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Gender Diversity in Australian Investment Teams
108 Plays2 months ago
In this episode of AFI, we meet with Yolanda Beattie to discuss the Future IM/Pact Path to Parity report. Currently, in Australia, women comprise less than 10% of key decision-making roles in fund management teams, and less than 20% of portfolio managers are women. We attempt to unpack the causes, and the solutions to improving diversity in Australian Funds Management.
Alpha Females Invest is a financial investing podcast. With a blend of unique perspectives from both buy and sell sides of the market, we delve into insightful conversations with industry experts from the Australian finance sector.
Whether you're a seasoned finance professional, a student of finance, or someone eyeing a career in the industry, our content is tailored to enrich your understanding and proficiency in navigating the financial landscape.
Each episode is a deep dive into a specific financial topic, spanning equities, debt, cryptocurrency, and the intricacies of investment banking.
Stay informed, stay empowered, and tune in to The Alpha Females Invest for your dose of financial listening.
We aim to promote gender diversity by having at least an equal representation of female and male guests on our show.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speaker. The content in this episode is general in nature, and is for informational purposes only. It should not be construed as financial advice, it has not taken into account your personal financial position or objectives. Listeners are encouraged to seek professional guidance or conduct their own research before making any financial decisions. Please refer to a licensed adviser or tax agent and always read the relevant PDS for full product details. The views and opinions expressed on the podcast do not necessarily reflect those of Alpha Females Invest or its affiliates.
Our theme song and background music is courtesy of @tmykmusic.
Find out more here: https://alphafemalesinvest.com.au/
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Transcript
Introduction and Disclaimer
00:00:01
Speaker
As usual, any information discussed in this podcast is not financial advice. All opinions reflect those of the individuals and this podcast is for educational purposes only. You should always read the PDS and talk to a financial advisor who can consider your personal circumstances before you invest.
00:00:19
Speaker
If you like listening to Alpha Females Invest, we would love your support on Instagram at AlphaFemalesInvest, and you can also find us on LinkedIn. And if you do want to find out more information about us and our episodes, you can visit our website at alphafemalesinvest.com.au. And please note that episodes may be supported by guests from time to time.
Introduction to Yolanda
00:01:03
Speaker
Impact which is an industry initiative building passion for investing in young women and creating career pathways for the next generation of investors. Now, Yolanda has a background in marketing and communication and a track record of influencing change by expertly facilitating conversations that capture and shift hearts and minds. The last 10 years of her career have been focused on developing great leaders and nurturing high performance teams that attract and value diversity.
00:01:33
Speaker
In that time, she's held senior executive positions at the Workplace Gender Equality Agency and MRSA before establishing her own consultancy in 2019, Yo & Co. with Future Impact as a foundation program. She's passionate about the power of great ideas and interesting conversations to change people and brings to clients infectious energy, passion for breaking the mould and insatiable desire to get to the heart of issues in pursuit of solutions that work.
00:02:02
Speaker
Yolanda holds a bachelor degree in commerce and a master's degree in public policy and is a certified executive coach and accredited Enneagram practitioner. So welcome to the show, Yolanda. Thanks for having me.
Yolanda's Career Insights and Challenges
00:02:17
Speaker
So to kick us off, we like to start each episode in the same way. So do you, Yolanda, have an embarrassing career moment you might be able to share with us? Embarrassing career moment. Look,
00:02:32
Speaker
If I think about, I've certainly had some moments where, in retrospect, I can see the witnesses are really embarrassing at the time, but in retrospect, I cringe, right? And now that I work in the area of leadership development and high-performance teens, all of that work is focused on deep self-awareness. And I can now see how little self-awareness I've had in previous incarnations of my career, right? And so if I probably think about particularly in my time at the workplace gender equality agency where I was sitting around an executive table and was so in retrospect, I can see so driven by ego, so needing to dominate, so needing to be right. And that's what we call um in our programs, this concept of being below the line.
00:03:18
Speaker
below the line stuck in ego, stuck in drama, um ah fueled by righteousness. And so I can see in retrospect so much of how I operated from that threat state.
00:03:32
Speaker
and in ways that really undermined team cohesion, drove outcomes. I think there were some positive results that come from that type of style. But in retrospect, I can see was not my best self most of the time. And so I definitely cringe when I think back at some of those times.
00:03:55
Speaker
Yeah, I think we've we've all had those cringe moments in our career.
Founding Future Impact and Gender Diversity
00:03:59
Speaker
So for the benefit of the audience, can you just provide us with a little bit of background information on what future impact is and I guess what drove you to create an organisation that does such an look has such an impact on you know careers and focus on gender diversity particularly?
00:04:17
Speaker
Yeah, sure. So it all started, I'd left the Workplace Gender Equality Agency. so This is back in 2016. I was a newly appointed Head of Diversity and Inclusion at MRSA. And that was a consulting role. So I was in the market of finding problems to solve that people were willing to pay me to solve.
00:04:33
Speaker
And I was sitting on the investor working group with a 30% club, which was just forming at the time, and sitting around with the CEOs and CIOs who were reflecting on how are they going to get their portfolio managers and analysts to advocate for more women on boards. And it was actually Mark Glassberger, who was the then CEO of Colonial First Aid Global Asset Management, who kept saying, we've got a problem, guys, because we've got mostly men in these roles. and a lot of them are all male or certainly male dominated teams and we want to be getting these male dominated teams to be advocating for more women on boards when clearly they're not really doing enough for themselves to to get more women into their teams.
00:05:11
Speaker
And he said it a couple of times, and I that just kind of kept peeking. I you just go, well, that sounds like a problem that's worth solving. And, you know, my background I've worked in and around funds management my whole career. So because what I also then started to kind of get curious about, well, myself of like, why are there so few women when it's, you know, funds management is not nearly as blokey as say.
00:05:30
Speaker
broken or invested banking ah or even you know some aspects of law. And so it felt like it was a problem that was that was really worth getting to understand and then and working out what we could do to solve it. And so we did this big piece of research. I got a stack of different fund managers to pay.
00:05:48
Speaker
and super funds to pay ah me to to to do the research. And we collected a whole lot of data that was looking at actual workforce data. So it was composition across different levels, appointment promotion, exit rates, and then a whole lot of experiential quant data. So you know lived experience of men versus women, and then a whole lot of um qualitative data through focus groups.
00:06:09
Speaker
And we we spoke with people and surveyed people from university all the way through to the most senior levels of organisations to look at all of the different strengths and barriers that there were for women in navigating that path into investment teams and then up into more senior roles.
00:06:27
Speaker
ah which revealed a whole lot of stuff that we we can talk about. But coming out of that was a really obvious challenge um where women at university were less likely to know about careers in investment management. And if they did know about it, they were they were more likely to say they weren't going to fit in. So we could see that the Hollywood stereotypes of Wolf of Wall Street and billions and the like were impacting their view of the industry.
00:06:51
Speaker
But probably the biggest issue was a structural issue, which means, which is that teams are small, turnover's low, and there's an experienced bias across the system, such that it is highly unlikely for an investment team to recruit interns or grads. So nobody was on campus talking about this career pathway. And yet the investment banks, the management consulting firms, the law firms have these massive on-campus presence, scooping up all of the grads.
00:07:19
Speaker
What that meant was is that if you, a woman became an investor, it was almost always by accident. And the amount of stories that I heard of of women that it was like, oh, I just stumbled into this career path.
00:07:30
Speaker
Whereas men were much more likely to have a very intentional move, um sell side to buy side, and were in an almost cliche way inspired by Warren Buffett, George Soros, some big high profile male investor, or somebody in their network that opened up those pathways for them.
00:07:52
Speaker
And so this hugely homogenous male um trodden path um just became, and unknowingly or unwillingly by anybody, a real barrier for women. And that's where Future Impact started, was a couple of years later, again, with another bunch of funding from different fund managers who were excited to tackle that issue.
Barriers and Progress in Investment Management
00:08:13
Speaker
and realised the power of collective effort in that area was to tell the story of how do you how do you launch a career as an investor and why would you want to do that anyway? What what what are the opportunities for young women in in this type of career? And that was six years ago. Amazing. Thanks so much, Yolanda. um such yeah Such an impactful and important organisation, solving yeah what what is a good problem to be solving. And on that note, you recently released a report called Path to Parity, which summarizes the research you conducted on gender equality in Australian investment teams. um So I think the statistic was that currently in Australia, women comprise less than 10% of the key decision-making roles, um and less than 20% of portfolio managers are female.
00:09:10
Speaker
So you you touched on a few reasons earlier, but perhaps could you help us unpack a little bit more what you think are the key reasons that have contributed to this limited female representation? So there the biggest challenge is is that this is a slow moving system, right? And so what we're seeing is Good, steady progress overall when it comes to getting more women into investment teams since we like launched the first report in 2016, which is where Future Impact started, right? So this program this report is seven years later, what's changing? And we can see composition has gone up overall in investment teams from 24% to 28%, which is great.
00:09:52
Speaker
ah That's being driven primarily at the grassroots level, but we can see we've fallen dropped at the portfolio manager level ah largely you know due due to reasons that we can't quite fully see in the data for various different reasons in terms of how we capture the data.
00:10:10
Speaker
But we can certainly see that we continue to see women leave at high rates um at the senior analyst level, despite them being brought into um investment teams at a proportionally good rate coming into those so as junior analyst levels. So what's what's happening there?
00:10:27
Speaker
The biggest thing is that as all of the funds try to get more women into their teams for a range of different motivations and reasons, and and mostly it's because they see the value of diversity, but certainly there's pressure across the ecosystem for them to do that. It's this big wall for talent where ah the poaching of senior analysts in particular is fierce, female senior analysts is fierce,
00:10:48
Speaker
um One fund's gain ends up being another fund's loss. And without ah more of an effort to bring women into the junior levels and promote them up, ah we're going to continue to get this talent recycling.
00:11:01
Speaker
So that that's that's probably one of the biggest issues. And it's also just a matter of time, right? you know In reality, when I first started working at this on this issue in 2016, which is not that long ago, ah it it was still relatively new for the industry to be being so concerted in their focus.
00:11:21
Speaker
the asset consultants and super phones were still still coming to grips. they were still They hadn't been as heavy in their advocacy of the need for diversity to improve in investment teams. So really it's only been seven or so years that there's been this level of focus. And I'd say it's been probably more the past three to five years that it's really ramped up. And the pathway is a slow moving pathway. So part of it is just time. And ah part of it is also a lack of focus in really driving the cultural change that's needed to retain great women that are that are in the industry. and so Part of that circling a talent will reflect the fact that women will, um because there's so many women that love what they do in investments, and so many women that want to be investors, and we come across them all the time. and so What will happen is is that they'll go into a team
00:12:11
Speaker
And you can see in a lot of women's careers, it's two or three years in this role, two or three years in that role. And they're shopping around waiting and looking to find the right team that they can feel really aligned to from a values perspective. So they can apply their intellectual curiosity in a team that feels like values their contribution. And that's really probably the the biggest piece that the industry is still grappling with. You can't just hire great women. You've got to do the work. to change yourself as a leader in order to be able to create the culture where they want to stay.
Benefits of Gender-Diverse Teams
00:12:47
Speaker
I mean, you raised so many good points. It's hard to touch all of them, all of them. But I think talent recycling is definitely an issue. And, you know, perhaps it's that we need to focus on getting new faces into the industry as well as, you know, retaining those that currently exist. And as you said, a lot of females love investment management, but they don't resonate potentially with the culture of the organization that they're working within. So You raised some really great points. and Another point in the reports that I read, you you quoted it within your path to parity research, was it female-led funds tended to perform better than male-led funds, particularly during times of market instability. and I think this is just a fantastic finding and you know that is that is quoted in your research. so
00:13:37
Speaker
Why do you think, or are there any particular drivers that make women great fund managers?
00:13:46
Speaker
Yeah, so while that's not my research, so I can't comment on the detail of that research. We quote we kind of reference that for um ah evidence, if you like, of why this why this is a matter, an issue to care about. What I can comment on, though, is what the leaders who do the work to bring more women into their teams, what they tell me makes a difference. And I actually think that's arguably the most compelling story to tell. And that when you have a leader that has this real head, heart, gut commitment to ah to bring in more women because they know it it will drive better conversations that lead to better performance. That's when you actually start seeing the cultural shift and the recruitment shift that that drives um gender diversity. And so what those leaders tell me is that when you have all male teams, there is more of a tendency for competitiveness in the team. And that competitiveness ends up being this ping pong of ideas
00:14:43
Speaker
of who's more right, rather than necessarily a genuine exploration of ideas, because the the nature of of of that homogenous ego dynamic um ah creates that competitiveness that doesn't lead to the conversations that generate the best ideas.
00:15:01
Speaker
So that's one thing. Women tend to be socialised to, be and particularly in male-dominated teams, they've had to that they' had to learn that if they come in acting like a man, they're they're less likely to be heard. So then they they get judged more harshly. And so they're they you know rightly or wrongly tend to then um be better at playing the game of how do I get myself heard? How do I be a little bit more nuanced or even a little bit more political or a little bit more careful? How do I how do i ask the questions and and make the comments that have other people come along? So they end up just basically being conditioned to being more sophisticated in their influencing than men who tend to have been able to just come in and just say it how how how they want to say it.
00:15:48
Speaker
They also tend to have more humility, um less less can um less needing to be right, um which means that they're more um open to looking at where they're wrong, exploring what they don't know, admitting weaknesses, greg being more vulnerable.
Strategies for Retaining Female Talent
00:16:05
Speaker
And while these are massive generalizations, right, you know anybody who's listening to this will be able to think of many women that don't fit that mold, and of course, because we're all way more complex than that,
00:16:14
Speaker
But it's this tendency, this style type of women that's in contrast to men that when you bring them both together, you end up creating a dynamics that lead to conversations that generate and pursue ideas that lead to alpha. Wow. That's really interesting. Thanks, Yolanda. Um, like how you discussed, um, you know, combining teams with like maybe A female portfolio manager might have a more nuanced perspective or a different way of asking questions and combining that with maybe a more traditional.
00:16:48
Speaker
and direct question asking style can lead to good dynamics and harmonies in the team. It's really interesting. I became to discuss retention of female talent a little bit. So we saw that in 2017, your research found that women were 50% more likely to leave at a senior analyst level and men were 30% more likely to be promoted.
00:17:12
Speaker
um Fast forward to 2024, the similar report found that promotion rates are equal for men and women, but women are still 40% more likely to leave at that senior analyst level. What as an industry do you think that we can do just so to support women at this level? And what what do you think is driving the increasing dropout rate?
00:17:34
Speaker
Yeah, I do think, but maybe if I can comment on what I've seen improved to make me feel a little bit less concerned about that particular statistic. um And what I've seen improved, so when we did the roundtables and one-on-one interviews back in 2016, the experience of women at that time was was really quite different. and And the biggest difference I would say has been COVID and hybrid working.
00:18:00
Speaker
And not just because women now have the ability, the flexibility to be able to work from home at least some of the time, and there's just more acceptance around that. But there's just a different trust dynamic that is happening in teams when women are given the flexibility to work from home. And everybody actually, more of a point, everybody's given the flexibility to work from home sometimes. Most organisations, not all, but most organisations are ah so ah mandating three days or so in the office, but there's an expectation that up to two days is fine. Some are mandating full time and There will be some implications for that, no doubt. um But the the trust that gets created in a system where you've got some hybrid working has been massive. So that's been a significant shift to the retention, the improvements in retention. And even though it's still 40% leaving at the senior analyst level, it's less than 50% more likely to. um and um And I think that that's much more driven by the talent recycling than it is women leaving the industry.
00:18:57
Speaker
Whereas back in 2016, when we first did those roundtables, we were hearing lots of stories of, you know, I just, flexibility, I'm told there's no flexibility, so I don't know how I'm going to handle it when I, if I was to have a second child or just the view that, put um, ah managing parental leave was just you know so poorly done um where there was just a view of yeah there's the circling of of of um vultures as women were about to go off on parental leave of who was going to get their book of clients or who was going to get their portfolio and just a really poor handling of those issues.
00:19:31
Speaker
and And what we've seen different, which again gives me that feeling that there's much more of that exit rate is about the talent recycling piece. And we can see it's happening much more likely to happen within asset owners than asset managers, where we know they handle that those dynamics much more.
00:19:48
Speaker
effectively than than the than the asset managers do typically. um So all that to say is that I think that you know we've done so much better to handle parental aid than flexible working, um and yet there is still just this lack of women in the system that means that we're getting that big recycling.
00:20:06
Speaker
Yeah, I do. That's interesting. But I guess following on to one of our other questions, given that you're talking about parental leave, which is kind of a elephant in the room when it comes to you know portfolio management, because the reality is that as an industry, the investment management very much has key person risk. And if that key person happens to go on parental leave, that does leave a gap that needs to be either filled or managed appropriately. so Is there a structure that we can take to manage money that doesn't create a big problem when the concept of parental leave comes up? And is introducing equal leave part of that solution for both you know maternity and parental? like Is it just parental leave that should that should exist? And I guess how can we position the culture around the firm to encourage people to take
00:20:58
Speaker
the appropriate amount of time off, and particularly on the you know father side, paternal side, is is there a way that we can encourage everyone to take to make use of that leave so that there's not that bias between males and females in in portfolio management and investment management? Yeah, look, there's so much in there, isn't there? And it just kind of talks to there's no silver bullet. um But there are some really basic things that you just have to get right. And the most important thing for all of this is mindset.
00:21:26
Speaker
And it's the we make it work mindset. So once you have this decision of we'll just make it work, guess what? You just look at all of the different things that need to happen to make it work. And probably the firm that um I've heard do this really well is Fidelity. And if I think of, um ah you know, when I spoke to Kate Howard, who was the who was a then portfolio manager,
00:21:50
Speaker
um She's an inventor in our level up program, um now retired from investing, um but was at Fidelity for close to 20 years. And when she she tells the story of when she um um was you know having you know she had two babies when she was at a Fidelity, and and like a lot of women had that feeling of, should I, you know feeling really guilty? you know What are we going to do? Are you sure you want to hire me? I'm thinking about having a baby. you know What do I do now? I'm going to have a second baby.
00:22:16
Speaker
and um And the people who were hiring her, she actually mentioned it in her interview, said to her, well, we plan that you you have a long many year career with us, so you have a baby, you take your time off and we just make it work, right?
00:22:31
Speaker
Now, without a doubt, that creates pressure in the rest of the team because you um ah you know a lot of firms have a policy they don't cover, um ah people when they exit, they just make it work within existing resources. And so they there that definitely creates pressure across the system. But when the whole system has that view of we make it work and you have more people that are then taking up, particularly the paternity leave, when you have more fathers taking it up, um you just you just end up creating the dynamics where that people just fill in where it's required. um So that's the most important thing is is a mindset if we make it work. And if I look at then some of the other things that's important, then it's obviously obviously having the lead provisions um that says um ah that you know we we gender neutral um parental leave, that it's not about maternity or paternity leave, but that men and women have the same access.
00:23:26
Speaker
Some of the more innovative stuff I've seen happen there is in the um management consulting firms that give options up to two years um for um fathers to take um that parental leave because it's often a woman, in particularly from a breastfeeding perspective, that's going to take time in that first six to 12 months. And so giving small flexibility for when men can take parental leave after ah the woman's taken the full 12 months parental leave, for example.
00:23:49
Speaker
So having some generous provisions there that make it easier for men to then take it. And then it's modeling it, right? And heroing it, you know, it's really putting it on a platform that when a man does take parental leave, it's really encouraged and rewarded, and his story is told. And and and the the truth is, is that when fathers spend time with their infants, particularly sub one, there's a lot of research on this,
00:24:12
Speaker
the relationship that gets connected there and the bonding that that gets that gets established from that time, from when they're infants, bodes well for the whole life of that, the whole relationship. And so I think you know if more men knew that, and you know a lot of them think, oh you know once we can start you know kicking the footy or you know doing whatever, that's when bonding starts.
00:24:35
Speaker
All the research shows the bonding starts when when but when the babies. And so giving them more um insight into the importance of them taking leave for their own relationships um really helps. so And there are now lots of examples in many firms where men have taken advantage of that and and really gotten so much out of it.
Advice for Women in Investment Management
00:24:55
Speaker
Great, it's really interesting um to see different organisations across various industries as well um progress their parental leave um initiatives. It's really important. um Just to pivot a bit, Yolanda, if there is a female listening who wanted to enter the funds management industry or a junior female who's already in the industry who might have her sights on a portfolio manager role, what advice would you give to her?
00:25:27
Speaker
That's a big question, isn't it? um So the the first thing is is getting, like like in any A to B move, right? So let's say you're a senior analyst now, you've been, and and let's focus on listed equities, right, for for simplicity's sake. um And of course there are many, many different ways that you can get, it you know, you can have an investments role. So we're choosing a little bit of a cliched story here, but let's say you're a senior analyst um in a fund and you've been you made an in an analyst role for about 10 years,
00:25:56
Speaker
um you you're you You're ambitious and you really have that desire to move into portfolio management. The critical piece is firstly recognizing this is a long game, not a short game and not a fast game. and so um And that this is a career that you're likely, once you get to portfolio management, if you get to portfolio management, you could be spending decades if you do choose to stay in in that role. So having some um some patience that isn't about being, um so I think patience is a way that we almost, it's not demean, but we kind of minimise women's ambition much more than than we do men's using the word patience. But it's to recognise that there are many ways that you can expand your skillset and expand your
00:26:40
Speaker
your confidence, your conviction, your effectiveness as an analyst in the pathway into portfolio management. And it's getting clear about what does that look like for you? So if you're a senior analyst now, what do you need to be doing to get more exposure um into the required skills and behaviors and mindsets that happen at the portfolio manager level? What I hear many women are have to develop, and men, this is not just a ah gender thing, will be things like being able to move beyond just the confidence that you have when you have deep analysis on a stock into the ability to be able to form a view and have conviction around your view when you don't have that luxury because you've got to actually have a much broader view. And so much of portfolio management becomes much more about instinct
00:27:25
Speaker
than it does about um analysis. And that's a massive shift. It's a mindset shift that gets developed over time with experience in the role. It's about broadening your exposure in your networks. It's about being able to enhance your communication skills, ask questions when you don't have all the answers or or when you actually don't even know. um you know So it's it's a it's a different mindset and skill shift and a different identity shift.
00:27:51
Speaker
um that you need to get really clear about. What is that for you? If it's going to be different for you, then it's going to be for anybody else. And so crafting your own career plan um that supports that move over time with the right advocates backing you, which is another critical part of that of that advice, is how to get the right advocates backing you, giving you the that you know enough rope to be able to um test those skills. Sometimes we'd say you know some capital allocations or some capital slaves or whatever that might look like um as you step up into those bigger responsibilities and start looking at opportunities portfolio-wide, not just stock-wide. Then the final point that I would say um as well is that you want to be landing in a team where you feel like you're going to have that support.
00:28:42
Speaker
And if you don't feel like you've got that support in a team, then do your time because you don't want to be chopping and changing too quickly. um But do your research, build your network, and there's a whole lot of ways future impact can help you do that ah in order to be able to land in a team that you've got much more confidence is going to be able to build your confidence and um support your potential.
Future Impact's Support Programs
00:29:06
Speaker
Yeah, that's great. A whole bunch of really useful advice for our listeners there. And speaking of future impact, obviously your goal is to try and develop the talent and provide these opportunities. So can you talk about a few of the programs that you offer that kind of do allow women ti to get exposure or to develop their career? Yeah, I'd love to. And I just had a really good example just before jumping on this call tonight of of one way that we do that, which is career coaching calls.
00:29:34
Speaker
But before I get into that example, let me talk about broadly about what we do to get women into the industry and then how do we create the environments where they wanna stay and then advance. So the pathways work we do um ah to help women launch their career starts at university, but also goes into young professionals. So and we we really agonize um about this definition of what's young. Cause the truth is in know in our young professionals program, we have women that are in their late twenties, early thirties, there's a whole lot of,
00:30:03
Speaker
We've been doing fascinating things in different relevant industries and roles, and they want to they want to become an investor. So what we do there is um help them get educated, help them get informed. What are the different investment type of organizations? Because there are so many different organizations that have investment teams, from asset owners, to asset managers, to private wealth firms, to platforms, to um ah you know there's trading trading organizations, there's all different range of different organizations for you to be able to have the role of somebody who recommends, makes, or implements an investment decision, which is the universe that we seek to influence. Private equity was almost is almost like a bit of a standalone itself as an example of a different type of firm. So get educated on the types of roles, the skills you need, the levels you need, um the passion you need, um most importantly, as well as the core the core technical skills.
00:30:57
Speaker
Then um we help them get inspired by seeing and learning from people in the industry. So we have podcasts, um we have different networking events at different times of the year to then finally come into the role of gain experience and that gain experience we do through mentoring circles, investment competitions, and ah that young professionals mentoring and advocacy program where you get mentored over six months and you do an investment case over that time. to get really practical hands-on exposure. All of that that allows us to build a talent pipeline of women that are all geared up and excited about launching their careers so that when our partners have roles at that junior level, we help them place them.
00:31:41
Speaker
ah So that that's the kind of very active um career launcher program. And I mentioned the career conversation. So I was speaking to an incredible first year student just before who's studying finance and echos, planning to do an honours year and echo in echos and helping her think through how does she make the most of her time at university to get those skills, get the exposure, and really build her CV so she's best placed for different different career opportunities down the line. And so that's part of what we do too.
The 'Level Up' Program and Personal Development
00:32:10
Speaker
When it comes to then, um if that's the launching piece, then we've got the career accelerator program called Level Up, which is how do you, like what we're just talking about there, how do you go from senior analyst to portfolio manager or senior associate to um ah director um at a private equity firm, you know, whatever whatever role ah or organization type you're in, how do you move into a senior investment decision-making role? I already talked about that, that's about getting getting the skills. But what what our focus in that work is what we call the inner game.
00:32:39
Speaker
How do you get a much deeper understanding of your strengths and your shadows and what you need to do differently beyond the technical skills? Because what got you here to senior analyst or or so so or senior your associate is not gonna be what gets you into the next level. And so how do you need to shift at the level of identity and ego, working with strengths and shadows in order to be able to take that next move?
00:33:05
Speaker
And then finally, we work with leaders and teams to create the environments where everybody can do their best work, because we know that when it comes to investing, it's a team sport. that if you're in a great team, that's where the magic happens and the best teams don't happen by accident, right? They they get, they're developed, they're nurtured, they're led by great leaders who are constantly investing in team dynamics that are surfacing issues that are that are really creating the environments where constructive challenge happens, where any friction and personality conflict gets resolved, where the trust dynamics are such that people can really flourish and learn and grow.
00:33:43
Speaker
And that's what we do through our various different Teams programs. It's a whole host of different ways that we try to make a difference on this topic. That's amazing. um it's It's really awesome to see that you know you're tapping into early university students as early as first year and able to give them advice and support on their journey and really create that wonderful talent pipeline with your partners. And it's great to see that lots of investment management partners as well are really supportive of the initiative.
00:34:11
Speaker
um Well, Yolanda, you've given us so much amazing infant so so many amazing insights and advice today um that I'm sure all of our listeners will take away some really important messages from.
The Role of Self-Awareness
00:34:27
Speaker
um But with that being said, we would still love to hear if you have a top all-time career tip to share to share with our audience.
00:34:39
Speaker
So in a few words, and then I'm happy to liberate and layrate on ease, know yourself. Very powerful. And that's a lifelong journey that takes Deep self-reflection, there are so many great tools that are out there. If you've never had a coach, get yourself a coach. If you've never been profiled using really powerful profiling tools, do that. Read books, listen to podcasts and do the deeper work to see what we always talk about is how do you get in your own way and how do you get in the way of others and therefore what do you need to do differently? That is a game of deep self-awareness and emotional intelligence. And if you do the work of knowing yourself
00:35:24
Speaker
Not only do incredible things happen for your career, but you actually just end up having a better life. There's so much more available to you when it comes to your health, your wellbeing, your relationships ah that is is transformational um over time, as well as sometimes you know sometimes transformational in in the moment with big light bulbs that happen when you do that type of deeper work.
00:35:48
Speaker
That's great, Yolanda. It's been a fascinating episode. We don't typically devote a whole episode to talking about gender diversity, but in this case, I think it's absolutely been worth it. I think there's a lot of lessons that both genders can can take away from this episode, so really appreciate your contributions. and yeah Looking forward to keeping in touch, and and we'll obviously post details about your programs on future impact in their episode notes. So anyone please do reach out to Yolanda if you're interested in one of her programs or want to learn a little bit more. But um for now, goodbye. Thank you so much and looking forward to chatting soon. Thank you for having me.
00:36:27
Speaker
thank you Thank you for listening to the Alpha Females Invest podcast. If you liked this episode, we would love your support on Instagram. You can find us at Alpha Females Invest. You could also leave a podcast review, but most importantly, please keep listening. See you next time.