Tag Archive for: Morgan Stanley

Rose-Gaëlle Belinga: Technology Associate, Morgan Stanley

,

Rose Gaelle Belinga“Because I really have people’s attention, I make sure that my work speaks for itself, that people take me seriously,” says Rose-Gaëlle Belinga from Morgan Stanley.

Belinga speaks about her unique journey into software engineering and her passion for applying tech acumen to better the world.

The Power of Simple Innovation

Growing up in her family home in Yaoundé, Cameroon, Belinga was inspired towards STEM at an early age by her parents, both family trailblazers who attended university in science fields.

While inclined towards STEM, what piqued her interest in technology was a simple can opener.

When her uncle gifted her book on inventions, she was inspired to learn that the can opener was not invented until 40 years after the can, meaning that people had accepted a harder way to do things.

“Someone said there must be an easier way, and if it doesn’t exist I’m going to go ahead and invent it and everybody is going to benefit from my invention,” says Belinga.

The notion of making a big impact on lives from a simple innovation catalyzed her passion for technological innovation.

Another Kind of Language

After high school, she moved to the U.S. and attained her bachelor and master’s degree in software engineering from Auburn University, alongside a bachelor of arts from Oglethorpe.

But coming from Cameroon, where neither computers nor internet were prevalent at that time, when a professor recommended that she take his Java course, she assumed he was referring to the island in Indonesia.

When that same professor described software through the example of the plane that senses, provides data and course-corrects for the pilot, steering the plane most of the time, she saw that “software was almost the spirit in the machine” and realized tech could complement any field of interest she would have.

As a polyglot, she now counts her programming proficiency among her Bulu, English, French, and German fluency, as well as Latin, Hungarian and Spanish languages she can speak at some level.

“Programming languages also have the grammar and spelling and syntax and all,” she notes.

In 2012, she joined Morgan Stanley after first summer interning there, and loving the company culture, complexity of problems, richness of technology and mobility of opportunities inside the organization.

Leveraging Your Difference

When Belinga moved to an engineering school with 96% caucasian and mainly male student peers, her initial sense of imposter syndrome was offset by being actively supported by her student peers and a Moroccan professor who advised her to leverage her differences.

“My professor told me that when he goes into a classroom, he doesn’t know who the best students are. But when he sees a female student or person of color, they get his attention right away,” she recalls from her junior year. “That’s how my professor challenged me, not to look at being underrepresented as holding me back but as an advantage – and let my work speak for itself.”

Those words stayed with her. When she first began employment, Belinga used her voice to call out those who assumed she was part of the administrative staff rather than the engineering team. But she has never considered her gender nor ethnicity as a barrier to her possibilities.

“Instead, I am showing that the abundance mindset is a thing,” says Belinga. “I’m here for a reason, and everyone I work with knows that. I now get more responsibility than some of my colleagues because I stand out and my team knows I can deliver.”

She mentors to keep your long-term interests in mind when making job decisions – such as advising a friend against moving to a position that was perhaps a diversity quota win for the team but not the best move for him personally, or advising a mentee into a PhD track so she could arrive to her desired focus of tech research.

Technological Philanthropy

“Because I stand out,” she shares, “I try to take advantage of the platform to open the door for others, such as encouraging colleagues to go to under-served high schools to teach computer science or encouraging male colleagues to mentor female students.”

She emphasizes that it can’t just be women helping women or people of color helping people of color, but everyone can step up.

Belinga is animated by technology philanthropy, putting her tech acumen to work for the greater good, not only teaching computer science to students in locally under-served high schools in the New York/New Jersey areas, but also making tech vocations accessible in places where they have been absent.

“One thing that has always made me sad was that I had to leave my support network, my family and everything I knew in order to pursue my studies and seek a better lifestyle,” she reflects. “It would have been nice if those opportunities had been made available locally.”

So Belinga is dedicated to being a part of the change she wants to see. Volunteering in partnership with Global Code and TurnTabl, she has traveled to Ghana with fellow volunteers the last few summers, apart from this past summer.

Partnering with Global Code, they instruct a three to four week crash course which empowers the community students to envision a tech solution project to help the local community – and together they develop the prototype.

For example, due to youth urban migration for education and work, elders did not always have immediate family to call on, let alone an equivalent of 911. The students created a necklace for elderly in the village with an embedded device and three buttons, pre-programmed to make calls or send messages for support in case of falling or emergency.

The best students from the Global Code program can then apply to the Turntabl program to be placed in contract technology jobs (with mentorship) for companies in North America, Europe and Asia from their home country, without having to relocate from their families or support system, as Belinga once did.

Envisioning What is Possible

Catalyzed by her passion for technology philanthropy, one of Belinga’s interests is Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality (AR/VR), which she researches as part of an innovation program that allows employees to dedicate 20% of their time to exploring new solutions or technologies.

“Wouldn’t it be great if with a headset we could allow different people to collaborate in the same virtual room?” she asks, whether an office or in a classroom.

Along with the benefit of collaboration, 3D data visualization animates her. She imagines her nephews being able to explore a village in the rainforest or to hear someone speak her native tongue, Bulu.

She also sees the potential of AR/VR to shift how we think about the issues we need to collectively confront, such as by immersing us in the reality of places most affected by them. Her first contact with the power of AR/VR was standing in middle of Times Square as she experienced it submerged according to sea level rising scenarios.

“AR/VR has the potential to help us see how the actions we take affect other people we don’t see,” she says, “so we can build more emotional intelligence and motivate ourselves to tackle it together.”

Belinga is an active member of the FIRE movement. For her, it represents finding life hacks to make your biggest dreams (if health, wealth and time were no issue) happen in the here and now.

She is currently polishing up Pachelbel’s “Canon in D” on the violin to fulfill her brother’s wish for a public performance (it will be her first) at his wedding this summer.

By Aimee Hansen

/by

Voice of Experience: Susan Reid, Global Head of Diversity and Inclusion Morgan Stanley

,

Susan Reid

By Cathie Ericson

At this point in her career, Morgan Stanley’s Susan Reid says that she understands now more than ever how important it is to build relationships – and that she wishes she had had a more concrete understanding as a new professional.

“Like many younger people I focused quite a bit on building technical skills and getting the work done, but if I had an opportunity to start over, I would focus on cultivating relationships earlier and sustaining those relationships over time,” she says.

It’s just one of the lessons she eagerly shares with younger women she mentors, as she lends encouragement to their climb in the important financial services industry, emphasizing its role as a significant contributor to global economies.

Various Roles in HR Led to Her Passion of D&I

Reid’s early career was in education; in fact she was thrilled to join her alma mater, NYU, as a full-time employee immediately after graduating to help build an office designed to help students of color successfully complete their college education. Looking back, she can pinpoint that experience as the start of her interest in diversity and inclusion. Stints as an HR professional in recruiting and D&I in various industries followed, and she joined Morgan Stanley in 2008 as an HR Coverage Officer for the Investment Management Business.

Reid joined Morgan Stanley during the financial crisis and says that her ability to help the firm through those challenging times is the professional achievement she’s most proud of today. “As an HR professional, you are called upon most during challenging times, and I am proud that I was able to contribute to helping our leaders and our employees successfully navigate that time period.”

Today, Reid remains excited about her role leading diversity and inclusion efforts. “It is not a cliché to say that our talent is our most valuable asset because they are,” she says. “The work that we do in D&I to help the firm hire, retain and advance a diverse group of individuals who can help the firm succeed while enjoying successful careers is extremely meaningful.”

Right now, Reid finds the shifts in demographics that workplaces are experiencing to be of particular interest, based on the implications they have for clients and colleagues of the future. Employees of the future will have different expectations about work and workplaces, and to grow the firm they constantly have to think ahead about who their clients will be and how to best engage with them. “We are in very dynamic times, and we all have the challenge of keeping pace and getting ahead,” Reid says.

Helping Women Carve Out Success

Reid is a believer in financial services as an important industry for women. “We offer challenging roles and contribute to economic growth, while also providing individuals with the wherewithal to give back to various communities,” she says.

But, she notes, it is also an industry that requires an intense commitment of time, energy and attention, and the many additional demands that women often deal with can create particular challenges.  However, she hopes that as society continues to shift towards greater equity in family dynamics, women will find it easier to have a sustained career in the industry, while continuing to meet their outside obligations.

On that note, Reid mentions her pride in Morgan Stanley’s Return to Work Program, which was launched several years ago to support talented professionals who take career breaks but want to return to work.  The program offers women and men the opportunity to spend 12 weeks in the equivalent of an internship and to convert to full-time hires if it makes sense for both parties at the end of that experience. “We have had great success hiring participants into various parts of the firm,” she notes.

Reid underscores that it is incredibly important for young women to join the industry and advance to leadership roles. “We simply cannot be on the sidelines of this important field,” she urges.

And she reminds her peers that those currently within the industry have a responsibility to help support and advance younger women – to reach out to women of color, LGTBQ women and other women in the “minority” and to intentionally drive their success. 

Reid has a number of passions outside of work, including her family, reading and running – a pursuit she admits she has been doing far less of recently but wants to return to.  She serves on the board of a private tuition-free school in her adopted hometown, Harlem, N.Y. (she is originally from Jamaica), where she and fellow Morgan Stanley colleagues spend time mentoring the seventh and eighth grade girls.

“This experience has reminded me of the challenges that girls, and in particular, girls of color and girls from poor communities, face navigating the world and how important it is to get involved and to stay involved with our local communities and with young people,” Reid says. “We have a responsibility to help shape the future, and this experience shows that we can all start right in our own backyards.”

/by

Voice of Experience: Jitania Kandhari, Head of Global Macroeconomic Research and Portfolio Manager, Morgan Stanley

jitania kandhariBy Cathie Ericson

In the male-dominated world of finance, Morgan Stanley’s Jitania Kandhari finds that women’s voices can often get muffled in their constant quest for perfection. “Women tend to speak up less as they search for the ideal solution or just the right words, but it’s something they can and should overcome,” she says. “It’s important to have faith in yourself — just join the conversation and own what you say.” An encouraging environment with the right leadership and colleagues can be a big factor in the success of women, and in her case, she says that she is very fortunate to be part of a wonderful team at Morgan Stanley that has a strong culture of open expression.

Carving Out a Valuable Role

Jitania hit the ground running, beginning her career as a trainee at the peak of the Asian crisis at Morgan Stanley in India. With jobs in short supply, she moved to another firm that covered Indian equities and subsequently became a private wealth manager for ultra-high net worth individuals, where the seed of her interest in global economics — the linkages between global macro and asset classes — was sown. She worked at another firm in the United States, consulting on Latin American markets, and then came back to Morgan Stanley where the person with whom she’d done her first-year rotation was head of a team.

She joined them as the sole analyst in an emerging market fund and has since carved out a role and built a team doing what she is most passionate about — heading global macro-economic research and recently co-managing the Breakout Nations fund, which is a highly active country allocation fund that invests in both emerging and frontier markets

“Being named as head of macro-economic research for the team was a huge lift in my career and has produced a steep learning curve, which I love,” she says. “I have learned more than I have ever learned in any role in my career.” For her, one of the most important lessons has been the value of good leadership which goes hand-in-hand with building a high-quality team, along with the more strategic functions of her position.

While active management versus passive management is currently getting a lot of attention, Jitania is confident that active management will reassert its importance. “In my group, we pay a lot of attention to country allocation, as well as stock allocation,” she says, adding that their philosophy is that in the developing world, getting the country call right matters as much as the stocks. “We first identify the best countries and then the portfolio managers buy stocks to reflect that country view,” she explains.

While she has a mentor, Jitania wishes she had had the benefit of one from the start of her career, having seen the valuable role it has played in shaping her career and helping her identify strengths and weaknesses. She also advises women to keep an eye out for a sponsor, noting that women are adept at working horizontally but shouldn’t overlook the need for someone higher up to be guiding and watching out for them.

Advice That Resonates

Jitania has three pieces of advice that ring true at any career stage.

The first is to be a voracious reader, which she says will help you connect the dots in your investment career and better understand the world as one macro environment.

Second, she advises others further along in their career to keep reinventing themselves, as the only constant is change.

And finally she says, “I tell my kids to work harder than anyone else around you, and the rest will follow.”

Through internal workshops and networking, she continues seeking advice on her own career, including a recent series on communication training, which has further bolstered her interactions with clients and peers, as well as her own team.

Threading Her Global Interests To All Areas of her Life

Complementing her work with global and emerging markets at Morgan Stanley, Jitania extends that focus throughout the other facets of her life. In her spare time, she enjoys Indian classical singing and dancing, activities she has pursued since she was a child.

Her husband is on the board of the Afya Foundation, a medical supply recovery organization that collects supplies that would otherwise be wasted in the U.S., and ships them to less-developed countries that are experiencing calamities. She would like to take her children, ages 7 and 5, to their warehouse to participate, as a way to bridge her work and philanthropic interests. “I want to make a difference and extend my knowledge and reach to these countries and help a bigger cause,” she says.

And the thread continues in her travel with her family, whom she takes to one emerging market each year. They started with India and will visit Egypt next. She is gratified that her kids have inherited her interest in thinking globally. Recently her daughter’s class completed a New York neighborhood study, and Jitania was delighted that her daughter selected Greenpoint specifically because it was a Polish neighborhood, where her daughter knew she invested and visited.

“My goal is to give them those experiences that I live and breathe,” she says.

/by