March 23, 2023 • 33 mins
In the early days of her career, Marg Franklin took the formidable CFA exam. It didn’t go according to plan. An exhausted new mother, she dozed off, only to wake up two hours later. Eventually, she passed it and today, she’s the first woman to be the President & CEO of this 75-year-old institution. In this episode, Marg talks about how courage shapes leadership, what working in a bike store taught her, why she believes neither women - nor men - can have it all and what she really thinks about the CFA exam.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello, and welcome back to Out of Office. If you're
joining us for the first time, thank you for listening.
And if you're returning for this episode, I'm so pleased
you're back. I'm your host, Malika Kapoor, my guest today
is a remarkable woman, a business leader who I found relatable,
authentic and grounded. Mark Franklin is a president and CEO
(00:25):
of the Chartered Financial Analyst Institute. Now when I hear CFA,
what I immediately think of is their exam, the Wall
Street exam that's often called the world's toughest. Mark is
the first woman to lead this seventy five year old company.
She was in London recently and came by the Bloomberg
office for this chat. We talked about leadership and the
(00:45):
value she places on courage, what running a bike store
in the early days of her career taught her, what
she is reading right now, why she believes the CIFA
exam is a great equalizer, and why her first attempt
add that CFA exam didn't go according to plan. You
as Mark Franklin and Out of Office. Mark, welcome to
(01:11):
Out of Office. Thank you. I'm really glad to be here.
What brings you to London, so we are doing meetings
with employers. We have quite an interesting dinner this evening
on ESGN, particularly Climate with thought leaders and industry leaders,
and then I'm off to the Netherlands tomorrow for the
same thing. Is this your first trip to London after
(01:34):
the pandemic? Now, I've actually been working out of London
off and on for most of the pandemic, and so
I come here frequently and for longer stints than two days.
This is probably one of the shortest I've had. You
are the CEO of the CFA Institute. Now when you talk,
(01:54):
when you say CFA, everybody thinks of the exam straightaway
and everyone's mortified. It's called the world's toughest exam. Is
that reputation fair? I think there are a lot of
people who write it. Many are not prepared, so for
them it truly is tough. It is a very rigorous exam,
(02:15):
and of course the reputation for it is garnered by
the quality of the curriculum, the content and syllabus, and
then obviously the examination process which really does ensure a
certain standard. So it's not easy, that's for sure. You're
the first female CEO of this company first female CEO,
and it's what's seventy five year history? Why did it
(02:39):
take so long? I think it's like many things that
you have to think outside the box. You start to
evaluate candidates differently, and I think there's a push to
look for different not simply for the sake of it,
but for identifying people who bring different experiences in different perspectives.
(03:02):
And that probably lines up quite neatly with a dramatically
changing investment landscape. And in our case, it's not just
the investment landscape, but also how people are learning, how
people are working, all those kinds of things that make
an organization successful. If I spoke to somebody who works
at the CFA Institute who works in your company, and
(03:24):
I ask them, are things different now that you have
a female CEO? What might they say? I don't actually
I don't know if they'd say it's different because I'm
a female, but they would definitely say things are different,
and I think they might point to three particular aspects.
First of all is collaboration. The second is inclusion, and
(03:50):
I think both of those really speak to an orientation
towards teams. And I think the last element would be
around accountability, so making sure that we're siplaned and intentional
and accountable for what we need to deliver. You know,
we're always talking about the lack of women in the workforce,
but particularly at the c suite level, and it's a
(04:12):
bigger issue here in Europe. I think lots of reasons
for that. We keep hearing about how they're aren't enough
women in the pipeline or the leaky pipeline issue. What's
your take. I think it's not any one thing. I
think it's a series of things. So if I reflect
back ten years ago, we had to bring research through
(04:35):
the Women in Investment Management Initiative to actually prove that
having diverse teams, starting with gender, which is the universal
diversity issue, actually produced better outcomes because you bring different
perspectives and that should, you know, presumably expand your opportunity
and risk perspectives. And it's a core principle of portfolio
(04:59):
management versification and the same applies for teams. What I
see now is nothing, nothing like what it was ten
years ago. Now we see organizations really desiring to have
more diverse talent pools for all the reasons that are
(05:20):
obvious and beneficial for their cultures for their strategies and
for their outcomes, but there are insidious practices or habits
or structures that make it difficult, not just for women,
but for others. And I often think about how you
climb up through the ranks, and you can have pipelines
(05:41):
that look at the foundational level or the early stage
career that look pretty good, and we see that, and
now we're looking at what are the barriers for women
or others that look different than the established leadership to advance.
And I think the pandemic has really shone a bright
(06:05):
light on workplace structures, on the way we think about work,
which should be good for better diversity, and probably goes
right to essentialism on what are we trying to achieve,
how do we do that, and what are the new
skills and capabilities that are going to make leaders, managers,
(06:26):
and ultimately companies better. And we're talking not just about
getting more women into the workforce or women in senior
leadership positions. You talked about just having a broader, more
diverse talent pool. So we're talking about all genders, all
racial groups. Is that what you mean? I think? So,
(06:48):
I think one of the things that is apparent is
that what is visible has not been visible in senior leadership,
whether it be gender, whether it be raised in some
cases sexual orientation. These are things that have been absent
in the C suite and even the level below that.
(07:10):
And so then you start to say, Okay, how do
we address that because those are things we can identify,
particularly women. It's half the population. We are half the population,
and that has real economic consequences. When you take out
a significant chunk of the talent pool right off the bat,
you've limited the opportunities that you have to choose from.
(07:32):
So I think a lot about universal design benefit and
oftentimes when you're solving for a very precise challenge, you
end up having a universal design benefit that affects others.
So I'll give you the classic example is of the
curb cut. The curb sidewalk cut was really for people
(07:54):
in wheelchairs and with disabilities to be able to cross
from one side of the road to the other. But
I challenge you to stand on any street corner and
you'll see older people, parents with strollers, kids on skateboards.
I appreciate it sometimes in my very high heels to
have a smoother path down and that's some great example
(08:14):
of a universal design benefit, and I think the same
applies to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. I want
to go back in time to your first attempt at
the CFA exam that didn't go exactly according to plan,
did it? No, it didn't. I had studied, I had
studied hard. I was very prepared, and I had just
(08:36):
had a little babies, so I had a three month old.
I showed up for the exam in the morning and
I put my head down for just one moment, or
what I thought was one moment, and of course it
was about two hours later and oh my god, and
I didn't pass the first exam, but then I did
get all three after that. So I was pretty determined.
(08:58):
Because the CFA charter when I started the business and
remained so was differentiated me from the competition. And everybody
that I was working with who was really good had
the charter, and so for somebody like me, it made
all the difference to my career. So I was pretty
determined to get it. Sorry, why were you even taking
(09:23):
that exam when you just had a baby. I started
before I had a baby. I would say I was
probably a bit more confident than I should have been.
But you know, I'm merely glad I did it, because again,
it was a real game changer for me in my career,
(09:44):
and I think it is for many charter holders. And
the thing that I love about this position and that
I have now sort of at the other end of
my career, is I have a very personal and wide
perspective on how the Charter is the great equalizer and
(10:04):
a democratic program. We don't care where you came from,
we don't care what school you went to, we don't
care who you know. Everybody writes the same exam. It's affordable,
it's fair, it's rigorous, it's recognized worldwide, and that is
and you can do it while you're working, and there
(10:25):
are very few programs that are like that, with that
kind of prestige and quality and recognition within the industry.
So I think I probably feel more so about it
now than even when I wrote it. You didn't growing up,
You didn't sort of it wasn't your life's goal to
have a career in finance, right. Did you work in
media initially? I yes. I came out in the crash
(10:49):
of eighty seven, and I had a couple of jobs
before I started here I ran a bike store. I
started an insurance and then I worked for a media
company where I was a market analyst analyzing marketing data,
and then just serendipitously ended up in at State three
Global Advisors. The head of HRD said there was a
(11:10):
job there and there wasn't enough opportunity for me in
the company I was in. And when I got there,
although I didn't know the difference between a stock and
a bond, I did realize that we would have killed
for the data that the markets provided every single day,
and that they were a gauge of confidence or fear,
and I found that completely fascinating. The bike store tell
(11:33):
me about that experience, my first job would be, I think,
you know, probably not what I should have done. I
was racing competitively for a team and my owners had
a bike store and they said, do you want to
work and run one of our bike stores? And it
was great. The New Zealand team raced under our banner
(11:54):
in the eighty eight Olympics and it was probably next
to this career and the job I have now. It
was probably one of the funnest jobs I've ever had,
and was just back in Toronto, where your Frond was, Yeah,
what does that teach you? Oh, I think everybody should
work in retail. It teaches you about business, where you
(12:17):
get your profit margin from. What are the most important
things that people want? Why do they buy things from you?
What are they aspiring to be? What can they be?
It teaches you about customers and discipline and how you
treat people. I think I think retail. Everybody should do
retail or work in a restaurant at some point in
(12:37):
their crew, at some stage. It teaches you wish humility.
It sure does, it sure does. So how did you
end up at CIFA? Then? So I ended up at
CFA because I had been involved in the CFA community.
I had been part of the Toronto Society and then
ultimately ended up on the board of governors and shared
(12:58):
the board in two thousand and love in twenty twelve,
and have always thought the community was great. I was
on the Future of Finance committee, and you know, I
think this is an incredible industry. It is incredibly interesting,
but has much more nobility and utility than I think
(13:22):
sometimes it gets credit for. And over the course of
my career, I have always worked with starting out with
the Fine Benefit Pension plans and the institutional world endowments
and foundations. So I come from a family of teachers.
Most of my brothers and sisters and their spouses and
their families, and my parents rely on pension plans that
(13:43):
they have accumulated over you know, over decades of working.
And I can see that those systems provide security and
dignity for people who are critical to the economy. So
it was not difficult for me to link what I
was doing with social utility and things I could be
quite proud of, you know. In my mind, I'm constantly
(14:07):
going back to what you said about being a new
mom and taking the exam having a newborn, you know,
three months old, and I'm sitting there thinking, that's very
honest of you to go public with that. And recently
we had Jinda Don't stepped down, and she stepped down
and she said, I have nothing left in the tank,
and I thought, that's really honest of her. And I'm thinking, wait,
when a man steps down, we never hear anyone saying
(14:30):
I'm nothing left in the tank, and we never have
people like me go oh wow, that's so brave. It's different,
isn't it. I think my own experience, and I don't
have the statistics on this, but I think just Sinda
is an example of a greater honesty around things. So
if I go back to the question, what would people
(14:52):
say are different in the organization, I think it's I
think we're able to have to be much We're honest
about where we're at, what needs to get done, who
are we serving? Are we doing well? Are there things
we can improve? And that runs through the entire organization,
our operations, our team structure, our workplace, culture, our product offering.
(15:18):
Who are we serving? Do we feel we're doing the
very best we can against our mission? I mean we
have I think the extraordinary privilege of having an organization
that offers just about everything that most people want, and
that is I want to do interesting work with a
level of autonomy, I want to work with good people,
(15:39):
I want to be paid fairly, and I want to
have purpose. And you know that's we have all of that.
So I think women just have a greater comfort level
with honesty. And then I want to say, once you've
had children, they do disappoint you, sometimes at the most
(16:00):
public moment. So there is a schooling that goes on
for the best leg plans of mice and men that
your children do teach your humility and so you know,
maybe that's where some of it comes from. And you
have a son and a daughter, I do. I do.
So my son is they're both gen z. My son's
(16:25):
a lawyer, and my daughter is in marketing for digital marketing.
So no one's followed your path. Nobody's followed my path.
And in my family there are six siblings. I'm the
only one in business. So really, I don't know what
that says about what I do. You know, being a
(16:45):
woman's CEO and having this fantastic position that you do.
I've really been curious over the last ten years, we've
had all these conversations about what it takes for a
woman to be successful at work in the corporate world.
We've had conversations about leaning in, about leaning out, about
(17:06):
whether women can have it all or as somebody else.
The co founder of Chief the Women's Network I spoke
to her recently on this podcast and she said, Wait,
do women really need to have it all? Why is
there so much pressure on us to have it all?
And I've been dying to ask you this question, what
do you think? Well, I don't think you can have
(17:28):
it all. But I also don't think that's exclusive to women.
I've had an amazing career. I have an amazing career,
and I've had a really great family life. Now I
have all kinds of other things that I have not had.
You know, there are periods of time, particularly when my
(17:50):
children were young, there's that sort of fifteen to almost
twenty year period where your social life isn't exactly as
it should be. I wasn't it as great shape as
I would have wanted to be, not as well read.
And you do burn it at both ends of the
candle a little bit. But for me, I think I
(18:11):
was better at work because of my family life, and
I think I was better at my family life for
having work. And I distinctly remember my daughter, who was
quite young at the time, maybe six, and she said,
why Mommy, don't you stay home and why won't you,
like basically do for me everything I would like you
(18:32):
to do for me. And I said, you know, each
of us go off on our days and we come
home together and we have dinner, and we get to
share the interesting things that we have done. And I
want to be part of that, just the same as
each of you do, and I you know, I think
one of the great things about certainly the last few
(18:55):
decades is women have more options and so you don't
have to stay at home, you don't have to just work.
It's not binary anymore. And I hope that our workplace
structures allow for greater flexibility Generationally. I think gen Z
is going to demand a completely, a complete reevaluation of
(19:16):
how we work. And you know, they can't count on
loyalty for a lifetime career. And I came into a
system where you could almost count on being at a
single place for a career, and that quickly was upended.
So I think what is going to suit gen Z
is going to suit women, and is likely to suit boomers,
who we want to keep engaged longer in business generally speaking,
(19:40):
or working generally speaking. So I think, again there's a
collateral benefit that doesn't just suit the incoming talent pool,
but also we'll probably work well for women. How should
companies adapt to cater to the needs of gen Z.
(20:01):
I think COVID and the pandemic has catalyzed a reimagination
and reevaluation of the contract with employees. And I think
in the if you look at the last year with
the great resignation, it might have tilted too far towards
the employee. So there needs to be a balance between
the employee value proposition and the organization value proposition. And
(20:26):
I think, you know, hybrid work is here to stay.
I have been very clear that we will keep our
options open, that connection and social and for productive purposes matters.
So we're really thinking about is what is the point
of coming in So recreating a pre COVID work structure
(20:52):
only three days a week doesn't seem particularly satisfactory. So
we're really trying to think about why should people be
in the office together, how do we facilitate that, how
do we accommodate different different commitments outside of work. I
think one thing that really weighs on me is and
(21:12):
we saw this even in our own organization, and the
data bears it out that women are disproportionately responsible for care,
whether that be childcare or elder care or other types
of care. And that is something I think we need
to really evaluate the consequences of because for all the
progress we've made over the last ten years, I can
(21:34):
see that going backwards as women just burn right out.
What's the rule in your office, like what's the guidance
about walking from home or working from the office. We
have been We've asked people to sign up for the
number of days that they're going to be in. We
are moving to having them really honor that commitment, but
(21:55):
we pulse survey our people to understand how we can
do that better. One of the things that has emerged
is sometimes people don't even realize the consequences, for instance,
of not coming into the office until it's too late.
So we had somebody recently leave us. They're going to
(22:15):
a terrific job. But I asked them, you know, can
you give me some advice? And one of the things
they said is like, I'm an introvert by nature. I'm
somebody who will close the door and isolate to get
something done and not requiring me to come in. I
didn't realize the consequences of how isolated I had become,
and I thought it was a very poignant story and
(22:37):
one that I'm really lingering on to think about how
we optimize between people wanting maximum flexibility, but we do
have to have connection. And of course we have some
completely remote workers and that's opened up our talent pool.
That opens it up to much more diverse talent and
different structures. So we're really thinking through We talk to
(23:01):
all kinds of organizations, and I think, like every other
chief executive, you're talking to everybody you know, looking at
all the data, looking at what people are putting out
there in terms of work structures, and you keep improvising,
moving forward, refining your own insights, and then ultimately developing
policies around that. Mark, I want to talk to you
(23:22):
a little bit more about leadership. What's the one quality
you most respect or admire in a leader. I think courage.
And I don't know that I would have said that
five years ago, but it's clear that not only business,
(23:44):
but just about everything is changing and the pace of
change is increasing, and you're working in a VUCA world volatile, uncertain,
complex and ambiguous, and you don't think that's going to
change anytime soon. And I think there needs to be
courage on how you engage with others. So bringing in
(24:06):
those wider perspectives, I think there needs to be courage
to experiment. I think there needs to be courage to
make some decisions even though you don't have perfect information,
and then be courageous enough to be humble, and it
just when you haven't got it quite right. Is there
(24:26):
a moment you can think of where you've really had
to draw on your inner strength and sort of find
the courage to take a decision. I think this particular
job has probably been the culmination of all of that.
And the reason I say that is I was six
months into the role and the pandemic hit, and it
(24:50):
has been the most consequential event that's happened to to
our organization. Eighty five percent of our revenues come from
the CFA examined for the very first time in our history.
We didn't we couldn't administer them. That's enormously consequential. And
so you have to make decisions really quickly and astutely,
(25:12):
and that will drive that'll drive you to seek out
other people. That'll drive you to rely on others. Now,
there are some interesting things that come from that. First off,
you start to build relationships, You automatically create a different
type of culture, you live with your results, and there's
(25:33):
almost sometimes a bit of a thrill to it, right,
Like you can only be so penalized when you're dealing with,
you know, really truly imperfect information. But I think that
that has been a moment where I think, in the moment,
it might not have seen that that was my strongest
(25:54):
leadership moment and the most courageous. But I think in hindsight,
I will evaluate that as one that was indeed that
and I'll have to reflect on I'll have to go
back to my all my notebooks and sort of assemble
the patterns that emerge from it over that period of time.
Who has had the greatest influence on you? I think
(26:19):
from a lifelong influence, it would be my father, and
he was in business, and I think oftentimes when I struggle,
I do think, what would my father do here? Yesterday
was his eighty fourth birthday, and he's as sharp as anything,
and I continue to really seek his advice. I know
(26:42):
he follows the stuff that I do, and we in
the entire family structure, we could sit in a corner
and talk away about all things. So I think we
have we take great enjoyment, and he really has influenced me.
I think from a business leader, I had the privilege
of working at Barclay's Global Investors be GI and Patty
Dunn was a CEO at that point, and I was
(27:04):
so inspired. It was in the nineties. She looked like
a woman, She had a diverse team. She was inspiring
do well by you know, do well by doing good.
Her story was unique, and the moments that I had
with her, she was just so human without ever abdicating
(27:26):
the purpose and dry for our business. And I think
for most of my career I have probably tried to
live up to my romanticized and idealized version of that.
And I found that quite inspiring to think about that
ideal and you know, it's always a work in progress.
What made her human She acknowledged that women had children.
(27:50):
I mean, this was a time when you know, you
if you talked about your children, if you talked about
your children, you didn't seem serious, you know, those kinds
of things. And she would really ask about your children.
And I remember her once saying, after my daughter Lucy
was born, how are you doing? And I said great?
And she said how are you doing? And I said
(28:11):
pretty good? And she said how are you doing? You know,
good enough? And she said, it's like a portfolio. I
bet if you measured on a weekly basis, you are
not performing on a monthly basis a bit better. But
I bet on a quarterly basis you are a really
good mother. I thought that was one of the kindest
things I could have heard as coming back to work
(28:32):
after a few months, and nobody had ever said anything
like that to me before. And then she's like, Okay,
now we got to go to the meeting, and you know,
here's what you've got to do, and here's what we're doing,
and like, let's get along with it. And she had
that thing about her that people wanted to be with
her and wanted to follow her. And she had a
(28:53):
very clear vision and a very clear purpose in a
highly profitable, highly capital seeking business. And I found that
really mesmerizing. And she made people feel welcome and valued
and valuable. And I think when you can get your
workforce feeling that way, that's a pretty amazing thing. What
qualities that you've imbui from your dad would you like
(29:19):
to see in yourself or like, you know, share with
share to your company or make it a part of
your company. What lessons have you learned from your dad
that you think are important to share with your employees.
I think he has courage. I think he's really conscientious,
he has enormous common sense. He's able to cut through things,
cut to the chase. I think he knows what needs
(29:42):
to be done and he has a great sense of humor.
But everybody knows what accountabilities are and what needs to
get done. Do you have an example of a time
when he exhibited courage. I remember a point in time
where my dad had told me that he had done
some complete mistake on a client accountant. He was an
(30:04):
insurance broker, and he was so honest about it, and
he used humor and he went back to the client
he said it, which is one of the worst moments
in my career. And I really think that again, he
exhibited a vulnerability and an honesty about things. He's very,
very honest. He's yeah. I think he just has a
(30:28):
real way about him. And I think both my parents
absolutely inspired team thinking, like, you know, we are together
and we have managed each one of us is really
different from the other, and I think they managed to
make it really work and we still continue to operate
as a family unit, including our spouses and our children's
(30:50):
it's and I think that's very admirable between the two
of them. Oh, it sounds amazing. Yes, absolutely, I know
you travel a lot, you're here in London, you're home
is Toronto. Headquarters is New York. Yeah, here in London,
going to the Netherlands Australia next week, and I've missed something.
There was one more city. You're going to think, I'm
I'm on a bit of a tour, so h but
(31:12):
I wanted to ask you. There is a raging debate
in my own team. My team is mostly women about
check in baggage versus carry on bag never ever, ever,
ever check in. I can go for a week on
and I will never check in. Seriously, ever, I haven't
checked in in years and I never will. How I
(31:32):
will buy clothes and have things shipped back on before
I check in. I'm I am a master packer and
top tip firm and I and I will use dry
cleaning on the way through. But I will never check
a bag ever. That is phenomenal. So in November I
had a long trip, well eight days to Asia, and
(31:55):
I checked in a bag, and of course I reached
without my bags. And after that, I'm a convert. I
will never I've gone three weeks, I never check in.
How do you fit everything in? Well, I'm kind of small,
so very effective. I don't waste a single space. Some
stage you have to have a workshop at backing Right
(32:16):
YouTube's got it all on there. This podcast is called
out of Office. What's your favorite thing to do when
you're not in the office. I love to read fiction.
What are you reading at the moment? Penelope Lively's Moon
Tiger from nineteen eighty seven, and I read it about
I read it, I think in nineteen eighty eight or
nineteen eighty nine, and revisiting it at this stage of
(32:38):
my life is just wonderful. And I just finished The
Marriage Portrait by Maggie o'farroll, which is brilliant, just brilliant,
and it takes you totally away from work and you
get insights into different things. So both are brilliant books.
Do you have time for a book club by any chance? Yeah? No,
I don't have time for a book club, but I
(32:59):
do have friends. You read quite a bit and we
swap stories and we definitely keep each other apprized of
what's good and what's not. Do you read in Do
you read a physical book or kindle? I do read
a physical book. And my husband is who's an architect,
so those are Renaissance type people. He is an enormously
good reader, and he is my curator of my reading list.
Oh fantastic, Mark Franklin, thank you so much for joining
(33:21):
me and out of Office, thank you very much. It's
been a real pleasure speaking with you. That was Mark Franklin,
President and CEO of the chart at Financial Analyst Institute
and out of Office. This episode was produced by Young Young.
I'm Alika Kapoor. You can find more episodes of Out
of Office on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the Bloombug Terminal, and
(33:42):
Bloomberg dot Com. Do check them out when you have
a few minutes, and as always, thank you for listening.
Hello, and welcome back to Out of Office. If you're
joining us for the first time, thank you for listening.
And if you're returning for this episode, I'm so pleased
you're back. I'm your host, Malika Kapoor, my guest today
is a remarkable woman, a business leader who I found relatable,
authentic and grounded. Mark Franklin is a president and CEO
(00:25):
of the Chartered Financial Analyst Institute. Now when I hear CFA,
what I immediately think of is their exam, the Wall
Street exam that's often called the world's toughest. Mark is
the first woman to lead this seventy five year old company.
She was in London recently and came by the Bloomberg
office for this chat. We talked about leadership and the
(00:45):
value she places on courage, what running a bike store
in the early days of her career taught her, what
she is reading right now, why she believes the CIFA
exam is a great equalizer, and why her first attempt
add that CFA exam didn't go according to plan. You
as Mark Franklin and Out of Office. Mark, welcome to
(01:11):
Out of Office. Thank you. I'm really glad to be here.
What brings you to London, so we are doing meetings
with employers. We have quite an interesting dinner this evening
on ESGN, particularly Climate with thought leaders and industry leaders,
and then I'm off to the Netherlands tomorrow for the
same thing. Is this your first trip to London after
(01:34):
the pandemic? Now, I've actually been working out of London
off and on for most of the pandemic, and so
I come here frequently and for longer stints than two days.
This is probably one of the shortest I've had. You
are the CEO of the CFA Institute. Now when you talk,
(01:54):
when you say CFA, everybody thinks of the exam straightaway
and everyone's mortified. It's called the world's toughest exam. Is
that reputation fair? I think there are a lot of
people who write it. Many are not prepared, so for
them it truly is tough. It is a very rigorous exam,
(02:15):
and of course the reputation for it is garnered by
the quality of the curriculum, the content and syllabus, and
then obviously the examination process which really does ensure a
certain standard. So it's not easy, that's for sure. You're
the first female CEO of this company first female CEO,
and it's what's seventy five year history? Why did it
(02:39):
take so long? I think it's like many things that
you have to think outside the box. You start to
evaluate candidates differently, and I think there's a push to
look for different not simply for the sake of it,
but for identifying people who bring different experiences in different perspectives.
(03:02):
And that probably lines up quite neatly with a dramatically
changing investment landscape. And in our case, it's not just
the investment landscape, but also how people are learning, how
people are working, all those kinds of things that make
an organization successful. If I spoke to somebody who works
at the CFA Institute who works in your company, and
(03:24):
I ask them, are things different now that you have
a female CEO? What might they say? I don't actually
I don't know if they'd say it's different because I'm
a female, but they would definitely say things are different,
and I think they might point to three particular aspects.
First of all is collaboration. The second is inclusion, and
(03:50):
I think both of those really speak to an orientation
towards teams. And I think the last element would be
around accountability, so making sure that we're siplaned and intentional
and accountable for what we need to deliver. You know,
we're always talking about the lack of women in the workforce,
but particularly at the c suite level, and it's a
(04:12):
bigger issue here in Europe. I think lots of reasons
for that. We keep hearing about how they're aren't enough
women in the pipeline or the leaky pipeline issue. What's
your take. I think it's not any one thing. I
think it's a series of things. So if I reflect
back ten years ago, we had to bring research through
(04:35):
the Women in Investment Management Initiative to actually prove that
having diverse teams, starting with gender, which is the universal
diversity issue, actually produced better outcomes because you bring different
perspectives and that should, you know, presumably expand your opportunity
and risk perspectives. And it's a core principle of portfolio
(04:59):
management versification and the same applies for teams. What I
see now is nothing, nothing like what it was ten
years ago. Now we see organizations really desiring to have
more diverse talent pools for all the reasons that are
(05:20):
obvious and beneficial for their cultures for their strategies and
for their outcomes, but there are insidious practices or habits
or structures that make it difficult, not just for women,
but for others. And I often think about how you
climb up through the ranks, and you can have pipelines
(05:41):
that look at the foundational level or the early stage
career that look pretty good, and we see that, and
now we're looking at what are the barriers for women
or others that look different than the established leadership to advance.
And I think the pandemic has really shone a bright
(06:05):
light on workplace structures, on the way we think about work,
which should be good for better diversity, and probably goes
right to essentialism on what are we trying to achieve,
how do we do that, and what are the new
skills and capabilities that are going to make leaders, managers,
(06:26):
and ultimately companies better. And we're talking not just about
getting more women into the workforce or women in senior
leadership positions. You talked about just having a broader, more
diverse talent pool. So we're talking about all genders, all
racial groups. Is that what you mean? I think? So,
(06:48):
I think one of the things that is apparent is
that what is visible has not been visible in senior leadership,
whether it be gender, whether it be raised in some
cases sexual orientation. These are things that have been absent
in the C suite and even the level below that.
(07:10):
And so then you start to say, Okay, how do
we address that because those are things we can identify,
particularly women. It's half the population. We are half the population,
and that has real economic consequences. When you take out
a significant chunk of the talent pool right off the bat,
you've limited the opportunities that you have to choose from.
(07:32):
So I think a lot about universal design benefit and
oftentimes when you're solving for a very precise challenge, you
end up having a universal design benefit that affects others.
So I'll give you the classic example is of the
curb cut. The curb sidewalk cut was really for people
(07:54):
in wheelchairs and with disabilities to be able to cross
from one side of the road to the other. But
I challenge you to stand on any street corner and
you'll see older people, parents with strollers, kids on skateboards.
I appreciate it sometimes in my very high heels to
have a smoother path down and that's some great example
(08:14):
of a universal design benefit, and I think the same
applies to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. I want
to go back in time to your first attempt at
the CFA exam that didn't go exactly according to plan,
did it? No, it didn't. I had studied, I had
studied hard. I was very prepared, and I had just
(08:36):
had a little babies, so I had a three month old.
I showed up for the exam in the morning and
I put my head down for just one moment, or
what I thought was one moment, and of course it
was about two hours later and oh my god, and
I didn't pass the first exam, but then I did
get all three after that. So I was pretty determined.
(08:58):
Because the CFA charter when I started the business and
remained so was differentiated me from the competition. And everybody
that I was working with who was really good had
the charter, and so for somebody like me, it made
all the difference to my career. So I was pretty
determined to get it. Sorry, why were you even taking
(09:23):
that exam when you just had a baby. I started
before I had a baby. I would say I was
probably a bit more confident than I should have been.
But you know, I'm merely glad I did it, because again,
it was a real game changer for me in my career,
(09:44):
and I think it is for many charter holders. And
the thing that I love about this position and that
I have now sort of at the other end of
my career, is I have a very personal and wide
perspective on how the Charter is the great equalizer and
(10:04):
a democratic program. We don't care where you came from,
we don't care what school you went to, we don't
care who you know. Everybody writes the same exam. It's affordable,
it's fair, it's rigorous, it's recognized worldwide, and that is
and you can do it while you're working, and there
(10:25):
are very few programs that are like that, with that
kind of prestige and quality and recognition within the industry.
So I think I probably feel more so about it
now than even when I wrote it. You didn't growing up,
You didn't sort of it wasn't your life's goal to
have a career in finance, right. Did you work in
media initially? I yes. I came out in the crash
(10:49):
of eighty seven, and I had a couple of jobs
before I started here I ran a bike store. I
started an insurance and then I worked for a media
company where I was a market analyst analyzing marketing data,
and then just serendipitously ended up in at State three
Global Advisors. The head of HRD said there was a
(11:10):
job there and there wasn't enough opportunity for me in
the company I was in. And when I got there,
although I didn't know the difference between a stock and
a bond, I did realize that we would have killed
for the data that the markets provided every single day,
and that they were a gauge of confidence or fear,
and I found that completely fascinating. The bike store tell
(11:33):
me about that experience, my first job would be, I think,
you know, probably not what I should have done. I
was racing competitively for a team and my owners had
a bike store and they said, do you want to
work and run one of our bike stores? And it
was great. The New Zealand team raced under our banner
(11:54):
in the eighty eight Olympics and it was probably next
to this career and the job I have now. It
was probably one of the funnest jobs I've ever had,
and was just back in Toronto, where your Frond was, Yeah,
what does that teach you? Oh, I think everybody should
work in retail. It teaches you about business, where you
(12:17):
get your profit margin from. What are the most important
things that people want? Why do they buy things from you?
What are they aspiring to be? What can they be?
It teaches you about customers and discipline and how you
treat people. I think I think retail. Everybody should do
retail or work in a restaurant at some point in
(12:37):
their crew, at some stage. It teaches you wish humility.
It sure does, it sure does. So how did you
end up at CIFA? Then? So I ended up at
CFA because I had been involved in the CFA community.
I had been part of the Toronto Society and then
ultimately ended up on the board of governors and shared
(12:58):
the board in two thousand and love in twenty twelve,
and have always thought the community was great. I was
on the Future of Finance committee, and you know, I
think this is an incredible industry. It is incredibly interesting,
but has much more nobility and utility than I think
(13:22):
sometimes it gets credit for. And over the course of
my career, I have always worked with starting out with
the Fine Benefit Pension plans and the institutional world endowments
and foundations. So I come from a family of teachers.
Most of my brothers and sisters and their spouses and
their families, and my parents rely on pension plans that
(13:43):
they have accumulated over you know, over decades of working.
And I can see that those systems provide security and
dignity for people who are critical to the economy. So
it was not difficult for me to link what I
was doing with social utility and things I could be
quite proud of, you know. In my mind, I'm constantly
(14:07):
going back to what you said about being a new
mom and taking the exam having a newborn, you know,
three months old, and I'm sitting there thinking, that's very
honest of you to go public with that. And recently
we had Jinda Don't stepped down, and she stepped down
and she said, I have nothing left in the tank,
and I thought, that's really honest of her. And I'm thinking, wait,
when a man steps down, we never hear anyone saying
(14:30):
I'm nothing left in the tank, and we never have
people like me go oh wow, that's so brave. It's different,
isn't it. I think my own experience, and I don't
have the statistics on this, but I think just Sinda
is an example of a greater honesty around things. So
if I go back to the question, what would people
(14:52):
say are different in the organization, I think it's I
think we're able to have to be much We're honest
about where we're at, what needs to get done, who
are we serving? Are we doing well? Are there things
we can improve? And that runs through the entire organization,
our operations, our team structure, our workplace, culture, our product offering.
(15:18):
Who are we serving? Do we feel we're doing the
very best we can against our mission? I mean we
have I think the extraordinary privilege of having an organization
that offers just about everything that most people want, and
that is I want to do interesting work with a
level of autonomy, I want to work with good people,
(15:39):
I want to be paid fairly, and I want to
have purpose. And you know that's we have all of that.
So I think women just have a greater comfort level
with honesty. And then I want to say, once you've
had children, they do disappoint you, sometimes at the most
(16:00):
public moment. So there is a schooling that goes on
for the best leg plans of mice and men that
your children do teach your humility and so you know,
maybe that's where some of it comes from. And you
have a son and a daughter, I do. I do.
So my son is they're both gen z. My son's
(16:25):
a lawyer, and my daughter is in marketing for digital marketing.
So no one's followed your path. Nobody's followed my path.
And in my family there are six siblings. I'm the
only one in business. So really, I don't know what
that says about what I do. You know, being a
(16:45):
woman's CEO and having this fantastic position that you do.
I've really been curious over the last ten years, we've
had all these conversations about what it takes for a
woman to be successful at work in the corporate world.
We've had conversations about leaning in, about leaning out, about
(17:06):
whether women can have it all or as somebody else.
The co founder of Chief the Women's Network I spoke
to her recently on this podcast and she said, Wait,
do women really need to have it all? Why is
there so much pressure on us to have it all?
And I've been dying to ask you this question, what
do you think? Well, I don't think you can have
(17:28):
it all. But I also don't think that's exclusive to women.
I've had an amazing career. I have an amazing career,
and I've had a really great family life. Now I
have all kinds of other things that I have not had.
You know, there are periods of time, particularly when my
(17:50):
children were young, there's that sort of fifteen to almost
twenty year period where your social life isn't exactly as
it should be. I wasn't it as great shape as
I would have wanted to be, not as well read.
And you do burn it at both ends of the
candle a little bit. But for me, I think I
(18:11):
was better at work because of my family life, and
I think I was better at my family life for
having work. And I distinctly remember my daughter, who was
quite young at the time, maybe six, and she said,
why Mommy, don't you stay home and why won't you,
like basically do for me everything I would like you
(18:32):
to do for me. And I said, you know, each
of us go off on our days and we come
home together and we have dinner, and we get to
share the interesting things that we have done. And I
want to be part of that, just the same as
each of you do, and I you know, I think
one of the great things about certainly the last few
(18:55):
decades is women have more options and so you don't
have to stay at home, you don't have to just work.
It's not binary anymore. And I hope that our workplace
structures allow for greater flexibility Generationally. I think gen Z
is going to demand a completely, a complete reevaluation of
(19:16):
how we work. And you know, they can't count on
loyalty for a lifetime career. And I came into a
system where you could almost count on being at a
single place for a career, and that quickly was upended.
So I think what is going to suit gen Z
is going to suit women, and is likely to suit boomers,
who we want to keep engaged longer in business generally speaking,
(19:40):
or working generally speaking. So I think, again there's a
collateral benefit that doesn't just suit the incoming talent pool,
but also we'll probably work well for women. How should
companies adapt to cater to the needs of gen Z.
(20:01):
I think COVID and the pandemic has catalyzed a reimagination
and reevaluation of the contract with employees. And I think
in the if you look at the last year with
the great resignation, it might have tilted too far towards
the employee. So there needs to be a balance between
the employee value proposition and the organization value proposition. And
(20:26):
I think, you know, hybrid work is here to stay.
I have been very clear that we will keep our
options open, that connection and social and for productive purposes matters.
So we're really thinking about is what is the point
of coming in So recreating a pre COVID work structure
(20:52):
only three days a week doesn't seem particularly satisfactory. So
we're really trying to think about why should people be
in the office together, how do we facilitate that, how
do we accommodate different different commitments outside of work. I
think one thing that really weighs on me is and
(21:12):
we saw this even in our own organization, and the
data bears it out that women are disproportionately responsible for care,
whether that be childcare or elder care or other types
of care. And that is something I think we need
to really evaluate the consequences of because for all the
progress we've made over the last ten years, I can
(21:34):
see that going backwards as women just burn right out.
What's the rule in your office, like what's the guidance
about walking from home or working from the office. We
have been We've asked people to sign up for the
number of days that they're going to be in. We
are moving to having them really honor that commitment, but
(21:55):
we pulse survey our people to understand how we can
do that better. One of the things that has emerged
is sometimes people don't even realize the consequences, for instance,
of not coming into the office until it's too late.
So we had somebody recently leave us. They're going to
(22:15):
a terrific job. But I asked them, you know, can
you give me some advice? And one of the things
they said is like, I'm an introvert by nature. I'm
somebody who will close the door and isolate to get
something done and not requiring me to come in. I
didn't realize the consequences of how isolated I had become,
and I thought it was a very poignant story and
(22:37):
one that I'm really lingering on to think about how
we optimize between people wanting maximum flexibility, but we do
have to have connection. And of course we have some
completely remote workers and that's opened up our talent pool.
That opens it up to much more diverse talent and
different structures. So we're really thinking through We talk to
(23:01):
all kinds of organizations, and I think, like every other
chief executive, you're talking to everybody you know, looking at
all the data, looking at what people are putting out
there in terms of work structures, and you keep improvising,
moving forward, refining your own insights, and then ultimately developing
policies around that. Mark, I want to talk to you
(23:22):
a little bit more about leadership. What's the one quality
you most respect or admire in a leader. I think courage.
And I don't know that I would have said that
five years ago, but it's clear that not only business,
(23:44):
but just about everything is changing and the pace of
change is increasing, and you're working in a VUCA world volatile, uncertain,
complex and ambiguous, and you don't think that's going to
change anytime soon. And I think there needs to be
courage on how you engage with others. So bringing in
(24:06):
those wider perspectives, I think there needs to be courage
to experiment. I think there needs to be courage to
make some decisions even though you don't have perfect information,
and then be courageous enough to be humble, and it
just when you haven't got it quite right. Is there
(24:26):
a moment you can think of where you've really had
to draw on your inner strength and sort of find
the courage to take a decision. I think this particular
job has probably been the culmination of all of that.
And the reason I say that is I was six
months into the role and the pandemic hit, and it
(24:50):
has been the most consequential event that's happened to to
our organization. Eighty five percent of our revenues come from
the CFA examined for the very first time in our history.
We didn't we couldn't administer them. That's enormously consequential. And
so you have to make decisions really quickly and astutely,
(25:12):
and that will drive that'll drive you to seek out
other people. That'll drive you to rely on others. Now,
there are some interesting things that come from that. First off,
you start to build relationships, You automatically create a different
type of culture, you live with your results, and there's
(25:33):
almost sometimes a bit of a thrill to it, right,
Like you can only be so penalized when you're dealing with,
you know, really truly imperfect information. But I think that
that has been a moment where I think, in the moment,
it might not have seen that that was my strongest
(25:54):
leadership moment and the most courageous. But I think in hindsight,
I will evaluate that as one that was indeed that
and I'll have to reflect on I'll have to go
back to my all my notebooks and sort of assemble
the patterns that emerge from it over that period of time.
Who has had the greatest influence on you? I think
(26:19):
from a lifelong influence, it would be my father, and
he was in business, and I think oftentimes when I struggle,
I do think, what would my father do here? Yesterday
was his eighty fourth birthday, and he's as sharp as anything,
and I continue to really seek his advice. I know
(26:42):
he follows the stuff that I do, and we in
the entire family structure, we could sit in a corner
and talk away about all things. So I think we
have we take great enjoyment, and he really has influenced me.
I think from a business leader, I had the privilege
of working at Barclay's Global Investors be GI and Patty
Dunn was a CEO at that point, and I was
(27:04):
so inspired. It was in the nineties. She looked like
a woman, She had a diverse team. She was inspiring
do well by you know, do well by doing good.
Her story was unique, and the moments that I had
with her, she was just so human without ever abdicating
(27:26):
the purpose and dry for our business. And I think
for most of my career I have probably tried to
live up to my romanticized and idealized version of that.
And I found that quite inspiring to think about that
ideal and you know, it's always a work in progress.
What made her human She acknowledged that women had children.
(27:50):
I mean, this was a time when you know, you
if you talked about your children, if you talked about
your children, you didn't seem serious, you know, those kinds
of things. And she would really ask about your children.
And I remember her once saying, after my daughter Lucy
was born, how are you doing? And I said great?
And she said how are you doing? And I said
(28:11):
pretty good? And she said how are you doing? You know,
good enough? And she said, it's like a portfolio. I
bet if you measured on a weekly basis, you are
not performing on a monthly basis a bit better. But
I bet on a quarterly basis you are a really
good mother. I thought that was one of the kindest
things I could have heard as coming back to work
(28:32):
after a few months, and nobody had ever said anything
like that to me before. And then she's like, Okay,
now we got to go to the meeting, and you know,
here's what you've got to do, and here's what we're doing,
and like, let's get along with it. And she had
that thing about her that people wanted to be with
her and wanted to follow her. And she had a
(28:53):
very clear vision and a very clear purpose in a
highly profitable, highly capital seeking business. And I found that
really mesmerizing. And she made people feel welcome and valued
and valuable. And I think when you can get your
workforce feeling that way, that's a pretty amazing thing. What
qualities that you've imbui from your dad would you like
(29:19):
to see in yourself or like, you know, share with
share to your company or make it a part of
your company. What lessons have you learned from your dad
that you think are important to share with your employees.
I think he has courage. I think he's really conscientious,
he has enormous common sense. He's able to cut through things,
cut to the chase. I think he knows what needs
(29:42):
to be done and he has a great sense of humor.
But everybody knows what accountabilities are and what needs to
get done. Do you have an example of a time
when he exhibited courage. I remember a point in time
where my dad had told me that he had done
some complete mistake on a client accountant. He was an
(30:04):
insurance broker, and he was so honest about it, and
he used humor and he went back to the client
he said it, which is one of the worst moments
in my career. And I really think that again, he
exhibited a vulnerability and an honesty about things. He's very,
very honest. He's yeah. I think he just has a
(30:28):
real way about him. And I think both my parents
absolutely inspired team thinking, like, you know, we are together
and we have managed each one of us is really
different from the other, and I think they managed to
make it really work and we still continue to operate
as a family unit, including our spouses and our children's
(30:50):
it's and I think that's very admirable between the two
of them. Oh, it sounds amazing. Yes, absolutely, I know
you travel a lot, you're here in London, you're home
is Toronto. Headquarters is New York. Yeah, here in London,
going to the Netherlands Australia next week, and I've missed something.
There was one more city. You're going to think, I'm
I'm on a bit of a tour, so h but
(31:12):
I wanted to ask you. There is a raging debate
in my own team. My team is mostly women about
check in baggage versus carry on bag never ever, ever,
ever check in. I can go for a week on
and I will never check in. Seriously, ever, I haven't
checked in in years and I never will. How I
(31:32):
will buy clothes and have things shipped back on before
I check in. I'm I am a master packer and
top tip firm and I and I will use dry
cleaning on the way through. But I will never check
a bag ever. That is phenomenal. So in November I
had a long trip, well eight days to Asia, and
(31:55):
I checked in a bag, and of course I reached
without my bags. And after that, I'm a convert. I
will never I've gone three weeks, I never check in.
How do you fit everything in? Well, I'm kind of small,
so very effective. I don't waste a single space. Some
stage you have to have a workshop at backing Right
(32:16):
YouTube's got it all on there. This podcast is called
out of Office. What's your favorite thing to do when
you're not in the office. I love to read fiction.
What are you reading at the moment? Penelope Lively's Moon
Tiger from nineteen eighty seven, and I read it about
I read it, I think in nineteen eighty eight or
nineteen eighty nine, and revisiting it at this stage of
(32:38):
my life is just wonderful. And I just finished The
Marriage Portrait by Maggie o'farroll, which is brilliant, just brilliant,
and it takes you totally away from work and you
get insights into different things. So both are brilliant books.
Do you have time for a book club by any chance? Yeah? No,
I don't have time for a book club, but I
(32:59):
do have friends. You read quite a bit and we
swap stories and we definitely keep each other apprized of
what's good and what's not. Do you read in Do
you read a physical book or kindle? I do read
a physical book. And my husband is who's an architect,
so those are Renaissance type people. He is an enormously
good reader, and he is my curator of my reading list.
Oh fantastic, Mark Franklin, thank you so much for joining
(33:21):
me and out of Office, thank you very much. It's
been a real pleasure speaking with you. That was Mark Franklin,
President and CEO of the chart at Financial Analyst Institute
and out of Office. This episode was produced by Young Young.
I'm Alika Kapoor. You can find more episodes of Out
of Office on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the Bloombug Terminal, and
(33:42):
Bloomberg dot Com. Do check them out when you have
a few minutes, and as always, thank you for listening.
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