When Seema Hingorani ascended to the position of interim CIO of New York City’s Bureau of Asset Management, where she once oversaw $150 billion in pension funds, she was immediately courted by a multitude of investment management firms.
“I got to meet pretty much every manager in the world, since they all wanted to come manage New York City’s money,” Hingorani says. “It was wonderful to meet everyone."
A veteran of the hedge fund industry, she began to look at the firms’ personnel charts. And that’s when she made a sobering discovery.
“What shocked me was that there were hardly any women on their investment teams,” she says. “I started to ask, ‘What’s going on? I don’t understand.’ And the refrain I got back from them is that they weren’t getting resumes from women.”
A 2013 study by Quantitative Management Associates found that women occupy only 10 percent of the senior roles in long-only institutional equity management. Earlier studies by the Harvard Business School found that women occupy just 9 percent of the senior roles in venture capital and 6 percent in private equity. At hedge funds, women represent merely 3 percent of the senior management.
30 By 30
In recent months, Hingorani has started “Girls Who Invest,” a nonprofit focused on instilling interest in investment management in young women and motivating them to take careers in financial services. The goal is “30 by 30” -- for 30 percent of the world’s capital to be managed by women by 2030.
“Right now, women manage less than 10 percent of the world’s investable capital,” Hingorani says. “In 15 years we’re going to reach that number; we can do it.”
Almost 75 years ago, “We can do it!” was the slogan of another great campaign to get women into the workforce during World War 2. Now Hingorani is speaking out about the issue of gender diversity in investment management.
She drew inspiration from another industry struggling with gender issues: coding and software development.
“There’s a nonprofit organization called ‘Girls Who Code,’” Hingorani says. “The idea there is to get more high school girls interested in pursuing degrees and careers in computer science. I thought, ‘Why don’t we have a Girls Who Invest?’”
Intending to shed light on the issue, Hingorani proposed the organization in a Bloomberg column last year.
“I had no intention of starting a nonprofit organization at the time I wrote the op-ed; I just wanted to start a conversation,” Hingorani says. “Right away, though, I received hundreds of e-mails from men and women in our business, college professors, business school professors, high school principals, saying that they wanted to help. I met the most incredible people.”
Pilot Program
This summer, Hingorani has worked to put her idea into practice.
“We’re starting with college first, with rising sophomores and juniors,” she says. “We’re going to do a four-week summer intensive training program with 30 women in our pilot [program]. We will hire business school professors to come in and teach core finance concepts, core valuation skills, capital markets and the ecosystem of asset management. Then we’re going to bring in speakers and industry practitioners to get these young women excited about our industry. That way they can then meet senior women and men in our business who they can start building relationships with."
The program will also offer lessons on interview skills, presentation skills and financial ethics.
“I wanted these other skills, not just the hard skills,” Hingorani says. “After the program, the women are going to get a certificate saying you went through the Girls Who Invest program and they can put that on their resumes. Then when investment firms come to campus to recruit these women, they will see that they went through our program and will be very interested in hiring them."
Hingorani has already developed a road map for slowly expanding Girls Who Invest. In year two, she tentatively plans on bringing 100 young women to New York City for an immersive training program. Year three will expand the pool of participants again, using regional sites in cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.
“We’re going to bring these women together, get them excited about our industry and then connect them with firms that will be interviewing candidates like them,” Hingorani says.