It’s happened again.
We recently published a fun story featuring two women in the wealthtech industry, both in marketing at different points in their career, and both named Kimberly Beck. The story went viral on social media and was a great read for the FA audience.
Now—unimaginably—I’ve found another set of women in financial marketing, this time both named Hannah Grove, in C-suite roles at two top financial firms. I reiterate from our “Kimberly Beck” article: What are the odds?
So let’s jump in and see what these two power women in the investment industry have to share with us on their backgrounds and visions for the future, through their unique lenses.
First, a bit on their backgrounds.
Hannah Shaw Grove
Chief Revenue Officer, Apex Clearing Corporation
I’ve known Hannah Shaw Grove for just shy of a decade. We initially connected back when the world was excited over passage of the 2012 Jobs Act, and waiting to see what it would mean for the hedge fund industry. Ultimately, the answer was “very little," but it did blast open the doors for the peer-to-peer industry to emerge and helped pave the way for a whole new investor class.
Shaw Grove is one impressive lady, with a degree from Harvard and a stellar career in the investment industry. She previously held senior marketing roles at Prudential and Merrill Lynch before co-founding the Private Wealth media brand for Charter Financial Publishing Network, parent of our very own Financial Advisor magazine. From there, she went on to join iCapital Network as chief marketing opfficer, and later moved to Apex Clearing as chief revenue officer, most recently taking on chief marketing officer duties for its holding company, private investment and technology firm PEAK6.
Hannah Grove
Chief Marketing Officer, State Street
The other Hannah Grove has an equally impressive, albeit different, background, spending the last 22 years of her career at State Street. Prior to joining the firm in 1998, Grove was marketing director for the Money Matters Institute, an initiative supported by the United Nations, the World Bank and private sector companies to foster sustainable development in emerging economies. Earlier in her career Grove owned and operated a public relations firm in London. She moved to the US as communications director of the World Economic Development Congress in Washington, DC, and attended Alexandra College in Dublin.
Now let’s hear the perspectives two Hannah Grove(s) have to share on today’s investment industry and what the future may hold.
What does your typical week look like in your current role?
Hannah Shaw Grove, Apex
Apex is a distributed company. Our headquarters is in Dallas, we have a Tech Center in Portland, Oregon where a big part of the engineering team is located, and we have teams in Chicago and New York that are co-located with our parent company PEAK6.
Most weeks I’m on a plane and doing lots of Zooms to make sure I’m connected to my teams and vendors, and that we’re working through bottlenecks and executing against our strategy. A typical week might include planning with the product management team around an upcoming release, brainstorming with our PR agency on key themes for appearances and events, or working with the founders to think about how marketing best practices can extend beyond Apex across all the portfolio companies at PEAK6.
Hannah Grove, State Street
No two are ever alike so a “typical week” is hard to describe. There are however things that are a constant like listening to our clients and stakeholders, understanding their challenges and priorities and then translating that into solutions and marketing campaigns that will resonate.
I also try to absorb as much of an outside-in perspective as possible, i.e. learn from other industries and colleagues and figure out what does good look like across the various brand and marketing dimensions. There is a lot to be learned for example, from the B2C space.