When Given Chance, Young Women Warm To Working In Financial Industry
June 29, 2017 by Christopher Robbins
Kathleen Powers Dunlap was looking for 60 young women interested in asset management.
She found 1,500.
“It was a surprise. We’ve read and heard a great deal about how women aren’t gravitating towards careers in asset management, so we thought we would have to do a sales job to get more women interested,” says Powers Dunlap, CEO of Girls Who Invest, a non-profit group dedicated to growing the number of women in portfolio management. “It’s been a real eye-opener to find out how interested women are in our industry.”
Earlier in June, Girls Who Invest kicked off its second Summer Intensive Program at the University of Pennsylvania with 60 college freshmen and sophomores.
Though no formal marketing program was established this year, Girls Who Invest sought applications from students interested in asset management and received 1,500 responses via the web, 500 of which were qualified responses.
“We didn’t do very much marketing at all. There was some social media, and there was word of mouth from young women who had been alumni of the program,” says Powers Dunlap, a 30-year asset management veteran who most recently served as chief business strategy officer for Fiduciary Research and Consulting. “We had 500 clearly incredibly qualified women interested in our program, and that signaled loud and clear that we had to do more, grow faster and get better.”
Overwhelmed by the number of qualified young women, Powers Dunlap sought ways to expand the program’s offerings. With the help of the CFA Institute and Coursera, the organization scaled its program online to give each qualified applicant the ability to engage with the program. Between the students on campus, and the students engaging online, Girls Who Invest is reaching 363 college freshmen and sophomores in its second summer.
Through the CFA Institute, freshman students can access an Investment Foundations course of study online to help them gain a more complete understanding of the financial landscape. After completing the program, students receive a certificate and a credential to enhance their candidacy as job applicants.
Through Coursera, sophomore students can access the Wharton School’s Business and Financial Modeling specialization, a sequence of courses and a capstone project that culminate in a joint certificate from Wharton and Coursera. These students can also access an additional 17 courses provided by Coursera.
“We invited the women we couldn’t take into our in-residence program to participate online at no cost,” says Powers Dunlap. “By the end of the summer, we will have served more than 400 women.”
Girls Who Invest was founded in 2015 by hedge fund and pension veteran Seema Hingorani, chief investment officer at SevenStep Capital, in response to the low levels of women in the asset management industry. The organization’s goal is “30 by 30,” to see 30 percent of the world’s capital managed by women by the year 2030.
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.
“It’s noteworthy to point out that women have made great strides in plenty of other professions, but our industry has really fallen behind,” says Powers Dunlap. “The narrative we hear is that women are thinking about becoming doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants, but are not interested in investment management. Yet when we put investment management among the options they can choose from, we find that they’re interested.”
Girls Who Invest launched the Summer Intensive Program in 2016 as a pilot program with 30 students.
This year’s 60 on-site attendees at Penn represent 33 colleges, 18 states and seven countries.
At Penn, students are educated in core finance and investment concepts and skills from business school professors and established industry professionals. The program also includes lessons on soft skills useful to investment managers, including presentations and financial ethics. After the educational portion of the program, students engage in six-week paid internships with leading asset management firms in the U.S. and abroad.
The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Baron’s, Livermore Capital, Greenspan Associates, PNC and the Carlyle Group are among the companies that have sponsored past participants.
This summer, every one of the attendees of the 2016 pilot program is employed or interning in asset management at firms including Goldman Sachs, Wellington, Artisan Partners, Fidelity Equity Research, Bank of America and JP Morgan, says Powers Dunlap.
“There are a lot of young women who find investing interesting, especially the growth of passive and quantitative study,” she says. “There are a lot of math majors out there who want to use their knowledge and talent, but they hadn’t thought about asset management as a way to apply those skills. They get very excited when they hear that their passion and their skills could be very valuable.”
