Tag Archive for: voice of experience

Voice of Experience: Deirdre Flood, Head of International Distribution, Wells Fargo Asset Management

Deidre Flood By Cathie Ericson

“You own your own path; you are your own CEO. Thus you need to manage your career to get where you want to go,” says Deirdre Flood of Wells Fargo Asset Management.

“For me opportunity knocked based on my work ethic and how I showed up to answer the door.”

Seizing opportunities as they arise has been the cornerstone of Flood’s successful career that spanned Europe and the United States, and back again.

Moving Where Opportunity Leads

At the ripe old age of 10, Flood remembers telling her elders that not only was she going to work for her money, but her money was going to work for her. Although she had varied interests throughout her teens, those words proved prescient, as she spent the first two decades of her career in financial management helping her clients money work for them.

After studying math, economics and French at University College Dublin, Flood was selected for a prestigious 18-month training program with Bank of Ireland Asset Management, the premier asset management firm. She was particularly fascinated by its global reach, with over half of its clients located outside Ireland. The internship entailed spending nine months at the headquarters in Dublin and then the other half in an international office. Flood requested a New York placement, but rather than the bright lights and big city of New York, she found herself in Greenwich, CT. Nevertheless, it was a smart career move as she found herself focused on the client-facing activities that would define her career.

In order to help gain additional credibility as a youthful female with sophisticated clients and colleagues, she earned her CFA designation. And then by building a reputation for initiative, proactive thinking and quality work, she found that opportunities presented themselves at a young age – and she said “yes” to them.

The day she planned to put in an offer on her first apartment in New York City, she was offered a position in California that she couldn’t turn down — working with a blue-chip list of clients as client service director. So instead of packing and moving to a new home in the city, she was packing her bags for California. This, to her, was an excellent lesson in seizing an opportunity, even when the timing isn’t ideal.

The role was not easy as the firm had some challenges with under-performing products and personnel turnover, and through that she learned another important lesson: You build your best client relationships during the tough times. The way one addresses client concerns – effectively and transparently – has a direct impact on successfully building a career.

Two years later the firm still hadn’t turned around, and she realized her goals and vision for her career was a mis-match with the opportunity the firm could present. Because she had built a solid network of peers in the marketplace, she put the word out that she was open to new opportunities and almost immediately had recruiters and companies calling. Narrowing it down to two appealing options, she ultimately moved to the asset management division of Wachovia, which presented itself as a start-up looking to establish a west coast presence. Flood was able to put a stake in the ground for them as the first person in an outpost office, joined shortly by key associates from her former firm as she built the west coast team.

Flood joined as consulting relations director, a role that had become a niche in its own right, and it was when she was in the process of moving to London to help expand internationally that Wachovia was acquired by Wells Fargo. Flood was interviewed by the acquiring management team and while they were not ready at the time for international expansion, they asked her to step into a leadership role, creating a merged global consultant relations team. She embraced the opportunity, relishing the challenge of integrating two firms.

And that Flood counts as the achievement she is most proud of so far: She was trusted as an unknown entity to play such a significant role at Wells Fargo, the acquiring firm.

In 2011, the world had settled down and international expansion again seemed like the right thing to do so she moved to London to expand the consulting relations team internationally. The role has expanded, and today Flood is Head of International Distribution for the firm.

For Flood one of the most intriguing recent developments in the industry is the growing appetite for Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investing. “Having investors take into account a company’s positive contribution to society brings an entirely new, satisfying dimension to my work,” she says.

Never Letting Gender Stand in The Way

While Flood has never considered gender as an obstacle, she notes that there is a growing appreciation for the role of diversity. Her one concession, she laughs, is that in her early client-facing days she learned how to play golf to allow her to more easily socialize with male colleagues.

She urges women to have confidence, particularly confronting the fear of speaking up or asking questions in a public setting because they are concerned it will make them look uninformed. “It’s about confidence, and honestly, I can guarantee there will be others in the room who will appreciate that you asked and will think favorably about you for doing so,” she says, adding that on a practical note, you will learn much faster than you otherwise would.

Outside the workplace, Flood indulges in a number of activities to bring balance to her busy work life. Her favorite involves marrying a childhood passion with giving back.

Having grown up on a working farm in Ireland, she developed a love for the beauty and spirit of horses and recently became involved with a program called Riding for the Disabled, where she can use her horse-handling experience to help educate, heal and bring joy to disabled adults and children.

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Voice of Experience: Lori Heinel, Deputy Global CIO, State Street Global Advisors

Loro HeinelBy Cathie Ericson

One of Lori Heinel’s key pieces of advice to those just starting out is to make sure to focus energy early on to build close relationships with both mentors and peers.

While her work was always impressive, she believes that it’s important to remember not to focus solely on doing good work, but to also embrace the value of strategic relationship building.

One best practice she readily shares comes from a colleague who derived untold benefits from creating her own “board of directors,” comprised of men and women with different skill sets at different places in their careers. “I always encourage women to network with people who will advocate on their behalf,” she says.

Tying Together the Threads of A Diverse Financial Services Background

And that’s because she knows that a career is very rarely a straight path, and the more people you know, the more doors that can be opened.

Although Heinel characterizes her career as “eclectic,” it has involved aspects of financial services for the past three decades, as she has held roles in fixed income sales and trading departments, as well as investment research and product development. The common thread has been a focus on the client: Whether she was selling to retail or institutional clients, her work prioritized using financial solutions to satisfy client needs. She has always welcomed the challenge and the opportunity to constantly learn new things and apply her skills in different ways to knit together these seemingly-disconnected pieces into a coherent thesis.
Heinel has been with State Street for more than three-and-a-half years and appreciates that her current position as deputy global CIO allows her to indulge her passion for markets and broad involvement in the firm’s investment capabilities. “Not only does my role entail understanding the current market environment and translating that into strategies and ideas, but I also get involved in strategic projects,” she says, noting that her broad background has lent itself well to providing value in areas from tech projects to product development.

Right now, she is particularly interested in how rapidly the environmental, social, governance (ESG) space is evolving. While social investing used to be primarily values-based, now it’s also about impact because investors are increasingly wanting both – they need solid returns but also want to know they are making an impact globally. “The industry is just at the beginning of understanding what that means in terms of meeting client expectations and how we can be a catalyst for change for the better,” Heinel says.

She also appreciates that SSGA has been vocal on diversity, including sponsoring the “She” statue, and she notes that research is increasingly proving that diversity is crucial for success. “There is a budding industry that is capturing data to provide a snapshot of how a company’s footprint is related to income equality or gender diversity. Investors can now pick something they care about and figure out exactly where a company sits in relation.”

The Concept of “Lean In” Has Merit

Looking at the role of women in the industry, Heinel sees both practical and impressionist challenges. “No matter how we slice it, women retain the bulk of child-bearing responsibilities,” she says, adding that it’s largely because women typically want to be intimately involved.

While there are legitimate times in a career that women have to make choices, she believes that companies could do more to provide women with options to offer value in different ways, so they can re-accelerate when the time is right.

“We do a good job of moving women into functional roles when they need it, but I am not sure that companies then provide the corollary, where women can re-engage for that C-level role when they are ready,” she says.

And yet she accurately notes that the skill sets women garner during those detours can actually make them more effective and bring different perspectives than those who stuck to the traditional vertical path.

On that note, she recommends that women take care not to self limit too early. She sees women in their early 20s who tell her they want to have a family so they shy away from roles that don’t immediately seem to offer the appropriate work-life balance. But she recommends that they see what happens before making those decisions; when the time comes that they do have the other responsibilities, there are ways to make things work. As she notes, if you’ve proven yourself as a quality performer, managers are willing to consider work-from-home arrangements and other flexible options, as increasingly companies realize they need to retain these contributors by making appropriate accommodations.

“If you see something interesting, go for it,” she advises. And even if the position doesn’t materialize, the visibility that professionals receive from putting their name up and striving for it can pay dividends in other potential opportunities down the road.

Heinel has been active in gender diversity programs for decades at her various companies, and currently chairs SSGA’s Diversity and Inclusion Council. She also acts as a mentor for the firm’s mentoring circles program as well as on an ad hoc basis for midcareer women.

Personally she helped start an informal group years ago called “Connected Women,” a loose affiliation of career-minded women who formed the group after realizing that they were lacking in social connections since they’d devoted the past years to raising their families and building their careers.

She started the group in Philadelphia as a way to have fun together, compared to most affinity groups that have professional goals. She has since formed similar chapters as she’s moved to New York and Boston, finding of course, that new business and professional connections have been an important byproduct, if not the sole intent.

Her other key outlet is travel and for Heinel, the ideal vacation involves something very physical — where all she can think about is the challenge in front of her, so she gravitates toward adventure trips, like skiing and ice climbing. “It’s the best way to get out of the day-to-day and really relax and come back refreshed.”

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Voice of Experience: Anna George, Head of Product Asia Pacific, WEX Inc.

Anna George WEX

By Cathie Ericson

“Take every opportunity because you never know where it may lead you,” says WEX’ Anna George, and certainly that has been a theme in her varied career path.

A Divergent and Successful Career

George’s first job was selling advertising space, but she very quickly learned that it was not her forte. She moved into the payments industry quite accidentally, she says, via Coles Financial Services, where she worked in operational roles while studying for her degree in Business Information Technology.

She then worked for GE for 15 years where she earned steady promotions and advanced in a variety of roles from business analysis to project management and process improvement. She eventually landed on product management as a real passion because it required the depth of knowledge and experience she had gained throughout her career. Three years ago she moved across to WEX to head up its product and innovation function.

Currently she is working through new product launches that will meet WEX’ business objectives of diversifying its portfolio. One truth she has learned over the years that applies to all her current endeavors is to always understand your customers’ and stakeholders’ needs in order to provide the right solution to the initiative or problem you are trying to solve.

One trend George finds particularly interesting is the upcoming disruption of blockchain and the importance of understanding the use cases relevant to the industry. “This is a game changer, and we need to get on the front foot,” she says. In addition, she cites 4IR, or the Fourth Industrial Revolution, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, as another area that will provide efficiencies once the ethical considerations are ironed out.

While George has had a number of professional achievements, including winning a recent Women in Payments innovation award, she is most proud of her role in developing team members and mentoring professionals who have gone on to become great leaders in various organizations.

She strives to help women overcome the stumbling block of knowing where to start and how to access the industry. One way to gain that expertise she recommends, is to start your career with a large organization and then work hard across diverse functions to build a skillset that can then be adapted to any industry. Finding a strong leader whom you can trust to help you with challenging decisions and advice is a must at every level.

Enjoying Travel and Giving Back

Married for a decade to an IT project manager, she says he helps keep their lives organized. They enjoy traveling with their six-year-old daughter, and George herself has a passion for traveling and experiencing new cultures, having visited 24 countries so far, with many more still on the bucket list, including a trip to Ireland this spring with the company’s President’s Club.

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Voice of Experience: Jennifer Hanes, Head of Investment Management and Operations, Buy Side Solutions at FIS Global

FIS
“When you make a commitment to focus on developing an area of domain expertise and own it, you’ll earn the credibility you desire,” says FIS’ Jennifer Hanes, offering words of advice for career novices.

“Define success for yourself; no one can give you the road map, so decide the most important criteria for success as it pertains to you, and then focus there.”

Several Industries Contribute to Career Growth

Hanes herself knows the importance of carving out a path that’s unique but beneficial for each individual. She earned undergraduate degrees in journalism and French in hopes of pursuing a career in international advertising, but at the time she graduated there were no professional jobs readily available. Having spent summers in the financial services industry, she took a position in investment banking as a research analyst. She earned her Series 7 and other designations to come up to speed quickly.

While she gained valuable experience, she decided that wasn’t the career for her, so she moved to a small firm in the municipal bond industry as the fourth employee, learning on the job and completing a master’s in business administration at night. She worked there for several years until it was acquired by Thomson Financial, which offered her more opportunity in a wide variety of roles including product management, business operations and marketing, as well as more international experience.

In 1999 she got the “dot com” bug and was lured by the possibility of something entirely different to join a company that specialized in antiques. While it was short-lived, she acquired a helpful perspective on the internet industry, but decided to move back to a bigger firm in the financial services field where she could return to a more international role. She joined SunGard, which became FIS, and has steadily grown with the firm, occupying roles from marketing to business operations and strategy. Currently she runs FIS’ global software and services portfolio business of fund and investor accounting, transfer agency, risk management, reconciliation, pricing and financial reporting solutions.

While she is proud of her many business-related outcomes in delivering top and bottom-line results, she finds her most satisfying professional achievement to be the impact she has had on developing her team members over the years and helping them flourish in their careers.

Right now, Hanes says she is inspired by the chance to see the strategy that her team has developed come to fruition as they execute on a more holistic and integrated business model that clients have been looking for. “It’s exciting to see something all the way through from strategy to execution and the positive effect we are having on clients as we use innovative technology to help them drive better business performance.”

She also is excited to see how artificial intelligence and its predictive analysis capability is being used to create ever more clever ways to take huge volumes of data and crunch it down to find patterns to drive investment returns. And, while less buzzy, she says that another exciting development to watch is how firms can create efficiency by leveraging automation and robotics in back office procedures to drive bottom-line profitability, achieving better results while saving time and effort.

Career Advice To Reach The Top

Looking back over her career, Hanes suggests that those starting out consider the value of networking and how helpful it can be. “As I got older and more confident in my abilities networking became easier, but it’s wise to start early.” She has found value in seeking out diverse perspectives from a variety of industries to solve problems and explore areas like people and project management that are not industry-specific.

Hanes believes that professionals at all levels should make deliberate time for mindful reflection. “We live in an era when everything is instant, and tons of information is coming at you constantly, but you need time to think and process, particularly when it comes to complex issues.” She advises women to find time to efficiently digest and reflect – such as while you’re exercising or commuting – to arrive at better answers.

Cognizant of the need to devote time to balance her career with other pursuits, Hanes has helmed a book club for 22 years and enjoys spending time cooking. Married with two grown sons in their 20s, she has been fortunate to have been able to take them on many of her travels, which has contributed to their increased awareness of diversity in the world.

Hanes also takes time to give back, sitting on the board of her alma mater, the Commonwealth Honors College at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She also is on the board of the industry association NICSA, whose member firms include major asset managers, servicers and large banking institutions. They are at the beginning stages of looking at partnerships for a diversity initiative, underscoring how a deliberate focus on diversity should ultimately drive better business outcomes.

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Voice of Experience: Paula Moreira, Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Paula MoreiraWhen Goldman Sachs’ Paula Moreira explains the framework that helps her succeed, she references a pyramid, with honesty and humility as key components of the base.

The body and top of the pyramid are driven by effort and personal mission, respectively. Those traits, combined with her drive, have fueled Moreira’s career.

A Career Spanning Regions

Moreira’s interest in finance is rooted in lessons her parents ingrained in her early on. “They taught me how important it is to work hard and dream big to attain financial independence,” Moreira says.

That’s one reason a career in finance had always appealed to her, as she knew that industry would give her ample opportunity to achieve those goals. She studied industrial engineering to develop her technical expertise, and then began her finance career at a French bank. She soon moved to Credit Suisse, which gave her the opportunity to work in New York. “I had always dreamed about working in that important financial center,” she says of her initial move from Brazil to New York.

While in the US, she pursued an MBA at Harvard Business School to complement her technical background with stronger management and leadership abilities. After completing her MBA in 2002, she began working on Goldman Sachs’ Latin American sales desk. Moreira was so excited to get to work that she cut short a vacation and began taking Spanish classes to sharpen her language skills.

She moved back to Sao Paulo in 2010 and has been there since, leading a team focused on serving Brazilian banks, asset managers, hedge funds, pension funds and insurance companies. Moreira has found the most rewarding aspect of her career to be building a successful team who is connected, committed to helping one another and working toward the same objective. Moreira is also fulfilled by providing her clients with superior support and ensuring they achieve their goals.

Identifying Transformative Trends

Currently, Moreira is particularly excited about growth dynamics in Brazil, as the country emerges from a difficult recession. She notes that as part of the cyclical rebound in the country, rates have been cut by more than a half, causing dynamic changes in the market. Moreira explains that significant investments previously allocated to money market funds are now being funneled to alternative asset classes like hedge funds – one of her biggest client bases – as well as investments in structured products and equity. “There is a significant opportunity to capture these trends in a country that is experiencing a big cyclical rebound,” she notes.

Moreira has also been interested in the impact of technology on the trading business, particularly the rise in electronic execution among credit, rates and commodities clients, a trend that has already been incorporated into foreign exchange trading. “It’s important that I connect my clients to our global platforms,” and notes, “I love my job because I’m constantly learning from my clients as well as other GS colleagues.”

Helping Advance Diversity

Last year, Moreira joined the Brazil Management Committee. This is in addition to her responsibilities as co-chair of the Brazil Diversity Committee, and she also previously served as co-head of the Brazil Women’s Network. During her tenure as co-chair of the Women’s Network, she learned firsthand how the network connects individuals and helps attract, develop and retain women. She also greatly enjoyed her role organizing content-rich events for members that were focused on topical issues in the workplace, such as the “confidence gap” many women face.

She has particularly enjoyed recruiting others to pursue careers in financial services by dispelling the perception that it’s hard to be a woman in finance. “It’s important to be present at schools and show people that they can reconcile work with personal lives and having a family,” she says. She hopes that her efforts will help plant the seeds for a more diverse workforce down the road.

“Because of cultural bias, many women lack confidence, and it’s vital to break these barriers and make sure women realize there are no obstacles in what they can achieve,” Moreira says. “I really hope that parents would ask their daughters to complete the same tasks that they ask of their sons in order to instill confidence and ambition in their daughters.”

Asking for Help – and Helping Others

Moreira knows that no one can do it alone, and she has learned to recognize the importance of asking for help and, in turn, helping others. “We often don’t ask for help, even though people feel rewarded when they have the chance to be the helper.” This realization has helped her to be more upfront about asking for support in both her personal and professional life.

She tries to make room in her personal framework for equal focus on family, work, and health, and often tries to organize weekend activities that bring family, friends and exercise together. She is proud of the wonderful family she has built with her husband, three daughters and two stepsons, and hopes she can inspire others.

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Voice of Experience: Pamela M. Harper, Griesing Law, LLC

Pamela M HarperBy Cathie Ericson

Domain expertise is not sufficient for success, says Pamela Harper.

“Being able to navigate the political landscape is just as important as being technically competent.” And, she adds, it’s distinct from knowing the unwritten rules, but includes the ability to understand the subtle nuances that comes with time and expertise. “What is unsaid is often more important than what is said.”

Two Disciplines Create a High-Powered Career

After earning graduate degrees in both law and business, Harper worked at a law firm where her career took a turn to industries that she never would or could have anticipated, such as aviation, consulting and money management, with each position allowing her to use skills she had developed in grad school.

“People had questioned why I attended both business and law school, but both degrees have proven to be invaluable. I wanted to do whatever I could to gain a competitive edge, and this combination has supplied that for my entire career.”

One of the professional achievements she is most proud of so far was being part of a team that built a comprehensive compliance program for an institutional money management firm. To ensure they were as thorough as possible, they took the extra step of subjecting it to a voluntary third-party audit, a precaution that is rarely taken.

To this day, she says her former team still receives recognition for the robust compliance controls that were put in place. “Many small money management firms don’t realize that compliance can be a competitive differentiator,” she notes; instead they see it as a cost and therefore don’t allocate sufficient funds. “Forward-thinking companies consider it a form of revenue protection and therefore a risk management tool.”

As chair of her firm’s Corporate Transactions and Compliance practice group, Harper is intrigued by two current issues in corporate compliance: First, she notes that the level of misconduct that has been witnessed recently has been staggering, but she believes it will lead boards to pay an increased amount of attention to the impact of corporate culture on business strategy and reputation.

“Ignore it and the result will be decreased brand equity and diminished shareholder value. Boards will start taking these issues seriously and give them the attention they deserve,” she says, adding that while culture is often perceived as a HR issue in reality, it is a risk issue. “There will be a higher level of scrutiny and attention, and the complacency that has allowed boards to willfully ignore misconduct and aberrant behavior will no longer be acceptable.”

Second, she finds that very few boards have separate stand-alone compliance committees and even fewer have members who are knowledgeable about corporate compliance. The prevailing trend has been to draw potential board members from the ranks of current or former CEOs, but she noted that as board refreshment occurs, hopefully companies will begin to consider candidates with backgrounds in corporate compliance and risk management.

As part of her focus on compliance, Harper is undertaking the process of becoming a FINRA arbitrator. She says that given the repercussions of the Madoff affair, she has been surprised by the number of people who are neither savvy about their investments or their rights as investors. “Being part of a panel that can deliver recommendations on how to resolve those types of conflicts is very interesting to me.”

A Firm That Supports Women – Every Day

Currently Harper is thriving at a woman-owned law firm, which she says embodies the highest caliber of legal services, while creating an environment where women don’t have to make an artificial choice between succeeding in their careers and having a thriving personal life. “Those shouldn’t be mutually exclusive, and we have created a unique culture that doesn’t assign origination credit, which contributes to a collaborative team environment and deters intra-office competition.”

She has found over the years that women in the industry face one challenge that men don’t: “Regardless of your credentials and intellectual bandwidth, you still have to prove yourself every day. Period. Women do not have the luxury of mediocrity.”

One key way to bolster your career is to recognize the difference between what a mentor and a sponsor can do for you. “A mentor is nice to have and will give you general advice, but a sponsor — someone who typically occupies a positon of power and is invested in your success — is a must-have,” she says, adding that they don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

And she urges even women who have achieved a high level of success to remain intellectually curious. “It’s easy to become stale when you reach a certain point professionally and personally, but it’s vital to keep growing.” That’s always part of Harper’s plan; in addition to her work with FINRA, she is planning to earn a certificate in the business of art.

Further indulging her passion for art, Harper serves on the board for the Center for Emerging Visual Artists and also is an avid supporter of cancer research.

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Voice of Experience: Ilona Steffen, Global Head of Marketing and Insights, PwC

Ilona Steffen Cope“Throughout my career I would consciously observe the style of other women as a model and notice how they set up their lives.

They all worked differently, and I realized there were a variety of options for having success in both the workplace and family life, from having nannies to a husband who stayed home to stepping out for a period,” says PwC’s Ilona Steffen.

As for style, she noticed some were very warm and tuned-in, with high emotional intelligence, while others exhibited more “male” traits in their style. “The No. 1 most important aspect for me was to find my own style by watching others. I saw some whom I knew would never be me, and others that exhibited a style I was more comfortable with, and that gave me role models and context which allowed me to see myself down the road,” she says. She recommends that women notice the various role models all around, and seek them out to have conversations and be highly aware of what might work for you.

A Career Planned with Balance in Mind

Steffen is what she calls “unusually planful,” and it shows in the great care she took to look ahead at her career aspirations. She thought early on about the professional implications of being a woman and how many years of experience she needed under her belt to be prepared to have a child. That’s why she chose an accelerated course of work that offered a great deal of work experience in her early 20s.

“It’s smart for mothers to have those conversations early with daughters to help them see how many years they’ll want to be working before they feel comfortable taking a break, as it is different for different careers,” she advises.

Steffen started in banking in Germany and then attended business school in New York which broadened her horizons and introduced her to consulting, which appeared to be a career where you could advance quickly. Her bosses would ask why she was in a hurry, but her life plan dictated that she reach a senior point before she had children to make it easier to achieve the flexibility she needed.

She found consulting to be fast-paced with its non-stop travel, but it was a good fit because it allowed her to grow at an incredible speed; then when she and her husband decided to start a family, she knew it was time to find something that would allow her to be at home more, to be the type of parent she wanted to be.

Her role at PwC has been ideal because it allows her to apply what she had learned in her client-facing career to internal strategy, combined with flexibility. Currently, she is leading the Markets & Insights (M&I) team which is part of a new global marketing organization at PwC. Despite it being a highly demanding role, some of it she can do remotely which helps create a bit of balance for family time.

As part of her M&I role, created last summer she was tasked with building a global thought leadership capability for PwC, a charge that has allowed her to build a new team, hiring 12 people in the last four months. “Our firm wants to be sought after in the areas where we excel, which means elevating how we write, what we write and how we position ourselves through content and ideas, to build the business around ideas,” she says.

Building this leading-edge content has exposed her to the interesting perspective of how
people consume information and how PwC can add value as they experiment with new formats and delivery mechanisms to meet audience demands, such as higher expectations for business content and a shorter attention span.

“Some people want visuals; others stories; so we are constantly thinking through how content is evolving and getting the right piece to the right person in the right way to have the impact we want,” she explains. That of course means they have to produce a prolific number of content assets around one topic, committing to an area over a sustained period of time to offer a variety of channels and formats.

Her first piece of thought leadership was developed 15 years ago and now she is responsible for a large team and transforming what thought leadership looks like at PwC, while still in an environment where having a career and being a good parent is possible.

Paving the Way for Others

“Everyone needs to find a purpose in what they do, and mine is to replicate my experience for others. Over the years I have had dozens of accomplished women who were in the same spot and needed an option that would allow them to balance,” she says. “I have made that my personal purpose — to help others find that opportunity.”

Steffen leads a diverse team, with a high proportion of career-oriented, successful women who are also moms. They don’t want to slow down, but need different parameters, where they can hold a smart job and continue to learn and grow while being the parent they want to be.

She said at the time her path was unusual, but she made it clear it was non-negotiable and then worked extra hard to prove she could be just as good or better when working from home and accomplishing as much or more than others. While her bosses initially saw it as a temporary solution, she was proud she had the courage to do it and now is glad she has the chance to motivate others to do the same — to be clear on what you need, but also work extra hard to prove to others that it can be done.

She finds that while travel and face-to-face meetings can be harder for parents, technology is improving to eventually bridge the gap, and the speed in which it is advancing gives her hope that these opportunities will continue to grow.

With both she and her husband as working parents to two children, ages 11 and 13, Steffen notes you have to be smart about how you set up your private life and hobbies. “I shifted them to activities the family can do together, such as breeding cats and bunnies, to make sure that the hours we spend together meet my personal self-fulfillment and happiness, but also allow us to do things together as a family.”

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Voice of Experience: Kimberly Hendry, Director of Global Operations, Corporate Payments at WEX

Kimberly HendryBy Cathie Ericson

“I wish I had learned earlier in my career not to take things personally as it can create obstacles in your day-to-day interactions and detracts from your overall work experience,” says WEX’ Kimberly Hendry.

“I have realized I wasted a lot of energy getting frustrated by things that weren’t being done to offend me. I have come to learn it is just business.”

Over the past few years she has concentrated on honing her skills in initiating difficult conversations, whether it’s letting someone go or helping to address team conflict. “You have to be willing to push through, and it’s important to remember that it’s probably not going to be as hard as you think it is, and ultimately you’ll be glad you had the conversation when it’s over.”

That attitude and acumen for tackling tough situations has propelled her through her upward rise in the fields of risk management and payments.

Setting the Groundwork for the International Stage

After graduating from college, Hendry held a variety of roles, primarily in management and operations, in industries ranging from banking to investments to public utilities. While her work took her from Boston to Phoenix, her home state of Maine called her back in 2007, and she returned there through a job at WEX. She started in risk management roles when the company was small – just the bank with no international subsidiaries – and her career has grown exponentially as WEX has.

Along the way she has managed a variety of components of risk. For the past two years, she has overseen a direct line of business’ global operations, rather than working across lines of businesses, a different role in that her teams are responsible for the day-to-day functions of client relationships. Now, she manages far-flung teams in London, Melbourne and Singapore, among other global locales.

“My career at WEX has been amazing in that I can grow globally and manage teams outside the United States with all the challenge and opportunities that presents,” she says. Coincidentally, it’s a position she had intended to hold even as a teen: As she perused her high school yearbook recently, she noticed that she had listed “international business” as one of her goals. “I can truly say, ‘mission accomplished,’” she says, given WEX’ international reach.

One of the achievements she is most proud of so far is also internationally related: In 2014 she worked in the U.K. for seven months setting up a joint venture between WEX Europe Services and Radius Payment Solutions Ltd. Highlights were taking over the European ExxonMobil card program and setting up a risk management division.

Currently, Hendry is immersed with integrating a family-owned business WEX acquired in the fall. While she’s “built and fixed a lot of things” over the years, she notes how different it is to help move staff into her organization – tapping into a different range of skill sets in order to address divergent operational cultures and the impact it has on the new staff to be brought onboard. “We have to focus on the success of both the financial product and the people piece simultaneously,” she says.

Looking more broadly at industry trends, another constant goal is working to help WEX address how to increasingly move to a closed loop network, improving margins by reducing the number of middle men.

Taking a Moment to Appreciate Success as Part of an Integrated Life

While the highly technical field of risk and payments can sometimes be intimidating to women, she has found it to be an excellent place to build a career, provided you are comfortable knowing you will largely operate in a male-dominated environment. For example, she says it’s not uncommon to be the only woman at a group of 30 people at a business dinner. “You will often be outnumbered, but that’s ok; you just have to be confident in who you are and what you bring to the table.”

On that note, she urges women in her position to never neglect to appreciate their accomplishments. She reminds herself often, in fact, to stop and enjoy where she is, the fruits of her labor and the road it took to get there.

“Women are frequently so focused on what’s next – how to advance and where you need to develop – that we don’t take the time to enjoy what we have accomplished,” Hendry points out. “While the next steps may be important, we shouldn’t become fixated on them at the expense of what we’ve already accomplished. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves.”

As a wife and mom to two boys, ages 15 and 12, she relishes family time and being outside – whether it’s hiking with her dog in the woods, skiing or running marathons and half marathons. They cherish their travel time together and she integrates history whenever possible, for example, sneaking in an event called “Tea with Eleanor” last summer when the family visited Campobello Island, where Franklin Delano Roosevelt used to spend time with his family. As Hendry says, “my boys may not appreciate the history lessons now but hopefully some day they will.”

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Voice of Experience: Elizabeth Martin, Partner, Goldman Sachs

By Cathie Ericson

“You have to be the author of your own path, and realize that you are going to do your best work when you are passionate about your goal,” says Goldman Sachs’ Elizabeth Martin.

Throughout her career, she tended to take career risks by shifting towards emerging problems or business trends versus following the more traditional banking path that had been successful for her predecessors. “It’s about ensuring you can make yourself relevant as the markets change, so you can maintain your career trajectory.”

Building a Career on Variety and Risk Taking

Martin joined Goldman Sachs in 2000 as a lateral hire from a different bank. “It felt like a big risk to change jobs, but I wasn’t being stretched in my first analyst role. I wasn’t learning from my manager and colleagues,” she says, adding that she realized early on that if your manager is not invested in advancing your career, you’re wasting time. “Since that point, I’ve recognized the importance of working for people who see your success as a measure of their personal and commercial success as well.”

Martin got her job in what you might call “the old-fashioned way,” passing out her resume on the trading floor at Goldman Sachs’ New York headquarters. Proving that even previous managers can be sponsors throughout your career, she was offered a role after receiving a review from her boss at a past internship with a competitor of Goldman Sachs.

For eight years, Martin worked in derivatives trading, a role she loved because derivatives give you the ability to constantly innovate solutions to new challenges facing clients. “Some women shy away from trading roles because they don’t see role models in the seats,” she says. But she notes, “Trading is about becoming an expert in how to value an asset and predict how the price may change over time. It’s a job that facilitates a huge amount of freedom to learn about different markets, asset classes, and emerging global trends, and also trains you in how to take calculated risks in life and in your career.”

During the financial crisis, her experience with derivatives and emerging financial regulations led her to shift to working alongside senior leaders to identify and implement a forward-looking strategy to address changes in the operating environment. She enjoyed being in strategy, where she had a seat at the table in adapting the business model to maintain a market leading position for their Equities business. The role also allowed her to engage with people across all divisions of the firm. “Investing in a broad network is critically important to your career. You make better and faster decisions if you have a broad set of perspectives upon which to draw.”

Two years ago, Martin joined Goldman Sachs’ electronic trading business, where the firm uses technology and quantitative analysis to decide when and where to trade a stock. When an opportunity arose to move to London last year, she jumped at the chance to work and live internationally.

Her career at Goldman Sachs has been varied – from New York to London, with roles in trading, derivatives, management and execution. “If you embrace change, Goldman is a great place to have a career,” she says.

Managing through Change in your Career and Life

The changes continue today: Like every other industry, the use of technology and data has altered the role of Goldman Sachs in the markets. Increasingly, trading occurs through a global network that connects clients to the firm and to marketplaces all over the world. She explains that technology has also allowed Goldman’s clients to reach places where they do not have a physical location – a game changer in accessing new markets around the world.

Martin notes that following the introduction of MiFID II, Europe has gone through “some of the most transformative market regulations in history,” and the result has been large investments in equities and electronic trading to ensure they earn the trust of clients to provide the best possible experience when executing trades at Goldman Sachs. “Markets change all the time. We never have a lack of interesting, global, technical problems to solve.”

Just like the markets have changed, so did what Martin wanted from Goldman Sachs throughout her career. “At the beginning of my career, I was more focused on short-term milestones, like the performance of my business that month,” Martin says, “but over time, I learned that what I really cared about was the cumulative impact in my life – my career is an important aspect of my life but not my only priority.”

Making partner was one of her greatest achievements “because it recognized my contributions to the firm over my career, but also because it happened just after I had three amazing daughters in five years. I’m very passionate about my career and my family.”

Martin also knows the value of a family who supports her career. “Having a partner who is empathetic to the challenges of working women and fully supports my ambitions… even if that means he needs to take a share of school drop offs…has certainly been a key ingredient in striking some balance in my life.”

A result of her childhood outside of Boston, her favorite way to spend family time is skiing, particularly now that the Martin family can venture across Europe. “Most of my favorite childhood memories are skiing with my family. Exploring the mountains with my kids is exhilarating.”

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Voice of Experience: Rachel Frye, Aviation Finance Advisory Leader at PwC Ireland

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Rachel FryeBy Cathie Ericson

“When I was just starting out, I didn’t realize where my journey would take me, but I have realized that it’s ok when the destination you start out with changes,” says PwC’s Rachel Frye.

“Start with a viewpoint, but know you might end up somewhere else, and that’s where you’re supposed to be.

An Unexpected Flight Pattern

Those statements might be considered world-class understatements when considering Frye’s path.

The best advisors are those who have learned the industry from the ground up, or in the case of Frye, from the air down. That’s because she started in the aviation finance industry in an unconventional way – as a pilot. While a flight student at the University of Oregon, she ended up working as an engineer at the airport, her first foray into adopting the attitude of “Sure, I’ll give it a go!” She found it to be a wonderful complement to her flight training to become immersed in aviation and learn the day-to-day operations, while building contacts with operations people and other engineers.

As she learned more about the private flying industry, she parlayed what she calls the “novelty factor” of being a woman into landing some private jet work.

But her ambition had always been to be a commercial pilot, following in the family footsteps of her dad who was a pilot, so she moved back to the U.K. to earn some additional licenses while working for an airline on the engineering side.

She was due to join KLM just prior to 9/11, when the job vanished as airlines stopped recruiting junior pilots. In the meantime, she received a phone call from an engineering contact of hers who had a client in the financial industry who needed some technical advice. Not knowing what to expect, she attended the meeting and was surprised to discover it was with members of the French, German and British governments, as well as representatives from huge international banks.

It turns out that it was the first time that the airlines had gone into bankruptcy on such a large scale, and the banks were in a quandary as to how to locate and bring back the myriad aircraft. It was uncharted territory, but Frye stepped in and developed a team, and for the next three years acted as a technical director repossessing the aircraft. “I could have felt like a fraud but since this had never done before, I didn’t know any less than anyone else – there was no right or wrong way to go about solving the problem.”

Once they had located and retrieved the aircraft, there was a new dilemma – how to sell or lease them. In an industry that is primarily relationship-driven, Frye stepped into this new role marketing aircraft and working with the law firms. When they had difficulty finding buyers, they turned to leasing and converted others from passenger to freight use. With some creativity, eventually every single bank got their money back.

While the work was a huge achievement in retrospect, she also knows that it was a terrible time in the industry and for her clients, and she found it fulfilling to help these companies who were in desperate need.

As word spread, she became known as the expert and found herself managing other airlines’ distressed assets. Then a leasing company asked her to run their marketing in the Middle East, which seemed like a good fit. While managing their portfolio, she spent time with the CFO and learned about financial modeling and structuring. A bank in Germany asked if she would be the assistant head of the aviation finance practice and with that, she had gone full circle to experience literally every sector of the aviation industry: from flying to engineering to marketing to finance.

“Most people have one of these skillsets, but it’s unusual for anyone’s experience to be so broad-based,” Frye says, emphasizing how useful it is to have the ability to walk into a meeting with an astute understating of the technical engineering side, even if they’re discussing marketing, for example.

When most firms shuttered their aviation practices during the economic crisis in 2009 and 2010, Frye decided to become an independent consultant until the dust settled, a role she ended up holding for seven years, leasing aircraft to companies, advising airlines and various governments, high net worth individuals who were investing, and even the military for the inflight refuelling fleet. This consultancy work culminated in being named “Interim Head of Aerospace Risk” at UK Export Finance, part of HM Treasury in London, immediately prior to joining PwC.

“While it was incredibly varied, it was also a little isolating,” she says. She wanted to step back into something more solid, but knew she could wait for the right role, which came when PwC asked her to head up their aviation sector in December. She finds it to be the perfect fit, because it’s as if she has her own business as she builds out her team, but with the brand equity of PwC.

And she knows without a doubt that she never could have landed where she is if not for the accumulation of her experience to date — connecting the dots, so to speak.

Frye looks forward to building out the team: While she appreciates that PwC is so forward thinking and takes a long-term view, her group’s challenge is to communicate to the industry that they can offer the broad range of skills and support that they do.

“I am excited to have such strong resources that will allow us to really build a center of excellence in aircraft finance,” she says. “We don’t just want to just advise the industry, but help evolve it and pull it forward.”

While it has been a niche area for some time, it is now growing rapidly due to the emergence of markets like Asia and India that are seeing passenger numbers increasing exponentially, bringing with them record aircraft orders. “There is unprecedented growth, and our role is to help our clients navigate the huge amount of change and capitalize on the opportunity,” she says, while also helping them harness new technologies to make the industry more efficient.

An Industry Where Women Can Take Flight

Frye has always seen her gender as a benefit, since she stands out and can quickly prove her expertise. But, she notes that the biggest barrier the industry faces is getting women to join at all. For example, when one of her fellow female classmates said she wanted to join cabin crew, Frye quickly asked why not flight deck, and was gratified when the friend subsequently became a pilot. The incident opened Frye’s eyes that it wasn’t an automatic choice or consideration for many women.

However, she doesn’t feel that the industry needs equality just for equality’s sake. “You need the best people in the role, and it should be irrelevant what gender they are,” she says.

She urges other women who might want to join the industry to remember that they don’t have to behave in a masculine way to get ahead. Women have an advantage with their high “EQ” and inquisitiveness, she finds.

Frye admits she is the first to say she doesn’t understand something, but finds men might also wonder but wouldn’t say it out loud. “That honesty comes across and works in your favor,” she notes. “It’s ok not to know everything and to ask questions. Being highly curious has informed my journey.”

Using Aviation As a Way to Open Minds

It goes without saying that Frye has a love of travel, which she has tried to instill in her children, ages 11 and 19, primarily to show them that the rest of the world isn’t like Western Europe. Her kids have a list and once a year she lets them choose a trip.

But she never forgets that these experiences are due to the magic of aviation. One highlight was a visit to Jerusalem which they found to be a melting pot of cultures. “We spent three hours learning history and cultures and having a delicious Arabic lunch with our host, and that evening we were back in London,” she says.

“I feel very strongly that if the planet is going to get better for any of us, we have to understand each other, and aviation is critical to that. The more we travel, the more understanding we have and the better our world will become.”

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