When Jennifer Doyle landed a temp job on the First Union trading floor in Charlotte, North Carolina, after graduating from college, she felt like she'd won the lottery.
At the time Doyle didn't know much about Wall Street or investment banking, or sales and trading. But as a former college tennis player, she relished the fast pace and competitive nature of the work.
"It was truly right place, right time," she said.
Doyle parlayed her temp job into a 25-year career starting at First Union, its successor Wachovia and then Wachovia's acquirer,
The group, which has about 500 employees, formed in 2022 from the combination of separate lending and sales/trading units. It offers direct structured lending, in addition to the underwriting and distributing of asset-backed securities. Through sales and trading, the unit also distributes structured securities for issuing clients.
Thanks to groundwork laid over several years, the structured products group ranked No. 1 for the first time in asset-backed securities on Bloomberg charts. It has also been a top performer in collateralized loan obligations and non-agency residential mortgage backed securities. Revenue, meanwhile, rose by double digits in 2024.
"It's been a very concerted effort for us to get to where we are today," Doyle said, noting that it has been a team win.
As a leader, Doyle said she believes in partnership and transparency. "I'm happy to share information and share credit."
Earlier in her career, Doyle said she tended to keep her head down at work. But she has learned over the years to speak up and say what she thinks. "I do often have a different view," she said.
Doyle continues to find ways to challenge herself athletically, as well. She learned golf to keep up with her family: Her husband was a college golfer, and their two teenage sons also took up the sport. She recently played in the
Doyle also draws lessons from her experience in 2009 as a passenger on Flight 1549, which famously crash-landed in the Hudson River with all passengers surviving. Doyle was on a business trip shortly after
The experience reinforced her natural optimism, which she also recognizes as a choice made in response to traumatic events.
In a memo to staff during the Covid-19 pandemic, she wrote: "We will all experience it differently. We will all remember it differently but the decisions we make and where we go from here has yet to be determined. Who do we want to be? The optimists or the pessimists? Who we are innately will dictate our first intuitions but at the end of the day we have a choice and I, for one, continue to choose optimism."
