Working on Wall Street, past and future

What was it like to work on Wall Street 20 years ago? And what has changed since then? Our current and former honorees discuss their biggest career challenges, and what advice they have for women ascending the ranks in banking and finance.

Transcription:

Mary Ellen Egan (00:13):

Hello everyone. Good afternoon or almost afternoon. Thank you to my distinguished guests, Doreen, Penny and Kate. I thank you for taking the time to talk to us today and being talking about your storied careers and what you've seen in the industry. I think they're all current and former honorees, and Doreen was on the very first cover, and has had an amazing career as you all have. So I think given that it's the 20th anniversary of the list of the program, I thought we should first look back, take the temperature, see where we are now, and see perhaps where we'd like to go or where we'd like to see it to go. So I want to ask all of you to talk about your first, your early career days, maybe your first big job or your first job, and what the environment was like for women then, because I think as we know, especially those of us who have been around the block me more than a few times, that it was very different when I started out. And in some ways my career is still the same from a women's perspective. So Doreen, do you want to start?

Doreen Woo Ho (01:12):

Okay, thank you. I've probably been in the industry the longest, although I'm associated with San Francisco Opera, but my background was Citibank, Wells Fargo, and I ran a community bank for a short time. So I think what has struck me today is the fact, the difference today is I think in hearing all the conversations this morning is that there's a lot more intentional development, a lot more intentional opportunities that happened. In my case, it was more serendipity and I was very fortunate to have mentors who were actually my bosses who pushed me forward and saw a horizon that I didn't see for myself. So my first job as a manager was general manager of Citibank International in San Francisco. And it came because my boss, who I was chief of staff, decided to move to LA and he decided to put me in a management role, which I had not really anticipated myself, but that was my first step into my career into a management role. And then from then on, he also was the boss that moved me from corporate banking into consumer banking, which is very unusual to move from corporate, or commercial banking into consumer banking. And that's what really made my career move all the way over to Wells Fargo at the end.

Mary Ellen Egan (02:26):

Penny.

Penny Pennington (02:27):

Hi everybody. I'm Penny Pennington. I'm with Edward Jones, the managing partner, which is the CEO role in our company. I started in banking in 1985 down south with a little bank called Wacovia Bank. I started in the management training program and after I got out of that training program, my first leader was a woman. Now I don't know how they knew that I needed to be under the tutelage of a strong woman corporate banker doing all kinds of fun deals the southeast, but that was my image of corporate banking as I was first starting out. Now I realize that maybe that was unusual, maybe I was lucky but I also realized that I was hearing all kinds of things in the background conversation about what it was like to be a strong woman in corporate banking in the 1980s and the south. And so I know that that has been part of my narrative part of the soundtrack that I've had running in my head as a strong woman leader During my tenure in the industry, I actually left banking and went into the securities business into wealth management in 1999, 2000.

(03:42)

And one of the questions was, when was your first big role? I felt like every role was one where I was learning how to be influential in the space where I, I became a retail financial advisor. And so the influence that I had was with families who were planning for their financial futures during very anxious times. And so learning with a great deal of empathy, but also a lot of IQ helped them navigate through all of that was a big part of my upbringing at that stage in my career. And then I went into home office leadership in 2006. What has characterized that process from 2006 to the role that I'm in today as CEO of the organization is that I moved roles every three years into things that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. And I was sponsored into some of those roles and advocated for in those roles, there were two of those roles where I raised my hand for.

(04:48)

And what I was learning during that process is the process of learning a new horizon of opportunity was in itself a characteristic of my own leadership that was really important. How I learned as a leader was one of the most important attributes of my continuing leadership trajectory. And that I was willing to learn out loud and learn as a team and lead a team through a learning journey was a really important part of my leadership experience. I can't tell you how important that is today because there is simply no playbook for the cultural renewal and the strategic transformation that our company is going through, as well as the types of things that we are helping our industry through and helping our clients through. So Lear a leader learning out loud in front of everybody is what I've learned is the most important, one of the most important attributes of successful influence and leadership.

Kate Burke (05:56):

So hi, I'm Kate Burke. I'm the CFO and COO of AllianceBernstein. And actually I would say much of what Penny just said is similar to some of what I'm going to share with you. My first job in finance was actually an investor relations right out of college working for Tommy Hilfiger. And I had no idea what I was doing. I had been an econ major and very quickly had started speaking with investors on the street about a company and had to get quickly up to speed on how to read a p and l and a balance sheet and be able to convey that story to the investment community. But it really helped cement to me like the love of the markets. When I joined Alliance Bernstein, I had switched then to those research side and was a research salesperson where I sat on a trading floor and I was one of a handful of women on a floor of otherwise a hundred plus men.

(06:54)

And it was that very beginning and has been consistent throughout my career at AllianceBernstein that I've been fortunate I think, to always have a very strong group of peer women that I've been able to lean on during my entire career and be able to share our experiences as well as a passion for continuing to elevate women within the firm and work together to try to make the firm a more inclusive place for all people, but really help women achieve a seat at the table. And I think one of the characteristics that I would say is that was similar to Penny. I did not, I've not had a female manager actually ever in my career. So that is the difference a significant difference I would say. But I have been fortunate to have men that I've worked for who have recognized my skills and attributes and really I think taken a significant role in trying to mentor me and help round out my skills, starting with my first sales manager, Rick Gallardo, where he quickly gave me responsibilities, basically doing everything he didn't want to do, which became basically the arc of my career, which was, what is it that needs to be done that doesn't getting done that you don't want to do?

(08:18)

Let me take that off your plate and start doing that on your behalf. And with that increasingly round out my skillset, so that I went from sales to sales management had gotten involved with the firm's training and development and was eventually tapped in a very non-linear move from my perspective of where I thought my value was as someone who wanted to be a revenue generator and producer to move into a role as head of human capital. And that was my most significant big role that I felt. And this is where my story with Penny is similar, is that I wasn't really prepared necessarily for that role, but I knew what I didn't know and I knew that I could ask good questions. And so over then the course of the last seven years, it's been through inquiry and honesty about what I know, what I don't know, and what I value in all the subject matter experts and what they bring to the table and appreciating their knowledge and recognizing what they're doing.

(09:19)

That has enabled me, I think, to gain the trust of my colleagues so that when we are trying to do problem solving along the way that I'm coming from a place where I'm an honest broker, I don't have an ax to grind, I don't have a preconceived notion, but I'm really in there to try to do what's best in the best interest of our clients and our firm. And I've always tried to lead with that level of integrity. And along the way, I've been fortunate to have mentors. My, my CEO today who has said, okay, you've learned that. I tell him I'm, what's the baseball term? This is terrible now I forget it. Designated hit. Designated hitter. Thank you. What you worked, you worked in finance long enough, you got to learn enough of sports analogies the designated hitter to step in where there was a need in the organization. And saying yes, despite oftentimes having my own level of discomfort or fear that I didn't necessarily know enough yet, but getting comfortable that I knew enough to be able to ask the right questions and be able to help the organization move forward. And so that's been really important, instill instilling that confidence in me and having that sort of mentorship in the firm.,

Mary Ellen Egan (10:33):

Kate, that kind of brings to mind when talking about the being to say, I don't know. I think back in my early career, the guys never said, I don't know, they are just kind of bluffed their way through. And so I was like, if I bluff, I'm going to get caught. So I would just say, quite frankly, I don't know, which has been actually a very useful tool in my career and still is because I can't pretend to know everything, and I find out more interesting things if I admit that out loud. So I think that's one of the, and not the stereotype, but I think women are kind of better about saying that and sometimes asking for help, sometimes not. So I wonder, because you've all been leaders as well and our leaders, are there certain qualities that you think that women bring to that role or bring to the workplace that, I mean, we talk and I think there'll be some discussion later about leading with empathy.

(11:23)

I think that there are certain, I, I've had both male and female mentors and they've both been great, but the female mentor I had, there was a special connection. And I think because she was more patient with me when I was starting out because trust, I mean, I could not write a paragraph to save my life, but she would sit down online, edit with me, and none of the men would do that for me. So anyway. So I'm wondering in your experiences, either as a leader or being led, what you think, if there's a different kind of mix that we bring to...

Doreen Woo Ho (11:52):

I would say number 1, I think women have a better sense of intuition. And I think echoing what Penny and Kate said, I think it is a learning experience. I have been thrown into many roles, particularly at Citibank where I was totally unprepared. I was put into jobs where I had no background in, but there was a need. So in those days, Citibank was expanding. And so they just put me in. And after I sort of got a reputation for being able to solve a problem they decided just to throw me in with baptism by fire. And I think you learn the first time, it's very uncomfortable. I had to lean very heavily on people around me because I didn't know all the answers. And as I think Kate mentioned, you really have to learn how to ask the right question and pick the people around you very carefully and be willing to sort of say, well, I'm willing to listen to you.

(12:42)

And the other thing that I find over the years, it's really important, is situational leadership. I could be in a meeting and we're trying to solve a problem and there's all sorts of senior people and there's junior people sitting in the room. And in many cases, the junior person who's working the problem tactically, operationally actually knows the answer, but nobody's going to call on them. And you have to actually go around and ask, and you have to see the leadership of the meeting of that discussion to that person because they know the most and you're going to hear the input. They may not necessarily have all the options for the solution, but they're going to frame it for you, tell you what the issues are, give you the facts, and then you can have a very robust discussion about the solution. So I really am a very strong believer in situational leadership in certain situations where you see your leadership role to someone else who you think knows more about it than you, and recognize that that's okay and let them become a leader. And it may be they're not going to be the leader forever, but for that moment, for that problem, for that issue, they are the one that's going to lead the rest of the group. And I found that that's extremely useful in solving problems.

Penny Pennington (13:49):

I'll use that, Doreen, as a jumping off point for something that I think women are, I think some of the research says this is true. I know I've found it true in my own leadership journey, and it was amplified for me yesterday because we had a DEI, panel with a woman who is disabled, and she works with other disabled folks matching employers and employees. And she said, what's fundamentally important when you look different than maybe everybody else in the room is for you to, in particular, to know what your superpower is and be able to exhibit that superpower in ways that are influential and effective. And one of the last questions was, what do you see more clearly than anybody else seems to see? You see it and it's kind of obvious to you, and you're wondering why nobody else is talking about it.

(14:51)

And sometimes I've had this experience, I see something so clearly, it's so obvious, it's like, well, then I must be the one who's wrong because nobody else is talking about this or sees it. So the reason that I say that is that you see things very, very clearly that others may not. The research says that women are able to draw on many different threads to create a story or a mosaic about what's really happening in a way that's not necessarily linear. What I just described is the way the world operates. It's not linear in a multi-stakeholder world where as leaders, we have to satisfy the needs of clients and colleagues in every community where we serve and the policy makers and the regulators and the media, we are asked to draw on threads and put together this sort of conception, this theory of the business or theory of the future. I find that women are particularly adept at doing that. And if you feel like that's part of your superpower and nobody else is thinking that way or talking that way, that's exactly why you need to be at the table because that's the way the world operates. It takes courage to do that. It takes compassion. I just learned this duo in inquiry and honesty to do that. And so I would just challenge you to draw on that superpower then to know what it is and to speak into it at every table where you are.

Kate Burke (16:31):

I'm not sure I want to say anything after that. Both of these were so great. The only other thing I think that I would add to it that women should continue to lean into, particularly where you may still often be one of the only women, if not the only women in the room, is to have that confidence that what you're thinking is of value. That differentiated point of view is necessary to help move the conversation and not let the fear of, I always had the opposite reaction of if I'm thinking this, that means everyone already thought of this and I'm just catching up versus saying, if I'm thinking this, I should be able to speak it, speak it, and raise it. And what I have found over the course of my career is the more confidence I had in listening to that voice and using listening as a key skill.

(17:26)

In those meetings, oftentimes I'll say, I've heard people speak over each other and not hear what the other person is saying on the other side of it. And so you have this back and forth when you're debating something and the conversation's not moving forward. I think women are particularly adept at taking pause and listening to what is being said and then coming in and trying to provide the clarity or provide the communication of what the two points of views are and get to the point of then this is what we need to resolve. Where do we agree and where do we disagree? So leveraging that listening and then leveraging your voice is I think something that women use astutely because we've learned to do it over time and and how to engage in those conversations that when we do it tends to be high impact.

Mary Ellen Egan (18:15):

So looking back on the early days of your career, what is it the one thing would've told your younger self that you wish you would've known or might have been helpful and you kind of learned the hard way? I mean, sometimes I think the only way to learn is the hard way, but there are sometimes useful pieces of advice. So I'd be interested to hear when you look back and think like, oh, I wish I should would've known whatever it may be.

Doreen Woo Ho (18:39):

Well, I think today everything that I've heard today is everybody is much more willing to speak up and ask and also make your intentions as well as aspirations known. I think that early on in my career, I sort of, well, being Asian too, I was quiet, so I thought, well, if I do a good job, I'll be taken care of. I learned as I went through my career, I had to really speak up a lot more. I had to sort of demonstrate that not was I just my performance and the results, but I had to speak about what my intentions and aspirations would be. And I had to speak on a broader level than just for myself. It was for my business, for my people that worked for me. And so I think I learned a little bit the hard way. I think what I hear today is I think you all are being encouraged to speak up a lot earlier about your aspirations, where you should go looking for mentors.

(19:33)

I didn't necessarily look for mentors, but I had certainly two or three key mentors that pushed my career forward. And if I hadn't had them, I wouldn't be where I did and I wouldn't have ended up, even after I left my operational role, I wouldn't have ended up on several boards, which I have served on. And since US Bank is a big sponsor here at this event, I have to give them a shout out. I was on the board of US Bank for eight years and as well as a venture capital lending board. So I think speaking up in a, I guess not in an aggressive sort of I wouldn't want to say this, but sometimes women are called bitchy, but don't do it. You have to do it in a graceful way, but I think you need to just mention that what you want to do and where you want to go. And even when the earlier panel just about board opportunities, I didn't realize when I was in an operational role that I got approached and I did not take those board opportunities until I retired. And so I think you have to take the opportunities as they come to you and speak up earlier. So for me, it was being much more intentional than just letting things happen to me. I was lucky. I really do think that serendipity and luck helped my career, so I don't want to take all credit for myself.

Penny Pennington (20:46):

I mentioned that idea of being able to see things so clearly and I've created more work for my organization and less value at the times that I saw something that was sort of an ambitious statement of an ideal future for a particular part of the company. And I demured from it and I said, well, maybe we can get halfway there. I see it. I see that north star. Maybe we can get halfway there. And I'm in a circumstance right now where five years later we're got to pick up and do the other half. It's like, damn, why didn't I push harder? Why? What were the skills that I needed to learn to bring others into that common understanding of what I saw? And there had to have been something there that I was saying, well, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe what I'm seeing, right? But I, I also knew that I was carrying my slide deck around about what that ideal future state was all over the place.

(21:53)

And I was socializing people to those ideas. And with inquiry and honesty, I was saying, what do you think the North Star should be? And there was alignment around some of those things. And for whatever reason, it was I demured from what could have been the best place to be. And so now we're having to go back and redo some of that work. So I think what the advice that I would give to my younger self is to be bolder. Just that to be bolder the organization that you love, the people that you serve, the people that you serve alongside will be in a better place two years from now and five years from now. When you say what you see and help oriented a team or a company around it

Kate Burke (22:43):

I would say don't be so hard on yourself or not to be so hard on myself still today sometimes thinks, why think to myself, why am I being so hard on myself and is everyone holding me to the same level of accountability that I'm holding myself? I also think that's a power that you want to leverage and use and use as a motivation to continue really and drive yourself forward. But there have been times where I've let that inner voice and that frustration or self-doubt, I think take on too much weight or been too hard on myself about the choices I've made over various points of the my career. And to me, the phrase I like least in life is work life balance. And I like, at least when someone says to me, it's amazing, it looks like you have it all figured out. And I'm like, no, I don't.

(23:36)

Right. And that's sort of that honesty of saying, don't be so hard on, I wish I hadn't felt like I had to always have it all figured out or try to always project also that image externally as well as then try to feel it internally and had a little bit more grace with myself about when there's challenges, let myself live in that moment and be okay with it, and then figure out how to still move forward. Versus sometimes I think just pushing it aside and not necessarily em embracing that opportunity to reflect and learn and let yourself have that breath in the moment and recognize that you're still doing pretty well, and that's okay and feel okay about that. I feel women oftentimes can be the har or the harshest critic critics of ourselves, and oftentimes even of our peer women in the organization about what we expect everyone to represent consistently in an environment that the standard wasn't set by women. And so letting yourself be who you are in the workplace and getting more comfortable with that. I wish I had started earlier in my career.

Doreen Woo Ho (24:46):

Could I just make one more comment? I think it's important which I didn't realize, is you know, have to realize what kind of brand are you creating for yourself, and you need to develop that early on, and you have to be genuine. So it can't be something you're going to project that you're not. But you have to understand what is the message you want to communicate about yourself and not only create that brand so other people perceive you need to check in and get feedback, whether it's through your boss, your peers, or even your subordinates to know is that brand resonating for yourself? And because it's that brand, eventually that's going to project your career. So you may think you have a great brand, but if everybody else thinks, no, no, you've got lots of issues, then it's not going to help you. But you need to ask yourself, what kind of brand do I want to project? And we all know how to make presentations. It's more about making sure the message gets across than all the information on the slide. It's the message. So what message are you sending about yourself and being self-aware that early on in your career, not letting your career shape it by itself, but helping to proactively shape it.

Mary Ellen Egan (25:56):

Thank you. That's a good segue. Think until we have time for a final question. We've seen the industry change. We've seen women rise up through the ranks, not as much as we'd like. We don't see as much diversity as we'd like. What do you think, I mean it's too broad to address in five minutes, but what kind of changes do you think banks or institutions can do to help promote and pull people in maybe earlier in their careers and give them some support? Or is there any specific thing you've seen happen or what have you seen change the most and where do you think we could go from here?

Doreen Woo Ho (26:30):

Well, I think most organizations now obviously all have DEI efforts, and there's a lot, we talked earlier in some of the sessions about leadership succession and pipeline development. I think it's very important to identify people younger and nine squares, whatever you want to use in terms of people's potential. I think the organization has a responsibility to do that, a senior management does, but the people who are in the list also have a responsibility and accountability to move forward. I think particularly in banking, the one thing I would say is perseverance is really important. There's so many people that when I first joined banking that were talented, competent, just as smart or maybe smarter than myself but they didn't last because they got sort of distracted or maybe they decided work life balance, they just didn't stick it out. And so sticking it out is very important. But I think that these days, I think there's more intentions by organizations to develop women and people of color but you have to give them the opportunities and you do have to take some risks on these people so that they can flourish and show that they're qualified and can succeed in their roles.

Penny Pennington (27:43):

I think just amplifying that, Doreen, it's recognizing as business enterprises that the only companies that don't have to worry about bringing lots of different perspectives and experiences to the table are the ones who don't plan to be here in 10 or 20 years. One of my favorite phrases is, if you don't like change, you will irrelevance even less <laugh>. And we already know that with wealth transfer, with how heterogeneous our economy is becoming multi-generational, multiracial, multiple points of view, that we have to have all of those points of view at the table. And so as an enterprise leader, I, like Doreen is talking about am working at the personal level on what I believe and why I believe it. On the interpersonal level across our teams and on the structural level, we have representation goals for women and people of color. We do that because it opens our aperture and raises our awareness that if we look homogenous and those that we sell to don't, then we are not going to be relevant five and 10 and 15 and 20 years from now. So the business case is very, very clear, but that also calls on us as human beings to have this conversation with ourselves and with those that we serve alongside about our experiences and how our experiences are shaping what our current and our future.

Kate Burke (29:19):

So I think we're at a period where there is a real focus on what the future world is going to look like in a recognition that it is going to be a much more mosaic world of clients and that we need to reflect that. I also though believe that there's been an important shift in some of the diversity and inclusion work to add this idea of equity. We've always prided our firm on this concept of meritocracy. If you're the best, you'll rise to the top. And there's a increased recognition that not everyone is starting at the same place when they enter into the door at ab. And so if we want to be a firm that enables all talent to be able to flourish than it is more incumbent upon us to meet our talent where they are, wherever they are in the organization and be intentional.

(30:10)

And I think intentionality was a word said earlier about the efforts were of what our efforts are in helping raise them up and provide them with the support structure and the development that they need that is unique to them, not the same for everyone. And so that recognition of the individual and what the individual needs versus we create programs, everyone gets the same thing all the time and good luck, I think is a real difference that firms are starting to encourage and embrace. It requires more effort and significant more intentionality about how you're dealing with those and trying to create some obviously scale in what you're doing. You can't do it totally one-on-one, but trying to figure out how you create those relationships internally in the organization so that people are getting that development and getting the recognition of where they are and where they want to go, I think is an important step that many firms are taking and really will help bode well for better representation and diversity across the organizations in the future.

Mary Ellen Egan (31:13):

Well, sadly, we're out of time. Thank you so much, Penny and Kate and Doreen, for a really fantastic and candid conversation. I really appreciate it.