-Ann King, Head of Investments, Barclays Stockbrokers

barbara-annBy Elizabeth Harrin (London)

Barbara-Ann King is not your stereotypical stockbroker. In May this year she will be jumping out of a plane to raise money for Breakthrough Breast Cancer. “I am a great believer in giving things a try, because if it does not work out you can try something else,” she says, “and I believe that leadership, or the best leaders, are those who are willing to go outside their comfort zone.”

King took another leap over ten years ago, when she moved from a legal and management consultancy career to alternative investment management. It turned out to be a shrewd move, as she has risen through the financial services ranks to become Head of Investments at Barclays Stockbrokers. However, it wasn’t a structured step on her career journey. “To be honest there was no master plan, it just happened,” she explains. “I was working on a project that involved private equity and got head hunted by a bank for a role that I had no interest in, fed this back and was then asked to consider another role in the start up of a ‘new’ department of alternative investments – the industry was not even called that at the time, it was called ‘special funds’.”

King liked the team at Citigroup and sees herself as a natural entrepreneur and ‘builder’ so she gave the role at serious consideration – and took it. “It sounded fun so I took a leap of faith,” she says. “It turned into a multi billion revenue business and with it I moved to New York and took a global senior management role.”

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Voice of Experience: Julie Monaco, North America Regional Head of Global Transaction Services, Citi

MonacoBy Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)

In April 2007, about to embark on a business trip, Julie Monaco, then managing director at JP Morgan Chase, was contacted about a position in financial giant Citi’s Global Transaction Services division. That’s when fate intervened and a routine trip turned into anything but.

While waiting in an airport security line for her connecting flight through Tokyo, Monaco struck up a conversation with a fellow business traveler. It just so happened to be the CEO of Citi’s Global Transaction Services.

“I stuck out my hand and introduced myself,” said Monaco. He laughingly responded, “You are about to have the longest job interview you ever had.”

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Voice of Experience: Sarah Lamar, Partner, Hunter, Maclean, Exley & Dunn, P.C. and President of legal network, ALFA International

By Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)

“I decided to become a lawyer when I was ten. We went on a family trip to Washington, D.C. and visited the United States Supreme Court,” said Sarah Lamar, a partner at Hunter, Maclean, Exley & Dunn, P.C.. “The tour guide must have done a really good job,” Lamar joked, adding, “Although it was a simplistic idea, I just followed it.”

Lamar grew up in the suburbs of New Haven, Connecticut. After obtaining her Bachelors from Yale, Lamar says she was “done with New England weather” and headed south. She attended Emory University Law School in Georgia, and spent the summer between her second and third year of law school in the DC office of Morgan Lewis Bockius, a well-known labor and employment law firm.

That experience gave her “a really broad and interesting view on that area of the law” so when she was deciding what law path to take, she “checked off what things I did not like in the law: tax, corporate law, bankruptcy…employment law remained fascinating because it is the study of human relationships and how they can go right and wrong. Also,” Lamar said, “it is very people-oriented and I am a ‘people person.’ It gives me the chance to get to know the leadership in different industries and what makes people tick. I’ve always been interested in the social issues surrounding employment law like harassment and discrimination and civil rights.”

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Voice of Experience: Janet Lustgarten, CEO, Kx Systems

janetpaloalto[1]By Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)

From a childhood in Colombia, to a life in the States, Janet Lustgarten’s personal motto might as well be “no guts, no glory.”

Lustgarten’s father was a men’s suit manufacturer in Colombia when new political pressures brought change to business and the way factories were run. “It was a difficult time,” she recalled, “and my family thought we’d live a better life in the United States and moved to Florida. We were the classic family coming to America looking for security and opportunity”

Just seven years old when the family arrived in Miami, Lustgarten didn’t speak a word of English, but found herself already proficient in math. “Even in Columbia, I was already leaning towards being good with numbers but, when I didn’t have the mastery of the language, that became my academic strength,” said Lustgarten. She followed her love of math and logic to Mt. Holyoke, the all-women’s liberal arts college. Ever the groundbreaker, Lustgarten commuted to University of Massachusetts for the computer science classes she required and became the first person to declare a computer science major at Mt. Holyoke.

“Computer science was a field that was up and coming,” said Lustgarten. “And I had a very clear objective to be financially independent. I wanted to develop a career path that would allow me to live comfortably in New York City. I was confident that I could graduate from college with a degree in computer science and secure myself a well paid position.”

After moving to New York City, Lustgarten interviewed with IBM for a sales support job but didn’t get the job because she “didn’t fit the mold.” Not stopped by this disappointment, Lustgarten began to look around for other opportunities. She was “just curious about personal computers, PCs, and went into Computerland, the only retail computer store  in New York City, a couple of times. When she observed that most of the sales people barely knew how to turn on the machines, she saw an opportunity. She met with the owner of that store and proposed that she build a technical support department within the sales department of the store so that customers would have successful preliminary experiences with computers instead of frustration. The owner gave her a chance—and a salary. Through that job, she developed a consulting business, helping computer customers with the installation of memory chips and other technical issues after purchase.

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Voice of Experience: Renee Pendleton, CPA, Partner, Cherry, Bekaert & Holland

ReneePendletonBy Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)

Renee Pendleton had a steady babysitting job in college. That wouldn’t necessarily distinguish her from many others her age. But how many babysitters parlay advice from their employer into a successful career path?

“I had wanted to be a controller in a small company but, he convinced me to try public accounting first because, if I didn’t like it, I could always go to a private company. But it would be difficult to go into public accounting if I did it the other way.” She followed the advice with the intention to “get in, stay for two years and get out,” but decided to stay at the end of that period to learn a bit more. “Now, here I am 22 years later, still in public accounting,” she said, laughing, “And I blame that guy to this day.”

Raised in Portsmouth, Virginia, Pendleton started off majoring in psychology at Old Dominion University. She intended to learn to help people with their problems; however, after one semester of psychology, “I thought, these people are out of their minds. I just don’t get it!”

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Elizabeth Schneider, Managing Director, Citisoft

Elizabeth Schneider_CitisoftBy Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)

“Education is continuous. The day I stop learning is the day I’ll die,” said Elizabeth Schneider, the managing director at Citisoft.

She credits her mother for instilling this value in her. “My mother was the oldest of nine children in a very poor family. My mother, who barely spoke English at the time, took on the role of trying to educate herself and raise her brothers and sisters in a very tough time right during the Depression. She realized that if you look at education as a lifestyle and more than academic you will grow and learn things that will propel you forward much more quickly than just classroom learning. From an early age, my siblings and I were involved in learning in all forms: drama, dance, community service, sports, and travel.”

After graduating from McGill University with a Bachelor of Science, Schneider entered into the evening MBA program at Babson College. And shortly thereafter, she got her first break at Fidelity Investments in entry level fund accounting. “[The man] who hired me took a chance and hired me [even though I had no experience working with securities].” Schneider continued, “Unlike today, there wasn’t anywhere in the academic world that focused on trading operations. At the time, the only way you learned this was through experience. [My boss] gave me the opportunity to get in there and learn.”

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Voice of Experience: Dr. Sherry Cooper, Executive Vice-President and Global Economic Strategist of BMO Financial Group and Chief Economist of BMO Capital Markets

CooperBy Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)

Dr. Sherry Cooper, Executive Vice-President and Global Economic Strategist of BMO Financial Group, was destined for the world of finance. An entrepreneur from an early age, Dr. Cooper said, “When I was 12, I spent the summer babysitting. But I didn’t just watch one child. I would gather all the children from up and down the street and take them into my backyard and watch them. At $50 per child, I made quite a bit of money that summer.” One of her role models was her great aunt, who was a “hotshot in mortgage finance” long before it was even a possibility for most women.

But despite the early attraction to finance, it took some time before she embraced it as a career path. Dr. Cooper marveled, “I always assumed that I would just get married and be a homemaker. Until I got to Goucher College, it never occurred to me that I would have a career for the rest of my life.”

She graduated first in her class with a dual degree in economics and math, and then continued on to the University of Pittsburgh for a Ph.D. in economics. Although Dr. Cooper wasn’t interested in academia, she still didn’t see any future in a financial institution. “I grew up in a time when there were very few women in banking or finance so it never occurred to me as a possibility.”

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