According to Nicole Douillet, Vice President, Credit Suisse, when you are young and high achieving coming out of college, entering the workforce can be a difficult transition, especially in an environment like Wall St. “It can seem disappointing if your career trajectory is not progressing as quickly as you imagined, but it is important to remember that a career path is very rarely a straight line,” advised Douillet.
“Take a breath, have patience, and look at the bigger picture,” she added.
Douillet was the first woman hired on the block trading desk at UBS in 2000. “My career in trading has been pretty tumultuous since I started in 2000,” said Douillet. “In fact, my very first day on the UBS desk was the last day the NASDAQ 100 closed above 4,000,” she continued. Douillet left UBS to pursue a job in quantitative trading at Credit Suisse where she eventually moved to the systematic market making group. She said, “I have been able to see a lot of different cycles in the markets from the beginning of 2000 through today.”
In 2007, Douillet was promoted to VP a year ahead of everyone in her class and was selected to be a part of the inaugural class of Credit Suisse Emerging Leaders program. Through this program, Credit Suisse identifies high potential associates and vice presidents and tasks them with creating solutions for problems the executive board is struggling with.
“My group was given the question, ‘how does an investment bank push innovation?’” said Douillet, “which is difficult considering the regulatory environment in which investments banks operate.” The challenge was to figure out how to inspire innovation among employees while staying within the regulatory framework. Douillet explained, “We devised a system of encouraging and rewarding innovation and presented our idea to the senior leaders running the program. The idea was rolled out as a pilot program in the IT division and later became a bank wide initiative due to the success of the pilot.”