Help me with industry sign banking new jersey form computer
I'm so glad people
came to the front, I didn't want to be
here all on my own. And what I always tell people
is take a seat at the table and go right to the middle,
it's the power seat. It will actually-- especially
if you're the youngest person in the room
or if you're a woman or you're the only of your
type, it will capture attention. It'll allow you to turn around
and say hello I am so-and-so. Just do it. Try it. I have to do it all the time. I'm an investment banker. I went to Mount Holyoke College,
which is a women's college. All right, yeah. [INAUDIBLE] [INAUDIBLE], there you go. Back in the Stone Age. I graduated in '76. What she didn't tell
you, I'm 62 years old. I started-- I graduated in '76. I went to work for Mobile
Corporation in supply and distribution, trading oil. I then did an MBA at night at
NYU, which I did not finish. Because I got a job, which
was the ultimate goal. And I got the job and I went
to Lehman Brothers in 1980 as an energy banker. I was the only woman
in my class of seven. And for two following
years, as I worked very hard and was quite quiet and
working incredibly hard, I was ranked number seven
out of seven in my class. But they told me I dress well. So I was pleased. Actually, no I wasn't
pleased, I actually got a little bit angry. And so I decided to
challenge and to work in a different kind of way. Which I decided at that
point, I will speak my mind. And I have not stopped. And every time I've
done that and challenged as I've gone through,
and I've always been on the relationship
management side of the house. So I've handled some of
the largest accounts. I've done some of the
largest transactions. I've an expertise in valuation,
IPO carve-outs, spinoffs, 355, slice, dice, finance. Finance is an art, but it's
also got a fundamental aspect of some type of engineering. You're studying the case method. I love the case
method, because there is no absolute right or
absolute wrong answer, no matter what your
professors tell you. So it is-- because it's life,
it's a reflection of life. It's a-- there are
at least six cases that I wrote for Harvard
Business School on deals that I've done over my career. And what I typically do
when they're being taught, is I bring the CEO and the
teams to the classroom. See if you guys have
any better answers for what we threw together over
a very short period of time. Because time is of the essence. So what I thought I'd talk
about for a few minutes is a little bit about what
it's like, you know, what I'm seeing in
the world right now. What it's been like to be in
the career that I've been in. And as you said,
I'm a vice chairman. I'm at Barclays, I started
at Lehman Brothers. So I am living evidence that
there is life beyond death. OK? [AUDIENCE LAUGHTER] Because I spent 28 years
at Lehman Brothers. It was a fabulous firm. It was horrifying
when it went under. But I'm still here. So resilience is important. Failure is going
to happen to you. It's how you deal
with the failure, it's how you deal with the
challenge is what matters. I am very much about
creating diversity of thought and
background in everything that we do for the sole
purpose as it gives us the best creativity. Which means you actually
have to speak up. And sometimes you have to
tell some people to shut up. Because sometimes they will
suck the oxygen from the room, right? People who, I'm sure
it never happens here, but somebody who believes
they have all of the answers. Nobody has all of the answers. It's putting that team together. When I put teams together,
to get to the right place. And I fundamentally,
as I look out, I know it's mostly the vast
majority of millennials, here. And there are some older
people, but nobody as old as me. And millennials, you
are a great gift. Don't let anyone tell
you that you're not. You're not conforming to
previous generations rules. That's good. Because the world that
you're inheriting, that you're
challenged by doesn't conform to anybody's rules. I brought some notes
with me that I'm not going to be speaking
from, but I wanted to use a few phrases from. Because I gave a
speech a few weeks ago, the night after I had
just-- we had just sponsored an event for New
York City school teachers at Hamilton. How many people
have seen Hamilton? All right, and well, you
all have heard of it, right? So the world turned upside down. So I know here I am
in Charlottesville and that I shouldn't
mention Hamilton. But I'm going to do it anyway. And it is-- because the
fact that, well, here we are in a world that
Jefferson built. And Jefferson and Hamilton
really hated each other. They didn't see the
world the same way. But they could converse,
they could have discussions. Some of the wonderful debate
scenes if you listen to the rap is fabulous. And we're at a moment in
time, here, where history is-- change is not linear. So when I come back to
you being millennials, and why it helps
that you challenge, this is a non-linear moment. And people who are
parents will know this, but people will say
to you sometimes, children grow quickly
almost overnight. They do. They don't grow--
when you were a baby, you didn't suddenly--
you didn't grow linearly. There would be real growth
spurts where suddenly you would just get much bigger. We're in that kind of nonlinear. You have major political
changes and market uncertainty. And I always see chaos as
being a point of opportunity and youth can lead that way. So right now is a
really critical time. It's a critical
time politically. You could see that
with the frustration. You know, anger is
coming from frustration, where it hasn't been
expressed and dealt with. You're getting it politically. I'm at a British bank. We've had it with Brexit. You could see what's
happening in France, you could see what's
happening in Germany. You've got a tremendous
amount of frustration. All because of a lack
of economic growth. Now that's something I couldn't
say to a normal audience, I'd have to explain it more. But you're MBA students
and so you get that. If you can grow the pie,
there's more of the pie. There's more opportunity, the
bigger and better it can get. But we're in this
progressive hangover from what happened in 2008. You're almost out of 2008. And you say, well why is
everybody protesting now? Because it's always
at that last moment. You know, and you've got people
that have been left behind. And then you have the element
of technological change. The industries that I
have covered in my career include technology. I started as an energy banker. This will tell you all the plans
that you're making, stop now. Right, so stop now. I started in 1980
as an energy banker. And you'd say, oh, of course
she was an energy banker. She was at Mobile, she
went to energy and refining marketing pipelines,
oil and gas. Actually, it's a great
area because it uses every single financial product. So you learn a lot. And it's international, so
you learn about development. It's a very broad
industry sector. I became very curious about
breaking up conglomerates. And so I was, sadly,
studied the tax code and became the person
who knew the most about 355 spinoffs and split
offs and royalty trusts. I executed the first
master limited partnership. All these things are ways
of carving out cash flows, creating securities,
spinning them off. I pitched in one, the
spinoff and the breakup of the Burlington
Northern and broke it into five different companies
within a 24 month period. And that's how I made managing
director when I was 33. So OK, great. Clearly I should have
a great energy career. But at that point in time,
the Digital Equipment company, which was an old technology
company, a legend that none of you will have heard of. But it was a big company
and it was a house account. The partner who had run
that account was retiring. And the company wanted a
banker to lead the account. I was already a managing
director for two years. A banker who would
lead the account, who knew nothing about
technology at all, but was a strong
corporate finance banker. I had all these technical
skills, products skills, grew up in a broad
range of energy. And they said, oh, Barbara,
we'll give that to Barbara. All I knew about-- I thought servers were like
plates that you-- you know, I knew nothing
about this industry. So I had to learn it and I
had to build a team of people upon whom I had to rely. Because I did not know
the industry sector. I had to layer in over the top. Big lesson, how do you
perform as an expert when you're totally
relying on a team? And then I worked with Digital
until I merged them with Compaq in 1998. At which point, it was the
largest M&A deal at that time. I transfer in and they asked
me to run the technology industries investment
banking sector, TMT. And I came in and began
to call on the IBMs of this world and everyone else,
and building relationships, delivering functions-- people, my teams and products. I now-- now I became,
after delivering off of that basis
which is great fun, there's crazy stories in that. I am not afraid of failure. Failure is just an invitation to
give it another go, all right? Oh, they didn't-- you
know, that didn't work. Let's try this. Let's try this. Let's go in. You know, what's the worst thing
that can happen to us here? We're not in
Afghanistan, they're not going to shoot at us. We're at IBM. Right, we're at Microsoft. So I have
relationships now where I am at the top of the house
with the CEOs and the CFOs. And you would expect
me to be there. That's not pride,
that's just fact. That's what my job
is, to be at those and be able to make those
calls to get our teams in there for access. Trusted adviser
reactions, you know, the biggest thing that we
do is when we tell a client, you know, I don't think
that's a good idea. Right, so you're out there
and you've built that out. That's where I've come from. I never thought, I knew
nothing about technology. That I'd be the
person that's talking to Satya Nadella at Microsoft
about how to think about what we should be doing next, right? How to think about
artificial intelligence. That I'm dealing with GE,
which is my major account and thinking about
you've got Predix as a platform for
artificial intelligence as the glue that's holding your
industrial businesses together. What should you be doing? How do you deal with a
situation where your valuation isn't being fully recognized? How do you move a big
ship of state like that? Those are skills
that are built up. I mentioned at lunch to someone,
it's like building LEGO. At you're-- in the world that
you're in, your building, you all had LEGOs
when you were kids, little LEGO blocks of skill sets
that will allow you to go where it might go. In 1980, when I started
at Lehman Brothers, the PC had yet to be invented. So when you did spreadsheets-- the reason why they're
called spreadsheets is you had this enormous pad of paper. You had a pencil and
a very large eraser. But the HP 12C still existed. So it's been around forever. It's as if it is a calculator. You don't know where
the technology will go. You may think you do,
but you'll be wrong. We're all going to be wrong. Even Jeff Bezos
doesn't know, that's why he keeps throwing things
at the wall to see what sticks. And he just has an
immense ability to create and a unique proposition
where he doesn't need to actually have
to have earnings to be valued at a very high multiple. Because his addressable market
keeps expanding as to what's within the possible. He views your margin
as his opportunity. That has very
disturbing consequences to society as a whole. Right, can't have all
the margin in the world going to one company. So you're living in that as well
from a technology perspective. One of the more
frightening things, I mean when I think
about the economy, I'm not too worried
about the economy. The US is in a pretty
strong position. But anybody watching
the markets today? Anybody watched the
markets last night? You can see they're like, OK. So if we didn't get health
care, if this president failed on that, then
they're not thinking-- no one thinks that was
the right place to start. Because every president who
tried to start in health care, died on that issue. But it didn't move to
the next issue, which should be tax reform or
infrastructure, which would have been simpler. So the markets are scaling off. And at our firm, we think he's
just knocked a half a point off growth for the year. Because the ability to
get to the infrastructure and the corporate
tax reform, which is baked in to the
projections of the numbers, people believe will get delayed. So you're at an intersection
of the political and the tax perspective. I am sitting here
at a British bank. I know I'm going to be asked-- I'm going to do an interview
afterwards-- questions about Brexit,
questions about what's going to happen in Europe. The largest single
global economy is Europe. Not the EU, Europe as a whole. We really-- they're doing better
than anyone expected because-- and the UK is doing better
than anyone expected. But it shouldn't
be to anyone who of my vintage, when Europe
had various currencies, was just simply happening in the
UK is that the UK currency has deflated to such a level
that its exports have grown. And the UK actually, also
London is the financial lungs of the world. If you think about the two
great financial centers, it's New York City
and it's London. And to a lesser
extent, it's Hong Kong. And even in Hong Kong, a
lot of those businesses are moving from Hong Kong
to financial businesses to Singapore. And if you want to know
why that's the case, it's because Singapore
is viewed to be, from a cybersecurity
basis, a safer place to put your intellectual property. And that's also another
issue that we're dealing with in terms
of safety and security. So but the world
as a whole, the US is primed and ready to
run on multiple levels. That's why you saw that
run up in the stock price. You've got a lot
of animal spirits. Animal spirits is simply
another word for optimism. And you have major corporations
trying to stake out territory. I mentioned to
someone else today that two weeks ago, was
the largest single market ever we've seen in leverage
finance, high yield finance. And that's because people
think rates are about to go up. They're trying to stake
and require real assets, hard earning assets. And there are also
a massive increase in research and development
as well, is what we're seeing. So those are all
strong positives. But to facilitate
it, you do need the infrastructure spending and
the lower corporate tax rates. So we'll see what happens. It is what, eight, nine
weeks into this presidency. And remember I said,
failure, it happens and you have to move on. I think what you assess in
this presidency from wherever you come politically, I
happen to be a Democrat. But wherever you
come politically, can you get to a spot where
they can compromise and get things done. Because really, what the
American people are saying, could you guys please
do something, right? And can you compromise? Can you find an answer that's
in the middle and execute? And that's
particularly true here in our economy, where the
corporate tax rates are the highest in the world. And that-- I'm now speaking
as if I'm talking to you from a major corporation. Help us, help you. Help us think about how we can
do job creation and strategy. I don't think it's a
bad thing to be talking about bringing jobs home. I don't think it's a great thing
to be talking about a border tax, because it's
basically a VAT tax. But there-- but,
you know, you can work with all of these
different things. From a career perspective, some
of the most important things that I've learned is
how to work with a team. How to work-- to bring the best
from everybody in the room. Organizations deeply silo
themselves in functions. Every organization does,
every university does. People tend to go,
well, this is my-- this is what I'm doing,
right, without thinking about the whole. So the key thing and
that's why the case method, it works so well, is you're
forced to step back and look at the whole thing. And you're also
forced to think about, whoever that executive
is, or whatever who is in the case is having
to make those decisions, here's what they know,
what should they do. You can make
assumptions, et cetera. That's sort of real life. Except oftentimes,
real life is occurring and in a much more crazy time
frame, under great stress. And you have a limited
knowledge, limited ability to make decisions. So from where I sit, when
I go into a corporate-- into a room, I will bring
a team with me if I can. And I will be
asking everyone that is on that team to be observing
the behaviors in the room. So if we're in deep
silos and you say well, my expertise is in the
leverage finance portion. And you're like, I'm over
here and I'm more on the tax. Who owns the whole thing? What's the motivation of
the people in the room? And how do you figure that out? And you can, there's
a way to do that. How do you-- how do
you come into prepare? Who's got what agenda? What's the goal? What's the objective? There will be a series
of right answers, what's the best right answer? That's the world that I live in. And sometimes you just simply
have to shut up and listen. And look at the guy and
go, all right, you're in a pretty tough position. I was mentioning earlier
today to somebody else, I have a client who is in
a-- a very big client that's in a very tough position. There'll be a new CEO soon. He's a CFO, he'd
like to be the CEO. A lot of criticism on the
valuation of the company. Why is it being
valued the way it is? I have a team, he's a
UVA member of that team, he's a young Associate, probably
about in his third year. I have a team of
maybe 10 or 12 people from various disciplines. I wanted a 15 page
paper, slides about how the company was
valued and why it was in the situation it was in. They did a very good job. Except what they
basically did is tell the client with a client
already knew, which is normal. That's the first part, you got
to start with what they know. Well what they didn't do
is say, OK, you're him. And this will be done
by tomorrow actually. I said, in one page, I said with
the title betwixt and between, please summarize
your 15 pages as to if you were the CFO
of this company, what do you think he needs to do? There are 11 of you, good luck. And guess what, there can
only be one answer from the 11 of you so go figure it out. Now, they will or they'll
come pretty close. I've never had that fail,
but it's important for you to know that. Because from an
academic perspective, you might think I'm a very
senior investment banker, I can hold the room,
I can hold the board, I can talk about
just about anything. You would certainly hope
after 37 years of doing this at my level that that was true. But I'm not going to own
all the different levels. I'm going to have
to rely on you. You might say, but I
just graduated last year from [INAUDIBLE]. No, nobody knows that. You walk in, you're you. They don't know whether you're
an analyst because you're all young. And so they'll know
that you're not the most senior M.D. because
you're not gray haired. But I am gray haired,
but you'll never know. And it is-- so it is, but
it is-- they're going to-- you're representing that team. So you can deliver,
not just you, but your friends,
right, and the peers. And you're going to build
those relationships. This CFO, I gave him the
title, betwixt and between. That's my, that's not even-- I hate these, agenda,
executive summary. What does that tell you? Who cares, you know? It's called, the starting
page is betwixt and between. It could say, you're
screwed, right? You know, it could say anything. But we're going to say
betwixt and between. You're at a catch-22. This is happening. Your growth is coming out here. At least you'd hope your
growth is coming out here. You're trapped right here. Are you on a bridge to nowhere? How do you convince
these equity analysts that you're going to get there? What signs you send, what's
the signature so that you could show that that addressable
market might give you some lift? Right, how have you artificially
constrained yourself? What might you do
that buys you run way? Time. You know, it's that
thing that when you're called out
in a class and you want to buy time
because you have no idea what the answer is. Right, so you start
entertaining yourself. But it is-- that happens. So I'm sure I'll
go back tomorrow and we'll have a fun session. And they'll have
done a decent job. And then I'll polish it up. And I'll teach them how to short
form it and go in there, right, and take a risk. But you're delivering that team. An example, you
start at whatever job you might be going into. This used to be done, they
don't do this anymore. But I just say-- when I was
training, there were only seven of us. They would come in,
the first case is-- the problem they would give us
was on convertible arbitrage, convertible securities. What do I know about
convertible securities? I told you I didn't
finish my MBA. I mean like, oh, my
god, what is that? So you know, everybody's off
with their corporate finance theory doing their
valuations, right. And I'm like, I am so dead. Then I thought,
you know what, I'll bet you somewhere in
this building there's a convertible arbitrage desk
and my job is to find them. So I went to the trading floors. I went down, I found the guys
in the equity capital market. Francis [INAUDIBLE]
and he goes, oh my god, are they still doing that case? That's ridiculous. [? Sako, ?] come over here.
[? Sako ?] comes over. He's the convertible guy. We sit down. They give me all the
answers, I've got everything. And then they invite
me out for a drink. We go have dinner. Everybody else in the
class is upstairs, writing their
spreadsheet numbers. Next day, questions
asked, what's the answer? I got the answer. The guys all said, she cheated. Did I? No. And so the guy goes, no Barbara
actually delivered the firm. She decided that there was
somebody in the house who knew this better than she did. She went and she found them,
they gave her the answer. And she even got a free meal. So I mean, so it was
a huge win, right? So this is a big huge lesson. OK, other lesson. This is my favorite story. OK, Lew Glucksman is
the guy who hired me. He was a legendary, a legendary
trader on Wall Street. So legendary and so eccentric
that he didn't want his traders to be distracted. So even though the offices were
on the 44th floor of 55 Water Street, which has a beautiful
view of downtown Manhattan and the Brooklyn Bridge. He had put up panels that block
the windows so the room had no natural light. In the middle was a
big glass cube in which he sat so he could see. This is a true story. Legend, legend of Wall Street. He had hired me because I
was not considered hire-able. Why? I didn't go to UVA. I didn't go to Columbia. I didn't go to Harvard. I was an NYU nighttime MBA. And NYU today is considered a
spectacular business school. When I was there, it was
a trade school, all right. That was how it was seen
within New York, great school but seen as more trade. And the industry was elitist. So they wouldn't interview me. I was NYU nighttime MBA. Now Salomon Brothers
interviewed me, if you've-- Drexel Burnham, now
that would have-- you thought Lehman was
bad, that was worse. And it was-- but and others. But getting into Lehman, I
sent a letter to Lew Glucksman because Lew Glucksman was
a nighttime MBA from NYU. What I didn't know-- so remember I said you
should really know stuff, right, is that Lew Glucksman
hated investment bankers. He was a trader and there
was this like, you know, sales and trading versus
investment banking. I sent this note saying, Dear
Mr. Glucksman, here's who I am. My understanding is that you
are no longer hiring people like yourselves, who
went to the MBA program. I was told by your
investment banking division that, you know,
I'm not eligible. Well, Mr. Glucksman picked up
the phone and he called me. And he invited me
down that afternoon. And he told me that his
investment bankers were all assholes, that he didn't
understand why I wanted to work in that division. He thought I should be a
trader and come over and work for him on the trading floor. But that if I wanted to go
investment banking division, I would go with his referral. And it was the
first and only ever referral Mr. Glucksman into the
investment banking division. So I got hired, but then nobody
could figure out who I was. You know, I tried to figure
out who my father was. But my father was a mail man,
he died when I was seven. So it was just an interesting
experience about, just why not? Send a letter. What's the worst thing
that can happen to you? Go call on a company. Figure it out, right? People say to me, I'm
looking for a job. Send it. Make the connection. If you can connect with
somebody in a powerful way, it can-- and you're always going
to be selling yourself, selling an idea, selling the team. For me, Mr. Glucksman was key. So Mr. Glucksman asked
me to do something. I told you my favorite story. Mr. Glucksman has
me do some valuation for something or other. And I'm working so hard
because this man made it possible for me. And I forgot the lesson
of the convertible. So I come in, I got the four
pages or whatever it is. It's my best work. He looks at it. And he's this
overweight guy, the ties down, there's soup stains. I mean, there is nothing
pretty going on here. And people feared
him, rightfully so. So he's-- and he
looks and he goes-- and the pencils,
the wooden pencils. He picks up a pencil, I'll
never forget, I'm sitting there, in the little glass cube. He picks up a
pencil, he raises it. He goes, see this pencil. I go, yeah. And he breaks the
pencil in half. He goes, this is you. I thought, this
is not going well. That's going to end. That was a quick foray into the
world of investment banking. And then he picked up a
whole bunch of pencils. And he said, see this
group of pencils? Yeah. And he tried to break it. He goes, this is
Lehman Brothers. You can't break a team. He said, you went off and
you did this on your own. That's not what I
asked you to do. I asked you to bring back
the best advice we had. Why didn't you talk to the-- and here, I'd forgotten
that first lesson. I've never forgotten it again. If you hire-- if I
am representing us, if we're going in there,
we are the best we can be. I will bring the doorman if I
think the doorman can help us. I will bring anybody
to that team. The moment you start talking
about I versus we, you're done. Because we're going
to work as a we. And I can absolutely tell you
that it works to work as a we. And that if you go in
and your elbows are wired about how
brilliant I am, it's your peers that will kill you. It won't take long
either, two years. Because the moment you stumble,
they won't pick you up. We all need to be picked up. We all need somebody when
you're having a bad time. Something's happened in your
family, your mom is ill, your dad is ill, there's
a child who's sick. Something, you need
people to pull you along. If you build those
bridges, all right, they're going to pull
you right on through. All right, they're
always going to be there. I view, a lot of the talent is-- I work for people
younger than me. Of course, my CEO
reminds me he's only two years younger than me. But I remind him I was two years
ahead of him in high school. So I mean, he's always
going to be that sophomore. And he is-- so he's-- and
it just did get a giggle out of him because the guy's
got the weight of the world. He's a great guy, Jess
Daley, he's fantastic. But you're-- but you
build these people up. You could see that
talent coming through. I can see it in the
young people in here. And we've hired extensively
from UVA, that talent. But you all bring
something, you're being hired for a reason. It's not always,
always the same reason. We see this in you,
we see that in you. But you might develop into
something totally different. Who you are today will not be
who you are in 10 or 15 years. And the world will
have changed, too. So whatever skills
are required, so you have to be so very flexible. But it's really important. So I wanted to-- and I'm
going to take questions. But I want to give you one
last thing, I brought this. That's where I brought the
thing is over the years, I've given a lot of speeches. And John Chambers,
who is the chairman, was the CEO of Cisco,
used to have me come out and talk to his diversity
teams and woman in leadership, was pushing for engineers. And one time, he had me come. He said, will you come and
speak to my team in Las Vegas. And it turned out to
be 5,000 salespeople. So it's a different
kind of speech, right? First off, you have no notes. You're on a stage. The best part about this
is, for me anyway, is they give you a
professional spray makeup job that makes you look-- I don't know, it's just probably
what they do for corpses. But it was, I mean, you
look fabulous, right? At least for that
moment in time. And I'm like wow, I had no idea
this is how you look so good. So what I did is I gave-- this is for the women in the
room especially, bad guys, too. OK? I gave the eight
lessons that I have learned, the eight lessons that
I've learned along the way. And it's called the
power of the dream. So do not expect perfection. You know, and I said
perfection of self. The perfect is the
enemy of the good. And for women, this
is really a big thing. Because women, and I have three
daughters and I have one son. And I'm the same
way, which is you try to do everything perfect. But for man, good
is good enough. And even better, if they can
get someone else to do it. Now think about that
for a moment, all right. So the ability, one of the
things I've used, what is good is good is good enough. A lot of the work that
you're doing here at UVA, at the Darden School,
is so much work you're going to have to prioritize it. What has to be A? What has to be B? What can I get somebody else
to do so that we can together get to, we get to the B? How do I prioritize? It's really important. And you can laugh about it,
but it's also a mindset. So I taught my
youngest daughter, came in once in
sixth grade, Kelley, she's out in California. She was very upset, she had
gotten a B in a math test and said oh, I suck at math,
I'm terrible, and went away. And my son walks in off the
same, shortly thereafter, puts a test down on the table. And Erin can, who
is in the room, could certainly attest to this. He walks in. C-plus, didn't even study. Imagine. Imagine what would have
happened had I studied, clearly it could have been an A. I go, well, you
might want to think about getting an A next time. Guy, you're going nowhere. So but I mean we
all laugh at that and you don't want
to be too cocky, but I got to tell you something. That's a self-defense
mechanism that works. Because it allows you to
say, you know, it wasn't me, it was them. We're going in tomorrow,
we're going to go get, right? I have learned that lesson
from some of the guys I work with who would
put brother to shame in their confidence despite-- I mean, they might
have received an F, but maybe we could get a
D. I mean it was like-- you've got a laugh. You've got to
believe in yourself. You got to star
in your own show. You got to be very confident. Why not? It's your dream,
you can believe. Don't say I'm not
this good, just say this a challenge for
you but I'm going to try. Ambition, there is
nothing wrong with wanting what's best for yourself. You can be ambitious. Just make sure that you,
in your playing to win, you're not running
over other people, OK? All right, I am going to
get by him and crush him. He'll be back, OK? Don't do that. Have a great sense of humor,
you're going to need it. Really, you're going to need it. That Lehman moment, that was
hard to find a sense of humor but I can find it. Unfairness happens. You're going to be
treated unfairly. I was treated unfairly
for many years. I did not get paid the
same way as the guys for up until probably the late 90s. Because there was an
assumption that I was a woman, I had four children and
I didn't need the money. I was even told that. I did not think that was fair. I told those guys I would be at
the firm after they were gone. And I am. Take a chance on yourself. How good you are, ask
for the big assignments. Take on the new stuff
because there's nobody who's got an established base there. You know, when leverage
finance first came out, when the sponsors first
came out, when industries are transforming, go there. Because there's good territory. There's a real challenge and
nobody has an established edge. Youth is a benefit. Forgive yourself and others. I practice active forgiveness. I forgive easily because
I don't want to carry the burden of being angry. Plus most of these crimes
are crimes of ambition or not crimes of malice. Nobody is actually
trying to destroy you, they're just thinking
about themselves. And know your limitations. And so you want to make
sure that the balance is in your life. That's for health and wellness
and humor and friendship because at the end
of the day, nobody wants on their tombstone,
she did one more big deal. Who cares? I mean, have you ever looked
in graveyard to see that? No. Nobody talks about that. So that's really
important and engaged. In career and
investment banking, how did you find flexibility
with family and a career? It's very, you know, I'm
fortunate in that I did not have my first child until I
was one year away from being a managing director. So I had in many ways had done,
I'm going to answer seriously. I had done a lot of the
very hard crazy hours and intense work before
I got to that stage. And then of course, I had
four children in seven years. I had very strong help. I worked from home on Fridays. My boss in 1991
came to me and said, hey, I think it will make
a difference for you, his wife had been
a banker at Solomon and had been treated poorly
after she had her second child. And so he wanted to make
a difference for me. That gentleman's
name is Tom Hill. He's the head of real
estate over at Blackstone. And that gave me almost
a psychological benefit of knowing I would have
three days at home. Obviously some of those Fridays
I did work if I had clients in or if I was at an M&A trade, I
might be away for the weekend. I'm not going to
tell you it was easy. But I can tell you I did it. I did it and I was as present
as I could be and should be. And Erin's here and she could
tell you what that was like. But I think, not bad, right? Worked out OK. And my husband is-- if they relied on my husband to
cook for them, they'd be dead. Peanut butter and jelly
sandwich and spaghetti. Yeah, so if you're
an investment banker, you're earning very good money. So what you do is you make
sure you have incredible help. And I valued much more than
fine furniture and antiques, the help that I had. And so they stayed with me
a very long period of time. They were superb people
and I pay them well because they had my
most important people. Anybody else? Go ahead. What does your husband do? What does he do? My husband is Tom Byrne. And he runs, right now he
runs his own asset management firm, High Net Worth. He's a lawyer by training. He-- one of the reasons I
stayed in the workforce, and I never entered
into investment banking thinking that I was going to
be doing what I'm doing now. Is my husband's father was
the governor of New Jersey. And when we moved to New
Jersey in 1991 or '92, he was named
Democratic State Chair for the state of New Jersey. So he then had this sort
of quasi political career. Right now he's overseeing the
New Jersey pension fund, which is a crisis in and of itself. So he's engaged in sort
of the political sphere. He is working in Princeton. I live in Princeton, New Jersey. He works in Princeton. He was always around. And even more importantly,
going back to the kids. My mother-in-law who died
two years ago, but she lived in Princeton as well, which
was a big draw to being there because it gave me that kind
of extended family backup. But he's in finance and law. We've been married 32 years. Yes? You could just yell it out. Or here comes a mic if you want. I have the mic. [INAUDIBLE] Oh yeah, we'll go to you next. OK, I'll come right to you. I just wonder, what are
the guiding principles that guide you through all the
difficult decisions that you make, that you're supposed
to make along the way? I mean, whenever you face a
choice to do investment banking or trading or whatever difficult
choices along your life journeys-- I don't see those as difficult,
those are tactical decisions. Difficult choices are things
that relate to family, that relate to what's-- I mean, that's a
tactical decision. If you want trading,
it's because it's-- I can tell pretty quickly in
spending time with somebody where their temperament
will fit career wise. Go to a trading floor. Sit down there for
an afternoon, which you can do by the
way at our shop, we'll encourage you to do
that, see what you think. And you might-- that would
have driven me crazy. And but so-- or being
in an office is-- but it would drive, my husband
was a trader by the way. He did trade. He traded on the
stock exchange floor. He loves that. I would have been driven mad. I like being in my office
thinking about projects and pushing things out there. The guiding principle
is, it is very simple. You all learned it
as children, right. And it's, first off, you
treat everybody with respect. You know that effort
doesn't always translate into great, great results. So you want to be
kind but direct. Right, and you'll know
you're in the right place if there's a clock up there. And the clocks
important because what are you doing when you
lose track of time? Ask yourself, what did I do
when I lost track of time? That is a passion. Because if you've lost track
of time, you're in the flow. I don't know what it is. Maybe you're a reader. Maybe you're an athlete. What is that? And what are the
common denominators of that moment when you're
working and you say, I was working-- I'm in the flow, I'm riding. If you've ever tried to write
when no words come out-- I mean we've all been there,
you stare at the page, right. But there are moments
when it just comes. What's the flow? You'll know, don't
overthink this. All right, I have tons of
young people say, well how-- remember the LEGOs, just build
the blocks, build the blocks, build the blocks. Build your life. All right, it will come. You've got the next one. Yeah, I would like
to ask the question that the main character of
the movie Equity that you helped to finance was asked. Which is, what is it that you
wake up in the morning for? And well, we can also
be more specific in what is it in banking that
you look forward to or that you are
passionate about? And how do you keep that
even though you [? had ?] been in the career
for over 30 years? OK, so the movie, Equity, right. Why did-- OK, first of
all let's talk about it. Anybody see it? Anyway, it's so great. You should-- we
should show it here. I could-- we should show
it here, the movie Equity. And I'll get one of
the principal actresses to come down and talk to you. It's great fun. The move Equity is about
a woman investment banker, and it's a thriller. And it is a good movie. It's worth seeing. I backed it because
a woman came to me, her name is Sarah Megan Thomas. She's the producer
and principal writer. And it was her idea,
about telling a story about a woman in this role. Because all the guys
say, oh, woman, there are no women key producers. That's not true. I make more than most of
the guys do by a margin. All right, so that's
just not true. So it is-- and it is, but she
is and she's different than me. But they sat down. And she sat there and she
wanted to tell her story. If you think the numbers
are bad in Holly-- on Wall Street for a
woman, and they are, OK. We talk about, we
bring in 40% females. But at the top of the
house, we have only 7% women MDs and PnL positions. Yes, we have 16%
in MD positions, but I'm focused on the PnL. Because if you're
in a PnL position, you can drive the change. It's true in men and women. OK, so coming back to the movie. I backed her because
she sat there. She had raised some
money, $400,000. She needed to raise
close to $2 million. And she sat there and said
no one will give me a chance. On Wall Street, at least you
can get hired, get your chance. Go. And Hollywood, if
you can't get backed, you can't ever get a shot. So I sat there,
I thought I'm in. I can do this, it
took me 10 minutes. And I never read the script. I assumed she-- I mean, I
knew it was pretty good. And then I had my
youngest daughter, who's a script reader. And she goes in,
here's what to do. And I met with the actors. I helped bring in other
women because of my stature. I called them up, I go it's
going to be great, come on in. All right, put up. And you had to call people who
could afford to put up $100,000 and lose it. Because your odds were
you were going to lose it. So you had to think about this
as a charitable enterprise. So we build it as, we'll
have cocktail parties. If we get to Sundance,
we'll go to Sundance. We'll hang out in the
hot tub, we'll go skiing. It'll be a great
experience, it'll be fun. Come on, let's do it. It's a girl gang. And it's a girl gang, it's
a girl gang of all of us who have suffered the
slings and arrows. And that's what we did. And we did it, we had a blast. We did get to Sundance, we've
had a lot of fun with it. It's up for being a
television series now. But you said, she said,
what do you get up to do in the morning? And this woman has
written, I mean there are many flaws to the
characters she's written. Most of all that the only
pet she ever seemed to have was a fish, which
really disturbed me. But anyway, it
turned out that was the cheapest animal
we could have on set without a pet handler. We didn't have
the budget for it. So it's amazing what you
learn, that you didn't know. I'm like, oh, I had
never thought about that. But so why do I get up? I get up every morning because
something new and different is going to happen
that day, right. We're going to have to-- what's happened in the market? What happened down at DC? What's happening in Asia? What's happening here? But my biggest
reason for getting up is people just like you. So I am investing
for the future. I am fighting battles for a
legacy at this point in time. I don't like the fact
that I am unique because I don't think I am that unique. I think somebody who's been,
who's just stayed at it. And I have the benefit
of being heard. And so if I'm out there fighting
those battles right now then the garden of people that I'm-- is bigger, right? So I can challenge, right? I could say, no, we need
to do more than this. So added to the woman
in leadership index, let's do this, right? I can fund stuff, right. I could say, let's
go get this done. Let's do this. Let's do that. And not sit in
endless interminable-- I hate meetings where
people come in and go, well for the next hour,
here's our agenda. We're going to cover
the following 10 items. Who cares? I mean, let's go
into the meeting. What's the goal and the
purpose of this session? Why are we here? Who wants to own this? Own your successes, even more
importantly own your failures. All right, who owns it. So you go in there. Be courageous, have
a point of view. I get up every day and I go
in, and I have a point of view. You may not like it, that's OK. You may not like
me, that's OK, too. There are a lot of
people in the world, I'll find somebody who likes me. So it is-- so if you have
that mindset, you'll be fine. Really, I mean you
could get fired. I got fired from an account last
year, it was a blessed relief. It was like, thank god. These people were
driving me crazy. But anyway, just
to be optimistic. Anything else? No tax questions. OK, here we go. Not a tax question. Thank you for coming today. My question is you talked about
the importance of diversity of thought and
also made reference to times when you're in
the room and someone's doing a lot of the talking. So I wondered if
you had suggestions for leaders who
are trying to make sure the best decisions happen
and it might mean you need to draw certain
people out so that you get the benefit of the diversity
of thought in the room. If you could talk about any
good practices for that, that would be helpful. Yeah, that's important. Because extroverts are--
oftentimes extrovert is seen as the leader and
the introvert, the follower. And that's not true. So what you do-- what I do is I will
say that is a great-- I call. I stop and I will call
upon people and say, who else has a point of view? But it's also upon
you as a person who is more introverted
to figure out how do I stick myself in
here, because life is not a classroom. So one way to do this that
I've taught some people to do, guys and girls, is
to ask a question. You just said x. Is this such and such? What if we were to look at it
this way would that make sense? Stop. You know, just a wedge issue. Just get wedged in there. Usually you got somebody
that are rolling on and on and on and on. Stop them, right. Wedge issue, question. Open question, that will help. Most decisions, you're
working as a team, they're not going to be
kumbaya moments, right? We're not going to
sing and we're all-- someone's going to lead. Someone's going to
bray, I've heard you. I've heard you. I've heard you. Great idea. Great idea. Great idea. We're going this way. And you're like, I thought
he said he liked my idea. He did like your idea, he's
just not going to use it, right? He's going this way. So you have to do that. I had that happen to me last
year with my boss, the CEO. And I knew that. I mean, I'm experienced enough
I knew he was listening to me, he had a lot of respect for me. But he wasn't going to go there. And he goes good
try, Barb, good try. Thank you. OK, I'll play again tomorrow. So you have to take
a risk on yourself. If you're-- and it isn't always
going to be the biggest talker who's going to win. You might have the
best work, but you can partner up with somebody
where you work together. You can be-- you can even
go into a particular kind of meeting where you want to
have a young woman managing director who is in
mergers and acquisitions. And she said to me, the
guys keep talking over me. And they were, right. I said stand up. Stand up at the next meeting
and stand in back of Larry and put your hand on
his shoulder and talk. He won't move. He'll be like frozen. He won't move. OK. And it is, I mean, there
are just certain things to-- and then afterwards
say to Larry, Larry, I did that because, you
probably aren't aware of this, but you are undermining
me as we do this. Now what I will oftentimes
do is run interference and go tell the guy
that's what he's doing. He's not doing it out of malice. I mean sometimes you
have to, it's like yak's. You know with yak's, they
just keep coming at you. And you have to like,
people throw bricks at them. Some of the guys I work with
is like boulders, you know? Stop. But you can't take
it personally. Speak up and try to-- if you're
running the meeting, if you're the senior person,
try to get something from the quiet person who's been
doing endless nights of running the models. And just stop and say, we'd now
like to hear from Sarah, now that she's conscious, to tell
us what she found out, right? And then you're allowed
to show if that's what your expertise is,
you will shine brilliantly. And you become hey, well I
need that person on my team because I totally
trust their work. But you have to work at that. It's hard. And it's hard-- you have to
really work at it because you have to-- we have to
constantly watch the room to figure out where you're
failing the people in the room. That's I see as my failure. Anything else? A quiet bunch. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate it. [APPLAUSE]