Yeshaya pivoted into research.
“I made the decision with advice internally through a head of economics here to first consider research at Morgan Stanley. And this was a period of time in Morgan Stanley’s history where there were very big-name macro economic strategists and economists, so it was the generation of Byron Wien, Stephen Roach, Steve Galbraith and Amy Falls.”
Soon, she became a trader.
“I had to make a decision, which is: Do you actually go and pursue a Ph.D. and follow this dream of policy-making and academic research? Or would it be best to kind of understand tactical skills associated with a sales and trading environment?”
Few women are in risk-taking roles.
“We had very few women who were risk takers. The assumption at the time was women can’t take risk or women can’t handle risk. What you fail to realize is that your job is to manage the risk. Like the job is not to sit and have a poker game, right? And so that’s what I think is the difficulty. You’re breaking the stigma that is actually probably misjudged or misplaced.
“I have close friends still there, managing directors who are women. And I think that the main thing is not that the stigma probably persists, but there are still few women in many of these seats. So that then makes it difficult for a young woman to believe that it is an appropriate place for her to necessarily be or pursue.”
Then came another pivot: Working for the CEO
“Fixed income was a difficult place to work at the time if we’re talking about 2014. Recall in 2015 Morgan Stanley ends up contracting 25% of its workforce, so you can imagine working in that group. I’m sitting in foreign exchange, Morgan Stanley’s not the leader in foreign exchange and doesn’t know what it’s going to do with its fixed-income business.
“Look, I was scared. Wouldn’t you be? I was 34, I was relatively young, your hands are shaking, you’ve never been upstairs to the 40th floor. It was quite dark and I remember it was a 5 o’clock interview.
“I don’t think I was looking for a warm and fuzzy relationship. I was looking for—how do I get out of fixed income, and try and make a difference? I like corporate finance. I like finance, and I just want to work here and I just made managing director, and I didn’t really know what I was going to do with the next stage of my life.”
Role models help deliver diversity.
“The first, most obvious, thing is: There’s somebody out there who actually looks at you and thinks to themselves, ‘I’ve got a shot.’ And I think that all of us have looked at somebody that way, saying, ‘Well, maybe it is possible that if I work really hard, someone will notice me, and then I will be able to move forward.”’
“I don’t know if it’s a tone, or if it’s a way to attract other women, because you can connect with them in a different way because you faced some of the same challenges and struggles that they might face in their own lives. I can have a conversation with a young woman who also has two immigrant parents, and also has a different situation and also wonders how to balance a life that looks different. Those are perspectives that you offer not just as a woman but as having different characteristics, no matter what type of minority you are.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.