Sallie krawcheck biography examples
I loved listeing to this interview with Sallie Krawcheck so much. I have been following Sallie’s career for years, and I had no idea I was going to see her in person until I showed up for the Forbes Executive Women’s Forum for a speaking engagement, and there she was, speaking right before I did. She was mesmerizing: Funny, authentic, quick on her toes and gorgeous.
But I most love her for her honesty. Everyone does. Even the Citigroup board of directors. It’s how she got her job. The short history of Sallie is that she was an analyst on Wall Street and when the analysts started compromising ethics during the dotcom boom she was one of the most high-profile analysts who didn’t, so her career went into super-high gear during the dotcom fallout. Now she is CEO of Citigroup’s Global Wealth Management. She’s the highest ranking woman in finance.
[Editorial note: I didn’t conduct this interview – questions came from Forbes editor Elizabeth MacDonald and an audience of about sixty people. I edited the interview below, and changed questions. I was the audience member who asked the question about stay-at-home dads.]
What is a good first job for someone who wants to run their own company?
I tell all young people to become an analyst after school. You pull out bits of information and put together a picture. Sometimes it looks like a dog or sometimes a cake. Then you make decisions with imperfect information. And when you get another piece, you say oh it’s not a cake. So its practice making decision with imperfect information. This is what you do as a CEO every day.
Why aren’t women at the top of companies?
There is something about women getting tired. They get to be thirty and they get tired. Add up all the time that you are not with the kids and not working but you are doing hair and makeup while your husband sleeps. It’s two-and-a-half hours a week. It drags you down. Also, women are not able
225 Years of Tar Heels: Sallie Krawcheck
Editor’s note: In honor of the University’s 225th anniversary, we will be sharing profiles throughout the academic year of some of the many Tar Heels who have left their heelprint on the campus, their communities, the state, the nation and the world.
Long labeled ‘the most powerful woman on Wall Street,’ Sallie Krawcheck has held prominent positions as CEO of Merrill Lynch, Smith Barney and Sanford C. Bernstein, as well as CFO of Citigroup. Her quick rise has been attributed to her accessibility, sharp problem-solving skills and ability to read the needs of investors. Fortune magazine once featured her in “In Search Of The Last Honest Analyst.”
She more plainly puts it in a hockey metaphor. “Like Wayne Gretzky,” she says, “I skate to where the puck is going to be.”
Krawcheck aptly followed that instinct when she left Wall Street to throw her hat in the entrepreneurship ring. Thinking beyond the nation’s persistent issue of a gender wage gap, she saw a gender investment gap and founded Ellevest, a digital investment platform for women.
“It was like a lightning bolt of insight for me — the retirement savings crisis is a woman’s crisis. We live longer and retire with two-thirds of money as men do. Once I had that insight, it quickly cascaded into finding a way to solve this problem,” Krawcheck said.
Women are savvy, and they understand investing, she says, there just wasn’t an investment platform that takes into account the particular challenges women face.
“This isn’t ‘for women,’ ‘pink it and shrink it,’ make it smaller,’” Krawcheck told TechCrunch.
For this work, LinkedIn named her one of the Top 20 Voices of 2018 and Ellevest one of 2018’s 50 Most Sought-After Startups, and Vanity Fair put Krawcheck on their 2018 New Establishment List. She has been honored with both UNC General Alumni Association’s Distinguished Young Alumna Award (2003) and its Distinguished Service Medal (2017).
A South Carolina native, On a recent episode of Recode Decode, Ellevest CEO and co-founder Sallie Krawcheck told Recode’s Kara Swisher that she’s trying to fix Wall Street’s long-running ignorance of women. You can read some of the highlights from their discussion at that link, or listen to it in the audio player above. Below, we’ve posted a lightly edited complete transcript of their conversation. If you like this, be sure to subscribe to Recode Decode on iTunes, Google Play Music, TuneIn and Stitcher. Transcript by Celia Fogel. Kara Swisher: Today in the red chair is Sallie Krawcheck, the CEO and co-founder of Ellevest, which offers investment solutions for women. Ellevest argues that women approach investing differently and that other firms cater only to men — no surprise. Sallie knows a lot about that, having previously worked at Citi and Merrill Lynch, and since May 2013 has been chairman of Ellevate, a professional network for women. Sallie, welcome to the show. Sallie Krawcheck: Thank you Kara. Thanks for having me. Oh, I’m thrilled to have you here actually. We met at Sheryl Sandberg’s house. We were at a power lady thing. I remember that. A few years ago. Yeah. That’s Ladyfest, as I call it. And you had come and talked there and talked about various things. Let’s start with your history because you had quite a career on Wall Street. One of the few most prominent women, bankers essentially. Talk a little bit about what you’ve done and how you got to where you are. Yeah, so my background is I spent, I guess it’s decades, on Wall Street. Investment banker in the early days, hated it. Research analyst in my younger days, loved it. CEO of Sanford Bernstein. And then I ran Smith Barney, so I was the CEO of Smith Barney, the chief financial officer of Citigroup and then eventually the CEO of Merrill Lynch Wealth Management. So I’ve been around! A version of this article appeared in the Autumn 2017 issue of strategy+business. by Sallie Krawcheck, Crown Business, 2017 When Sallie Krawcheck lost her prominent investment banking job in 2011, she was intent on learning from the experience. She writes that she “hit the wine bottle,” thanked members of the board for the opportunity, assessed how she could have improved, contemplated what she loved about her previous jobs, and plotted her next move. The result, following nine networking introductions over several years, was the acquisition of 85 Broads, a women’s business network. Krawcheck’s Own It: The Power of Women at Work is a compelling guide for professional women who need to navigate a business world in transition. Own It is one of a number of books that have been published by and for emerging female business leaders, but Krawcheck’s Wall Street background — she was chief financial officer and head of wealth management at Citigroup and CEO of Merrill Lynch Wealth Management — ensures that the advice isn’t sugarcoated. As one of the few women who has negotiated with Sandy Weill (the former head of Citigroup) and Ken Lewis (the former head of Bank of America), Krawcheck has experience in being the only female in a room populated not by “cartoon-character villains,” as she puts it, but by middle-aged white men who had educational backgrounds, training program experience, and social connections similar to her own. Krawcheck’s Wall Street background ensures that the advice isn’t sugarcoated. The best parts of the book are when Krawcheck uses her born-and-bred-of-Wall-Street background to distill valuable lessons. For example, after starting as a data-driven research analyst at Sanford Bernstein, she got her first promotion while visibly pregnant. At that firm, as opposed to some other workplaces, she recalls, she was encouraged and able to speak more freely. “At which company do you think I was
Full transcript: Ellevest CEO Sallie Krawcheck on Recode Decode
Woman at Work
Own It: The Power of Women at Work