Wanda Wallace, Ph.D. is President and CEO of Leadership Forum, Inc. The firm specializes in working with organizations to enhance corporate capability in leadership including strategic thought, customer insight, people and inclusive cultures.

Dr. Wallace has worked with many firms in the financial arena, including Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Ernst and Young, and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Prior to founding Leadership Forum, Inc, Dr. Wallace was Executive Vice President of Duke Corporate Education, Inc, which she helped found after her tenure as Associate Dean of Executive Education and professor of marketing at The Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.

What prompted you to use your psychology background in the financial arena?

I believe the best strategies succeed or fail based on engaging hearts and minds in the opportunities and the requirements for success. To do so, one must understand people – how they think, how they react, how they make sense of their world, what communication style is best, and so forth. To me, this is the essence of what I bring from my psychology background.

Five years ago, the financial world was interested in high quality coaching, strategic planning and teamwork development. They still are, but in the last year there has been an increasing focus on improving the ability to manage people in a business where numbers count for everything. As an industry, I see financial professionals placing an increased emphasis on retaining the great talent they worked so hard to recruit. Improving retention requires improving management practices. Even in diversity efforts, which are critical for financial services firms, better management practices increase the chances of developing and retaining diverse talent.

What I enjoy most is the ability to go into an organization, identify and clarify the issues and present solutions, using training and development activities and/or coaching.

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For our Voices of Experience series, The Glass Hammer interviewed Dorothy Price Hill and asked her about her experience in private equity and her advice for young women in finance who might be interested in pursuing a similar career path.

Ms. Hill is the Director of Investor Relations and Business Development at a New York-based private equity investment firm specializing in buyouts and buildups of business services companies at the lower end of the U.S. middle market. She has a 14-year record of accomplishment in alternative investments and investment banking, including experience in private equity, hedge funds, risk management, investor relations and capital markets.

Prior to her current role, Dorothy worked for Capital Dynamics, Deutsche Bank, McKinsey, Siemens and the Council on Foreign Relations. In the 1990’s, she spent six years overseas with Goldman Sachs during the firm’s major international expansion and completed assignments in Japan, Hong Kong, Germany, Switzerland, the UK and France working with corporate and high net worth clients.

Ms. Hill holds an M.B.A degree from the NYU’s Stern School of Business and a B.A. from Dartmouth College. She is a guest lecturer at the Stern School of Business; serves as co-head of the New York City chapter of 85 Broads, the Goldman Sachs alumnae network and does annual fundraising for Mt. Sinai Hospital’s Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit, among other organizations.

How did you get started in financial services?

I became interested in financial services after meeting several financial-firm CEOs in my first post-college job at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City. There, I had the opportunity to work with Fortune 500 CEOs, leaders of non-profit organizations, and other world leaders and prominent academics.

Please tell us how a past success – or failure – has helped you learn and grow.

While I’ve been lucky to work for some great firms in positions of increasing responsibility, my career path has not always been smooth. I once worked for an organization led by a highly-experienced financial professional who was borderline abusive to his colleagues, and while it wasn’t fun, it was a tremendous learning experience. I learned a lot about the psychology of working with others and what does, and does not, work in terms of motivating colleagues and teams.”

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Three times in the last week, I have had the same déjà vu-inducing experience. First, when I was helping a client prepare a high-tech conference speech, second, when writing an article about dark pools of liquidity in the European equity trading landscape (welcome to my world), and finally, while listening to a friend bemoan her ineffective interdepartmental meetings. My friend perfectly summed up the common thread in these experiences: “How are we supposed get anything done if we can’t understand a word anyone says?”

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Voice of Experience: Women who have made it, on their own terms, reaching the upper echelons of the professional world. TheGlassHammer is delighted to give a platform to those women who have blazed a trail…Christy Roux Bremner, Global MD, PORTIA, Thomson Financial, gives us her career insights.

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