Diane Schumaker-Krieg
Managing Director, Global Head of Research, Economics & Strategy, Wells Fargo Securities
Wall Street is known for its high turnover, but Wells Fargo Securities, under Diane Schumaker-Krieg, has been an anomaly.
Since she took the helm of what was then Wachovia Securities in 2004, Schumaker-Krieg has tried to diminish burnout in her ranks by constantly keeping tabs on senior analysts to make sure they aren't overworking junior staffers.
Believing that people are a firm's greatest competitive advantage, she also created a culture of promoting from within. The result: more than 50% of the firm's senior analysts are homegrown.
The continuity has helped earn Wells' research and economics team a number of top rankings in areas ranging from industrial production forecasting to municipal bond research. Her equities research team earned second place in stock picking and earnings accuracy out of 167 firms in this year's Thomson Reuters StarMine Analyst Awards.
Her success has made her a sought-after speaker; she's been the keynote at several events, most recently a June event for technology, venture capital, and private equity executives.
As a high-ranking woman with a strong track record of nurturing female talent, she is also frequently asked to speak at events geared toward businesswomen.
Schumaker-Krieg doesn't sweat the spotlight at these events. She explains that during the financial crisis she and her husband, on a whim, bought a 1928 Knabe piano from a store that was going out of business — despite the fact that neither knew how to play at the time. Learning the piano inspired her to take singing lessons, which she says has actually helped her public speaking.
"Presenting to a 1,000-person audience is a piece of cake relative to singing in public," she says.
