By Tina Vasquez, Managing Editor
When we talk about the progress that has been made by women in corporate America, using gender to mean ‘all women’, what we’re actually referring to is the progress and gains that have been made by white women.
African-American women, who make up 13 percent of the female population in the US, are a long way from closing the racial and ethnic disparities they face, but there are some encouraging trends to report on this year. According to the Center for American Progress, African American women-owned businesses continue to grow despite significant financial and social obstacles. As a matter of fact, African American-owned businesses are the fastest-growing segment of the women-owned business market and are starting up at a rate six times higher than the national average. Even more impressive: The number of companies started by African American women grew nearly 258 percent from 1997 to 2013, which is great news for entrepreneurs.
In the corporate world, we look at the numbers first. In December of 2013 when FORBES published its annual list of the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women, 11 were black and they ranged from the First Lady to corporate executives, including the magnificent Ursula Burns, CEO of Xerox and the first African-American female CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Burns has an inspiring story, as she started on the bottom as a Xerox intern in 1980 and under her leadership, Xerox has transformed its image as a manufacturer of printers to a full-fledged services business. According to FORBES, in 2010, Xerox acquired business process outsourcing firm Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) and now gets half of its revenue from service businesses, like managing electronic ticket transactions, road tolls, and parking meters.
During the Prism awards fundraiser lunch at New York University last year, the CEO told attendees there is “a tidal wave of women business leaders coming” and the business world “would be silly” to ignore the large and growing pool of “talented women in America colleges.”
What Ursula said cannot be disputed. It is projected that women of color will make up 53 percent of the population by 2050, positioning them as vital to the economic future of the United States, especially as they become a greater share of the workforce. And make no mistake: It is vital that Corporate America understand, develop, and leverage this increasingly valuable and talented group of people.
When companies feature diverse teams, it has been proven to lead to more effective decision-making and it better positions companies to compete on the global stage, drawing in a wider customer base. Not only that, Workforce Magazine reports that when employees feel that they have a more diverse and inclusive workforce, turnover is almost 20 percent lower and employee effort is nearly 12 percent higher.
Also featured on FORBES list was Rosalind Brewer, President and CEO of Sam’s Club, a $56.4 billion division of Wal-Mart Stores. According to FORBES, Brewer was a college chemistry major who came to the big box chain in 2006 from consumer-products maker Kimberly-Clark Corp, where she started as a scientist. Brewer is the first woman and first African American to become the CEO of a Wal-Mart business unit.
It was recently announced by Catalyst that Brewer’s former employer, Kimberly-Clark, is one of the recipients of the 2014 Catalyst Award, a prestigious annual award honoring innovative initiatives that expand opportunities for women and business. Kimberly-Clark’s initiative, Unleash Your Power: Strengthening the Business With Women Leaders, addresses Kimberly-Clark’s need to look, think, and behave like the people who use and buy its products.
Addressing ‘Otherness’
Making sure that talented Black women are getting promoted to key roles should be keeping senior execs and HR heads up at night.
The good news is that ambitious, talented, and capable women of color are in the pipeline, but a recent Catalyst study found that “otherness” can be a significant barrier to success. As defined by the organization, otherness is about being different or having characteristics that set you apart from the dominant group or groups in a given context. In our white- and male-dominated business world, these characteristics become normative and those who feel like an “other” not only feel different, according to Catalyst, but also feel separated from the essential aspects of a group. If they do not experience belonging in a group, they may consequently be excluded.
According to Catalyst, in order to overcome the effects of ‘otherhood’, efforts need to be made to ensure fair and equitable decision-making regarding career development and advancement. Addressing the issue head-on will require putting mechanisms in place to guarantee those with backgrounds that differ from the majority are evaluated fairly.
Shining Examples
For Black History Month, theglasshammer.com will spend all of February celebrating talented, ambitious Black women who are making huge strides in their fields. Yesterday you met Accenture’s Managing Director of Federal Services, Tamara Fields. Later this month we’ll hear from RLJ Lodging Trust’s CFO Leslie Hale, one of just eight Black, female CFOs of a publicly traded company in the history of the US, and Barbara Edwards, the first in her family to come to the US. She is now Counsel for Shearman & Sterling, a far cry from her days working as a live-in housekeeper. These are just two of the many inspirational profiles we’ll bring you this month, as we hear at theglasshammer.com understand both the power and the importance of sharing these stories.
Here’s hoping 2014 is a fruitful year for Black women in business.
Voice of Experience: Wanda Hill Managing Director, BK University, BNY Mellon
Voices of ExperienceWhen Hill stepped into her new role in October of 2013, her first goal was developing a three-year strategic roadmap.
“When you step into a new role at a mature company there’s always the challenge of putting your institutional knowledge to work, while at the same time being open to very different approaches and the nuances of each strategic business,” Hill said. “It’s a challenge, but I enjoy it.”
Currently, much of Hill’s focus is on the overall learning and developing strategies tied to what the company refers to as the “investment life cycle” where expertise, innovation, and intellectual capital is necessary to support and sustain BKU as a world-class learning organization. BNY Mellon’s employees are located in 35 countries and 100 markets, with the Investment Services business alone comprised of eight major businesses. Hill regularly meets with those businesses to identify how the company’s virtual university will support their business models today and into the future. “I love to build these strategies and relationships,” Hill said.
BNY Mellon’s Impact
BNY Mellon continues to intensify its focus on diversity and inclusion. In an effort to attract and retain diverse talent and create an inclusive workplace, a number of employee-powered resource groups were launched, including IMPACT in 2008, which is geared toward the company’s multicultural employees. Hill serves as Global Chair for IMPACT and is conscious of the group’s approach outside the US.
“We’re a global company and IMPACT has chapters around the world. Outside of the US, our focus is diverse employees because ‘people of color’ doesn’t really translate in other parts of the world. Creating inclusive workplaces is such a part of the fabric of BNY Mellon and being a part of this work means a lot to me,” Hill said.
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The Latest Tricks in the Illusion of Inclusion
Expert AnswersWith Mary Barra tapped as heir apparent to lead this country’s largest corporation and Janet Yellen confirmed as the next Federal Reserve Chairman (yes, that’s what they’re calling her despite the fact she’s no “man”), you can hear men breathing a collective sigh of relief. They hope that maybe now women will quit complaining about being overlooked for the top spots in their companies and the political arena. After all, there are more women at the helm at Fortune 500 companies than at any other time in history and Yellen will arguably be the most powerful finance person on the globe.
Well, not so fast. With about two dozen women Fortune 500 CEOs, that’s a whopping 4.8 percent of the total. And women in politics? The 113th Congress saw a record number of women elected: twenty. That’s just twenty percent in the 98 years since the first woman, Jeannette Rankin, was elected to Congress in 1916. At that time she proclaimed, “I may be the first woman member of Congress, but I won’t be the last.”
In 1984 I worked as an Equal Employment Opportunity Specialist at the then oil company giant ARCO. Back then women were told we needed to get more women into the pipeline before we would see changes at the top. So women went back to school, eventually surpassing men in graduation rates, entering the workforce in greater numbers than ever before, and proving that their contributions as leaders significantly pushed up the bottom-line. Along with McKinsey and Catalyst studies that tie profits to gender diversity at the top, Roy D. Adler and his colleagues at the California school of Pepperdine University consistently found the “correlation between high-level female executives and business success has been consistent and revealing.” The better a company was at promoting women, the better it tended to rank in terms of profitability. Three decades later, the best we can do is 4.8 percent?
The Turning Point
Do I think women make better leaders and CEOs? You bet. If ever there was a time in history that cried out for women’s leadership in all facets of life from politics to corner offices, that time is now. Here’s why:
We’ve reached what physicist Fritzov Capra calls “the turning point.” It’s that time in society when the people who have power, no longer know how to use it to solve current problems, but they won’t share that power with other people who could help them. Take a look around the world. It’s filled with corporate greed, poverty, war, famine, global warming and in the U.S., a Congress that has done less than any other in history. And who’s at the helm? Right, 20 percent women in Washington and less than 5 percent in corporations.
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Gender Parity in 2029: Realistic or Optimistic?
Managing ChangeIn a recent article published by The Guardian, Chris Sullivan, Chief Executive of UK corporate banking at RBS, pressed his belief that in 15-years, gender parity will not be an issue. Sullivan assured readers that talent is what should— and will— be the deciding factor of who wins executive roles in big business, and that it is merely a bad cultural habit preventing women from reaching these positions.
Considered a “diversity champion” and supporter of the organization Focused Women, Sullivan recognizes that the issue lie in what’s been considered a “leaky pipeline” system of advancement in corporate businesses. While most companies seem to hire recent graduates on a 50:50 basis to fill junior level positions, the number of women begins to dwindle higher up the ladder, according to Fiona Hathorn, Managing Director of Women on Boards, a UK-wide organization dedicated to providing resources and programs to support women on their path to the boardroom. Nothing reflected in recent research makes Sullivan’s ill-informed opinion even slightly plausible. It is overly optimistic at best and many, including Hathorn, do not view gender parity as a realistic option by 2029.
Reports Say Otherwise
“Too many companies do not even know their gender employment data at various managerial levels, which shows that many are not managing their talent let alone taking gender talent management seriously,” Hathorn said. “In fact, Cranfield School of Management’s November 2013 interim Women on Boards update reviewed 50 FTSE 250 companies, revealing that only 2 percent had clear policies or goals for ensuring an increase in female management.”
Research released by the World Economic Forum (WEF) reported that Britain in particular has gone from 9th place in 2006 to 18th in 2013 in terms of gender equality. Britain continued to rank low in other WEF statistics, including helping women find professional positions (71st), getting women into parliament (54th), and healthy life expectancy of women (97th).
Are Quotas the Answer?
It’s not all doom and gloom, however. The UK is taking steps to rectify the situation. In 2011 The Lord Davies Commission began supervising the number of female board directors, raising the number from 17.4 percent in 2011 to 19 percent. Yet much of this progress is a result of boards merely increasing the number of female non-executives within their company.
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Voice of Experience: Latrise Ashford, Managing Director, Health & Public Service Practice, Accenture
Voices of ExperienceIt wasn’t until Latrise Ashford was interviewing with Accenture that she realized technology consulting would be the perfect career choice for her, enabling her to be analytical and work directly with clients.
“A friend who interned at Accenture introduced me to the company and suggested I apply,” Ashford said. “I always knew I wanted to work in business, but wasn’t aware I could have a career in consulting.”
The Yale graduate is now Managing Director of Accenture’s Health and Public Service Practice. Since the early days of her career she has concentrated on information management.
“After receiving my first assignment analyzing and structuring new data sources, I knew I had made the right choice,” she said. “In my current role I work with data analysts and statisticians on a regular basis and love it. I may not have deliberately chosen this path, but I ended up in the perfect place for my skills and interests.”
Leveraging Assets
Currently, Ashford is focused on helping health & public service organizations become insight-driven by leveraging their best asset: data. By using data more effectively and efficiently, she says, these organizations can better help their communities and the citizens who depend on their services.
“I am committed to working with my clients in the public service sector and I’m passionate about finding solutions to problems that affect those who are most vulnerable in our society,” Ashford said. “The combination of my technical skills and love for creative problem solving has made my current position leading Intelligent Processing and Data Analytics in our Health & Public Service practice the perfect role for me.”
The Art of the Possible
The work the managing director does is new and cutting edge, with advanced analytics and new technologies quickly becoming the buzz in the market. But there are challenges.
“The challenge is that public service organizations often don’t have a lot of room for trying out new techniques and methods without the fear of impacting the lives of the citizens they serve. Balancing limited resources and increasing demand for services is something my clients deal with every day. Helping them understand the art of the possible – and how new technology plays into that – is my biggest challenge and a challenge I welcome,” Ashford said.
The work she did with the Administration for Children’s Services is among Ashford’s proudest career achievements. She spent four-years working with the agency to create a management reporting solution that provided a holistic view of children in the New York City foster care system.
“This tool was a powerful way to track key outcomes to get children and families reunited where appropriate,” she said. “I’m happy I played a role and am looking to create similar and even more advanced solutions for my clients.”
Work-Life Integration
Ashford’s schedule is jam packed and she admits that sometimes it can be overwhelming. But a long time ago she received a piece of advice that has stuck with her.
“Stop trying to strike work-life balance; focus more on work-life integration. I have learned that life may not always be balanced, but my work is very important to me and being able to achieve professional success while still being there for my family provides me with a sense of accomplishment, pride, and true fulfillment,” Ashford says.
Leading By Example
The managing director has equally good advice for young women considering a career in her field.
“Always strive to be an authentic leader; never lead in a manner that does not feel natural – working in this manner is simply not sustainable,” she said. “We spend a tremendous amount of time at work, and give our all to our colleagues, clients, and teams. We should enjoy what we do, and not feel we are forcing anything unnaturally.”
The newly-engaged Ashford knows a great deal about being a leader, too. She works with several NYC non-profits, assisting the under-served and most vulnerable citizens of the community. For the last 10 years she has also led the Metro NY African-American Employee Resource Group.
“I am amazed at the programs we’ve been able to organize and the impact we’ve made within Accenture and our communities,” she said. “This group has been a source of mentorship and camaraderie for me and I’m happy to play a leadership role. Watching the next generation of leaders take the torch and run with it also has been incredibly rewarding.”
A forward thinker, Ashford says she sets her sights on new goals every couple of years.
“I’m shaping my next big goal,” she said, “but for now it’s to be the best I can possibly be in creating viable, profitable, and most important, sustainable, business for Accenture.”
How to Ensure We’re Not Having The Same Conversation About Women in the Boardroom in 2014
Managing ChangeSheila Ronning, President & CEO of Women in the Boardroom, does not mince words when it comes to the topic that gave her organization its name.
“Research for the amount of women serving on corporate boards is only being done for the Fortune 500 and those boards are still mainly only looking at CEO’s in F500 to fill those spots. So yes, we know there are a lack of women sitting at the helm of those companies,” Ronning said. “Mid cap and small company boards are also a great place for women to take a seat at the table and there are thousands and thousands of women who are more than qualified for these boards. In just the last 12 months, even though we are not a search firm, we at Women in the Boardroom have received 19 notifications of these board seat openings and we work to connect our board ready women with these companies.”
As Ronning affirmed, there are more than enough qualified women, but recent Catalyst research tells us that there has been absolutely no change in the number of women on Fortune 500 boards or the number executive officers and top earners. We’ve talked at length about the lack of female representation at these levels, but what now? How do we ensure we’re not having the same conversation about women in the boardroom in 2014?
Malli Gero is Executive Director and Co-Founder of 2020 Women on Boards, a national campaign working to increase the women on U.S. boards to 20 percent by the year 2020. We need to change the narrative and instead of focusing on the bleak numbers, focus on what can be done. Gero says there are three parties who can be making progress both separately and collectively: stakeholders, CEOs, and individual women. All three, Gero says, are important in the quest for gender parity.
What Stakeholders Can Do
Gero attributes the slow rate of change to a seemingly-common misconception held by CEOs and board chairs: stakeholders don’t pay attention to board composition. Gero says it’s also a matter of transparency, an issue 2020 Women on Boards is working to address.
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The Toigo Foundation: Taking Steps to Diversify the Financial Services Industry
Industry Leaders, Leadership“No one who makes it does so alone.” This assertion by Dr. Stacy Blake-Beard, Professor of Management at the Simmons School of Management, was recently made at the Toigo Foundation’s third-annual Groundbreakers Women in Leadership Summit on December 5. In those eight words, Blake-Beard encapsulated so much of what Toigo is about as an organization.
Founded in 1989, the Robert Toigo Foundation’s goal is to bring increased diversity to the finance industry through a number of programs aimed at inspiring young people of color who might not have otherwise considered a career in the finance industry. Through its MBA Fellowship the Foundation provides leadership training, mentoring, tuition assistance, and support as they pursue MBAs and launch their finance careers. Toigo offers the only diversity leadership development program focused on the field of finance.
Financial Services’ Lack of Diversity
There is endless data that illustrates the great need for an organization like Toigo that is committed to encouraging people of color to enter the financial services industry. A report by the General Accountability Office (GAO) looked at the issue of diversity in the financial services industry, finding that “overall diversity at the management level in the financial services industry did not change substantially from 1993 through 2008.” Using data collected by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the GAO reported that minorities held just 10 percent of senior-level management positions at financial services firms. In 2008, EEOC data revealed that white males held 64 percent of all senior jobs in financial services, with African Americans holding 2.8 percent, Hispanics 3 percent of all senior jobs, and Asians holding 3.5 percent of top-level jobs.
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Being a Present, Concerned, Clear, and Genuine Leader
Expert AnswersAre leaders born or made? Do you have the competencies to be a leader? Is your emotional intelligence consistent with successful leadership? Will your strengths match what you need to effectively lead?
There are so many questions swirling around leadership and if you choose to lead, you will feel bombarded with images of what leadership looks like and chances are you’ll judge yourself against them. Who has time to delve into all the leadership information while having a fulltime career?
It is my belief that we need to shift from “doing” leadership and focus on “being” a leader. As we become more intelligent about leadership and motivation, we also create more judgments about it. This blocks the ability to allow each of us to identify our core talent to be a leader. With over 25-years of leadership coaching, training, and consulting, I have not found one person who does not have the core ability to be a leader.
According to the US Department of Labor Statistics, despite the high unemployment rate, more than 2 million Americans voluntarily leave their job every month. Why are so many people quitting? Four reasons: they don’t like their boss; they lack empowerment; internal politics; and lack of recognition.
Leaders have the opportunity to change this pattern and retain the employees they don’t want to lose. Not through learning more about what it takes to be an effective leader, but through focusing on how to be a leader that others want to follow.
Be Present
Being present is the strongest leadership skill you can possess. You don’t always have to be right or be the wisest person in the world to be an effective leader, but being present will create the greatest amount of trust and respect.
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Black Women in Business: An Update on Progress
FeaturedBy Tina Vasquez, Managing Editor
When we talk about the progress that has been made by women in corporate America, using gender to mean ‘all women’, what we’re actually referring to is the progress and gains that have been made by white women.
African-American women, who make up 13 percent of the female population in the US, are a long way from closing the racial and ethnic disparities they face, but there are some encouraging trends to report on this year. According to the Center for American Progress, African American women-owned businesses continue to grow despite significant financial and social obstacles. As a matter of fact, African American-owned businesses are the fastest-growing segment of the women-owned business market and are starting up at a rate six times higher than the national average. Even more impressive: The number of companies started by African American women grew nearly 258 percent from 1997 to 2013, which is great news for entrepreneurs.
In the corporate world, we look at the numbers first. In December of 2013 when FORBES published its annual list of the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women, 11 were black and they ranged from the First Lady to corporate executives, including the magnificent Ursula Burns, CEO of Xerox and the first African-American female CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Burns has an inspiring story, as she started on the bottom as a Xerox intern in 1980 and under her leadership, Xerox has transformed its image as a manufacturer of printers to a full-fledged services business. According to FORBES, in 2010, Xerox acquired business process outsourcing firm Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) and now gets half of its revenue from service businesses, like managing electronic ticket transactions, road tolls, and parking meters.
During the Prism awards fundraiser lunch at New York University last year, the CEO told attendees there is “a tidal wave of women business leaders coming” and the business world “would be silly” to ignore the large and growing pool of “talented women in America colleges.”
What Ursula said cannot be disputed. It is projected that women of color will make up 53 percent of the population by 2050, positioning them as vital to the economic future of the United States, especially as they become a greater share of the workforce. And make no mistake: It is vital that Corporate America understand, develop, and leverage this increasingly valuable and talented group of people.
When companies feature diverse teams, it has been proven to lead to more effective decision-making and it better positions companies to compete on the global stage, drawing in a wider customer base. Not only that, Workforce Magazine reports that when employees feel that they have a more diverse and inclusive workforce, turnover is almost 20 percent lower and employee effort is nearly 12 percent higher.
Also featured on FORBES list was Rosalind Brewer, President and CEO of Sam’s Club, a $56.4 billion division of Wal-Mart Stores. According to FORBES, Brewer was a college chemistry major who came to the big box chain in 2006 from consumer-products maker Kimberly-Clark Corp, where she started as a scientist. Brewer is the first woman and first African American to become the CEO of a Wal-Mart business unit.
It was recently announced by Catalyst that Brewer’s former employer, Kimberly-Clark, is one of the recipients of the 2014 Catalyst Award, a prestigious annual award honoring innovative initiatives that expand opportunities for women and business. Kimberly-Clark’s initiative, Unleash Your Power: Strengthening the Business With Women Leaders, addresses Kimberly-Clark’s need to look, think, and behave like the people who use and buy its products.
Addressing ‘Otherness’
Making sure that talented Black women are getting promoted to key roles should be keeping senior execs and HR heads up at night.
The good news is that ambitious, talented, and capable women of color are in the pipeline, but a recent Catalyst study found that “otherness” can be a significant barrier to success. As defined by the organization, otherness is about being different or having characteristics that set you apart from the dominant group or groups in a given context. In our white- and male-dominated business world, these characteristics become normative and those who feel like an “other” not only feel different, according to Catalyst, but also feel separated from the essential aspects of a group. If they do not experience belonging in a group, they may consequently be excluded.
According to Catalyst, in order to overcome the effects of ‘otherhood’, efforts need to be made to ensure fair and equitable decision-making regarding career development and advancement. Addressing the issue head-on will require putting mechanisms in place to guarantee those with backgrounds that differ from the majority are evaluated fairly.
Shining Examples
For Black History Month, theglasshammer.com will spend all of February celebrating talented, ambitious Black women who are making huge strides in their fields. Yesterday you met Accenture’s Managing Director of Federal Services, Tamara Fields. Later this month we’ll hear from RLJ Lodging Trust’s CFO Leslie Hale, one of just eight Black, female CFOs of a publicly traded company in the history of the US, and Barbara Edwards, the first in her family to come to the US. She is now Counsel for Shearman & Sterling, a far cry from her days working as a live-in housekeeper. These are just two of the many inspirational profiles we’ll bring you this month, as we hear at theglasshammer.com understand both the power and the importance of sharing these stories.
Here’s hoping 2014 is a fruitful year for Black women in business.
Voice of Experience: Tamara Fields, Managing Director, Federal Services, Accenture
Voices of ExperienceAs Tamara Fields began looking into employment opportunities as her college graduation neared, she noticed that all of her classmates were clamoring for consulting jobs. At the time, she says, consulting firms were hiring in large numbers to help support the Y2K buzz and the new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementations that were getting started.
“I wanted to be a part of this fast paced and dynamic world,” Fields said.
And at what better place than Accenture? Once at the global consulting company, Fields initially worked across industries and then moved in to the federal space, where she worked on a project supporting federal financials transformation for NASA.
“I decided I would focus on this area, as I like the concept of serving the government and helping the government be accountable to its citizens,” the managing director said.
Fields has now been with Accenture for 16-years and is currently based in Austin, TX and serving as a Managing Director in Accenture Federal Services. She has since moved on from her NASA project and is currently working with the Department of Defense. Specifically, she is working on a project for the US Army, saying she truly enjoys working in the military space.
In addition to her client work, Fields also serves as the Sales Lead for Accenture’s Army Contract Writing Systems project and is responsible for every aspect, including customer call plan execution, solution designing, win strategy, and competitor intelligence analysis.
“This makes me excited because I truly enjoy planning from the beginning stages. I am also excited because this opens opportunities for the people on my team for new career considerations,” Fields said. “I like contributing to the success of the Army projects and I get even more excited about helping the people who work on these projects succeed in new opportunities.”
Paying It Forward
In a career where there has been so much to be proud of, Fields cites her promotion to managing director as one of her most gratifying career achievements thus far.
“It is not an easy road as an African-American female working in a corporate America that is still predominantly Caucasian and male-dominated. I am thankful I had the opportunity to reach this level, and I am also grateful for the support I received in helping me reach this goal,” Fields said.
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Voice of Experience: Catherine Clay, CEO, Livevol
Voices of ExperienceBy Tina Vasquez, Managing Editor
In November 2013, Catherine Clay received a career-changing promotion: she became CEO of Livevol, which offers options analysis and trade execution software. The CEO says the company extracts data from the market and gives clients what they need “in a sea of noise.”
If it weren’t for a call from Clay’s sister, however, she may have never entered the derivatives industry. In the early 90’s, Clay’s sister got a job in San Francisco manually updating market maker quotes at what was then the Pacific Exchange. One day she called Clay and told her this was the industry for her, believing her sister’s natural competitive nature would make her a trading floor natural – and she was.
In The Beginning
Clay began her career at Interactive Broker’s market making unit, Timber Hill. She started as a clerk and worked her way up to director of floor trading and operations, spending about 12 years on the NYSE Options Floor, overseeing a staff of 20 traders, brokers, and back office staff. While at Timber Hill, she also served on NYSE Committees and was involved with floor trading, listing, membership, and arbitration.
Her involvement in Timber Hill’s mentorship program continues to be a bright spot in Clay’s career. The formal program hired aspiring option traders, with staff running the educational programs.
“We brought candidates on to the floor and taught them how to trade derivatives. It was good to help others and empower them with the knowledge to make good lifelong investment decisions,” Clay said.
Forging Her Own Path
In 2006, Clay left Timber Hill to co-found Thales LLC, a market making firm on the NYSE Options Floor and on OneChicago single stock futures exchange. Thales employed comprehensive volatility analysis using extensive historical options data. During her time with Thales, Clay noticed a demand for this type of data from professional traders and brokers on the trading floor.
“One of the challenges the industry faces is taking the enormous amounts of live and historical data from the market and harnessing it in a way that gives it meaning,” Clay said.
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