Jenny Johnson, president and CEO of Franklin Templeton, sees a potential for digital asset investment products far beyond her company's new bitcoin ETF.
In January, the $1.6 trillion investment firm launched the Franklin Bitcoin ETF, which seeks to reflect the performance of the price of bitcoin. "That's so basic when it comes to what can ultimately be brought to the markets with blockchain," Johnson said. "Digital asset capabilities are going to be really interesting in their ability to develop new products."
Blockchain will democratize alternative investments, making them more accessible to investors, Johnson said, and it will open new investment opportunities that are uncorrelated to traditional categories.
Franklin Templeton is well positioned to create new digital asset products, she said. In 2021, the company launched a tokenized money market fund — the first fund to use a public blockchain to record transactions and ownership. Because of this, the company will be able to launch other tokenized investment products, she said.
Johnson also sees great promise for artificial intelligence to help make her company's investment teams more efficient, to gather data to make better decisions and to respond to opportunities faster. But, she said, AI in the investment field is still in its early stages and nobody in the industry is doing it well yet.
"We're all experimenting, but we see the possibilities and we're really excited about it," she said.
As the third generation of her family to lead Franklin Templeton — her grandfather founded the firm in 1947 — she thinks often about how she can position the company for the next generation. Part of that positioning is rethinking the talent pipeline for women into the company and into the investment industry as a whole.
So far, quoting statistics and citing data about how boards of directors and investment teams with women perform better hasn't done much to increase female representation in finance leadership, she said.
"I do believe that the conversation should move from 'Why is this important? to 'How are we going to accomplish it?'" she said. "We're not really changing the dial. The only way we can change the dial is if we can attract women into this business."
The finance industry needs to start engaging with young women earlier through support programs in high school, teaching girls about basic finance and bringing them into the workplace for weeklong internships, for example, she said. "That suddenly makes a high school girl say: 'Hey, I could actually do this. I can see myself here.'" Similar efforts need to continue through college.
"In my tenure as CEO, it may not have meaningful change and huge numbers. But if we can make that change in high school and college ages to get women more interested," then the next generation will solve the challenge, Johnson said.
Another problem is the perception of finance as a career, she said. "We don't talk about it in such a way that it attracts women."
She remembers a discussion with her daughter — newly graduated from college at the time — about the possibility of her working in the finance business. Her daughter said, "Mom, I don't want to do that. I want to do something that helps people."
"I realized that we don't talk about this industry as helping people," Johnson said. "And we are a really important industry to help people with anything that they want to do. I remind her now, because she makes documentary films, that somebody's got to finance those documentary films."
Women can help their own careers in finance by building networks of friends, which they often don't make time for because they're busy with home and family activities, Johnson said. "Don't wait for the network to come to you."
Johnson said she has been asked how she copes when she walks into a room knowing that the men are going to discount what she is saying. For her, that has never been an issue."I've never walked in the room and thought that. You shouldn't think about it either, because that's taking up your head space and you need to be focused on whatever the issues are, whatever you're trying to solve.
"Have confidence in yourself knowing you're going to do things differently," she said. "That's why diverse teams get better answers, because they have different perspectives."
The only time Johnson ever considered a different career path was in college, when she coached an elementary school girls' basketball team and loved it, she said. But she decided that she could have a much more lucrative career in finance while pursuing coaching as a volunteer, which she did with her daughters' soccer teams for 11 years, along with coaching their high school volleyball and basketball teams.
Leading a company is a lot like coaching, she said. "You've got to be able to rally the troops when things are down and you've got to keep people focused on what the objective is. A lot of things that I loved about coaching, I find that I love managing a business."
